THE WALLS OP JERUSALEM AT VARIOUS PERIODS. 135 



this gate stood somewhere near the Jaffa Gate. The next gate, 

 which was 600 feet farther on, is the Gate of Ephraim, which, 

 if the former identification is correct, must have stood some- 

 where in the line of the present western wall, but the site is 

 quite lost. After this comes the Broad Wall, which led on to 

 the Tower of the Furnaces, which we have already suggested is 

 identical with the great rock scarp at the C.M.S. boys' school. 

 This circuit of the walls fairly satisfied all conditions, though if 

 time permitted it might be necessary to discuss some difficulties. 



It may be added that the Gate of Benjamin (Jer. xx, 2 ; xxxvii. 

 13 ; and xxxviii, 7) is very probably identical with the Sheep 

 Gate, as the natural exit from the city towards Anathoth. This 

 is strengthened by the reference in Zee. xiv, 10, where the 

 breadth of the city is described as " from Benjamin's Gate unto 

 the Corner Gate." Quite probably, too, at an earlier period 

 this was referred to as the " Upper Gate of the Temple " 

 (2 Kings XV, 35 ; 2 Chron. xxvii, 3). 



We must now turn to the famous description of the walls of 

 Jerusalem given by Josephus. I need not again dwell upon his 

 account of the first wall, but he describes two other w^alls which 

 protected the weakest part of the city's defences, that towards 

 the north. The second wall was in existence in the time of our 

 Lord, but when it was built is a matter of doubt. Professor Sir 

 George Adam Smith believes it may have been during the time 

 of the later kings ; others, and I have adopted that view, during 

 the Maccabsean period. 



This wall is described as beginning at the Gate Ganneth. At one 

 time the explorers of the Palestine Exploration Fund thought they 

 had identified the Gate Ganneth with a half -buried gateway on the 

 general line of the old wall to the south-east of the Church of the 

 Holy Sepulchre. Unfortunately excavations showed that this was 

 impossible. So bhe starting-place of this wall is uncertain and 

 speculative reconstructions have usually been biased by a 

 desire to include or to exclude the traditional Holy Sepulchre 

 from within its circuit. Although we have as yet no archaeo- 

 logical proof, I can see no reason why a wall built, as this probably 

 was, to protect the buildings which had grown up outside the 

 Fish Gate, along the great north road — buildings chiefly in the 

 low-lying Tyropoean Valley — should have m.ade so wide a circuit 

 to the west as to include the site of the Holy Sepulchre. Un- 

 fortunately the subject is seldom looked at in a dispassionate 

 way. This second wall completed its circuit at the tower of 



