248 DR. E. W. G. MASTEEMAN_, ON EECENT DISCOVERIES 



these remains could be positively dated. For want of information 

 on the subject, it would be quite open to believe that Solomon 

 himself constructed the wall on the wider lines running down 

 to the Pool of Siloam, and tliat the other line of wall may have 

 belonged to later times. The present writer considers the 

 former theory the more probable. In addition to the walls 

 Bliss found three gateways, one of which, a little south-west of 

 the Pool of Siloam, clearly showed successive changes of level 

 over three periods, eacli represented by a new door sill. In 

 association with a Iloman street running out here was a great 

 rock-cut drain, 6 feet high, which shows that Jerusalem was 

 not alv^ays the insanitary and ill-drained city it is to-day. 

 The drain was Pioman work, and may have been in use in New 

 Testament times. During the progress of the excavations the 

 ancient limits of the Pool of Siloam were defined. The 

 original pool was found to have been a rock-cut excavation 

 (71 feet north to south, and 75 feet east to west), and round 

 the four sides there was a covered arcade (12 feet wide and 

 22-^ feet high); probably Herodian work ; if so it was in use in 

 Xew Testament times, and to this very arcade came the blind man 

 (John ix, 7). On the west side of the pool a flight of stone steps 

 was found which led up into the city, probably on the line of 

 the very stairs mentioned in N"eh. iii, 15. 



There are many questions of Jerusalem topography yet 

 unsolved. The south-east corner of the Temple which was so 

 long pronounced with such positiveness to be Solomon's work, 

 is now very generally considered Herodian ; it was certainly 

 built to admit of a great extension of the Temple area, and not 

 the original limits. The exact course of the second and third 

 walls is still a matter of dispute, and is hardly likely to be 

 settle 1 without excavation, but on the whole the opinion seems 

 to be gaining ground that the present northern walls follow 

 the general line of the third wall. The fact now demonstrated 

 by 131iss's excavation, that the city extended so much further 

 southwards than at present, makes it more believable than it 

 once was, that the walls of the city at the time of the Crucifixion 

 did exclude the area now covered by the " Church of the Holy 

 Sepulchre." So good an authority as Sir Charles Wilson 

 admits that there is nothing in the topography against the view, 

 but whether the question will ever be cleared up on scientific 

 evidence is doublful. 



Ancient inscriptions are unfortunately rare in Jerusalem on 

 account of the softness of the local limestone and the destruc- 

 tiveness of man ; one, therefore, which can be certainly dated and 



