in the Levant, in 1621, undertaken in consequence of commissions with which he was charged by Louis XIII. to the grand seignior. One of the articles of these commissions being to support the Latin monks. in the possession of the sacred places in Palestine, and to establish a consul at Jerusalem, it is not surprising that such a plan should be met with in his book rather than any other. The present extent of the city, its streets, the topography of the ground, are expressed in this plan, and better than any where else that I know of. For the greater clearness and less distraction in regard to the principal object, we admit into our plan such circumstances only as are particularly connected with the subject of this dissertation. The utility, nay even the necessity of a plan in such a case, affords just reason for astonishment that no use has yet been made of that whose assistance we borrow.

1. OF THE QUARTERS OF ANCIENT JERUSALEM. Josephus gives us a general idea of Jerusalem, when he says, War of the Jews, book vi. chap. 6. that this city was seated on two hills facing each other and separated by a valley. That which was called the upper city occupied the most extensive as well as the most elevated of these hills, whose advantageous situation induced David to choose it for his fortress; and the other hill, named Acra, was the site of the lower city. Now we see that mount Sion, which is the first of these two hills, is yet perfectly distinguished on the plan. Its most remarkable declivity looks toward the south and west, being formed by a deep ravine, which in Scripture is denominated Ge Ben Hinnom, or the Valley of the Children of Hinnom. This valley, running from west to east, meets, at the extremity of mount Sion, the Valley of Kedron, which extends from north to south. These local circumstances, which are determined by nature herself, are not liable to those changes which time and the fury of men may have made in the city of Jerusalem. It is these that ascertain the limits of the city in that part which Sion occupied. It is this part that advances furthest toward the south, and you are not only fixed in such a manner that you cannot take in a greater space on that side, but the utmost breadth to which the site of Jerusalem can possibly extend is determined on the one hand by the declivity of Sion which faces the west, and on the other by its opposite extremity toward Ćedron and the east. That part of the walls of Jerusalem which Josephus calls the most ancient bordered the summit of the rock, according to that historian. To this also refer these words of Tacitus, in the description which he gives of Jerusalem, Hist. lib. i. cap. 11. Duos colles, immensum editos, claudebant muri; extrema rupis abrupta. Hence it follows that the contour of the mountain still serves to mark and circumscribe the ancient limits.

The second hill rose to the north of Sion, its east side facing mount Moriah, on which the temple was situated, and from which this hill was separated only by a chasm which the Asmoneans partly filled up, by lowering the summit of Acra, as we are informed by Josephus in the place quoted above: for, this summit commanding the temple, and being very near it, according to the account of Josephus, Antiochus Epiphanes erected a fortress upon it to overawe the city and annoy the temple; which fortress, having a Greek or Macedonian garrison, held out against the Jews till the time of Simon, who demolished it, and at the same time levelled the summit of the hill. As no mention is ever made of Acra till after this time; it is most probable that this name is nothing else than the Greek word Axea, which signifies a high place, and sometimes means a fortress. Besides, the term Hakra, with an aspirate, appears to have been peculiar to the Syrians, or at least adopted by them to denote a fortified place. In the Chaldean Paraphrase, 2 Sam. ii. 7. Hakra Dsiun is the fortress of Sion. Josephus gives an idea of the figure of the base of the hill, by the term auQxvgros, which, according to Suidas, is applied to the moon in one of her phases, between the new and the full; and, according to Martianus Capella, between the half and the full. A remarkable circumstance in the plan which serves for our ground work, is a vestige of the principal eminence of Acra, between Sion and the temple; and this circumstance is the less equivocal, as care has been taken to write high place in the plan itself, near the southwest corner of the temple.

Mount Moriah, on which the temple stood, being at first only an irregular hill, it was necessary, in order to extend the appendages to the temple over an equal surface and to increase the area of its summit, to support the sides, which formed a square, by immense works. The east side bordered the valley of Cedron, commonly called the valley of Jehoshaphat, which was very deep. The south side, overlooking a very low spot, was faced from top to bottom with a strong wall; and Josephus assigns an elevation of not less than three hundred cubits to this part of the temple; so that, for its communication with Sion, it had occasion for a bridge, as the same author informs us. The west side looked toward Acra, the appearance of which, from the temple, is compared by Josephus to a theatre. On the north side an artificial ditch, Tagos de ogwgunтo, says our historian, separated the temple δε from a hill named Bezetha, which was afterward joined to the town by an extension of its area. Such is the general disposition of mount Moriah, in the site of Jerusalem.

The famous tower of Antonia flanked the northeast corner of the temple. Seated on a rock, it was originally erected by Hyrcanus, the first of that name, and called Bages, a Greek term, according to Josephus, but

which St. Jerom asserts to have been common in Palestine, even down to his time, to denote strong buildings, and such as were erected in the form of towers. That in question received considerable embellishments from Herod; who named it after Antony, his benefactor; and before the accession of Bezetha, the area of the city did not extend beyond it toward the north. It is even necessary to recede a little to the south, a very small distance from the west front of the temple, in order to exclude from the city Golgotha or Calvary, which, being the place of execution for criminals, was not comprehended within its walls. The piety of the Christians did not at any time suffer this place to remain unknown, even prior to the reign of Constantine the Great: for, could it have been so to those Jews who had been converted to Christianity, who, as we are told by St. Epiphanius, again took up their abode in the ruins of Jerusalem, after the destruction of that city by Titus, and there led an edifying life?

In the year 326, Constantine, according to Eusebius, covered this very spot with a church; and his account agrees with the testimony of the author of the Itinerarium a Burdigala Hierusalem usque, who was at Jerusalem in 333, according to the consulate, which serves as a date to his Itinerary: Ibidem modo jussu Constantini Imperatoris Basilica facta est, id est Dominicum, miræ pulchritudinis. Though Almansor Hakim Billa, a calif of the race of the Fatimites of Egypt, ordered the church to be destroyed at the beginning of the eleventh century, from a determina tion not to tolerate the imposture of the holy fire, as it was termed, of the Greeks on Easter eve; yet the Greek emperor Constantine Monomachus, thirtyseven years afterward, in 1048, obtained of Hakim's grandson the right to rebuild the same church, and defrayed the expense of the structure, as we are informed by William, archbishop of Tyre. Besides, the conquest of Jerusalem, by Godfrey of Bouillon, in 1099, leaves no long interval of time from the circumstance just mentioned. Now it will be remarked that the preceding facts, relative to ancient Jerusalem, have nothing equivocal, and are as decisive as the disposition of mount Sion on the opposite side.

In respect to the eastern part of Jerusalem, there is no ambiguity. It is notorious and evident that the valley of Cedron served for the boundary of the city, in the same or nearly the same line as was described on the border of that valley, by the front of the temple which looked that way. We arrive at the like certainty in respect to the west side of the city, when we consider that the natural elevation of the ground which bounds the area of Sion on that side, as well as toward the south, continues to run northward till it comes opposite to the temple. There is no reason to doubt that this long eminence, commanding a valley situated without the town, is the contrary side of Acra to that which faces the temple. The advantageous situation which the walls of the city still re

tain on the precipice, fully justifies this opinion. It is moreover supported by the testimony of Brocardus, a Dominican monk, who was in Palestine in 1283, as he informs us in the description which he gave of that country. It is to the west part of the site of Jerusa lem, running from Sion toward the north, that these words, extracted from the special description of this city, refer: Vorago seu vallis quæ procedebat versus aquilonem, faciebatque fossam civitatis juxta longitudinem ejus, usque ad plagam aquilonis; et super eam erat intrinsecus rupes eminens quam Josephus Acram appellat, quæ sustinebat murum civitatis superpositum, cingentem ab occidente civitatem, usque ad portam Ephraim, ubi curvatur contra orientem. This statement of an author who wrote from actual observation, is perfectly conformable with the preceding representation, suggested by the plan of the ground. This may suffice to explain the different quarters which composed ancient Jerusalem, their site and relative positions.

II. EXTENT OF ANCIENT JERUSALEM.

The account given by Josephus of the several walls which encompassed Jerusalem, comprehends circumstances that contribute to make us thoroughly acquainted with the extent of that city.

This historian distinguishes three different walls. That which he calls the most ancient, not only covered Sion on the exterior of the city, but likewise separated that part from the lower city, or Acra. It is at this very place that Josephus commences his description of this wall. He says that the tower called Hippicos flanked the end next the north, apoμevov de xaтa Bogeαv aπо т8 ITπms, incipiens ad boream ab Hippico; it thence extended to the west gate of the temple, by which, to judge from the plan, we are to understand its southwest angle. It is obvious that this part of the wall forms a separation between the upper and the lower city. It seems to correspond with the southern boundary of the modern city of Jerusalem, which excludes Sion; so that we have every reason to presume that the tower of Hippicos, whose situation, as we shall presently find, is an important point for us to ascertain, stood near the southwest angle of the present area of Jerusalem. If we may give credit to various accounts, the present wall was the work of Solyman, who, in 1520, succeeded his father Selim, to whom the Turks are indebted for the conquest of Egypt and Syria. Be this as it may, Edrisi, who wrote his geography for Roger I. king of Sicily, deceased in 1151, represents Jerusa lem as being nearly in the same state as at the present day, saying that it extends in length from west to east. He even expressly excludes mount Sion from its area; for, to use the words of his description, in order to go to a temple where the Christians pretended that Christ had held the last supper with his disciples,

and which is situated on that mount, it is necessary to leave the town by a gate called Bab Seihun, the Gate of Sion, which corresponds with the present state of Jerusalem. Benjamin of Tudela, whose Travels are dated 1173, remarks, that in his time there was no entire edifice standing upon mount Sion, except this church. The observation relative to mount Sion, which is to be found in the Travels of Willebrand of Oldenburg, performed in 1211, Nunc includitur muris civitatis, sed tempore passionis Dominica excludebatur, must be taken in a contrary sense, if it were only on account of the last member of the sentence, excludebatur tempore, passionis. It is, in general, highly probable, that in places where the ancient wall had any correspondence with the modern enclosure, the situation of those places, nay even the vestiges of the former foundations having determined the limits of the modern area, the latter consequently gives the extent of the ancient site. A particular circumstance exists to authorize this general observation in regard to the separation of Sion from Acra. This is the re-entering angle facing Sion, which is to be observed in the present southern boundary of Jerusalem, in the part nearest the site of the temple or mount Moriah; for it was, in fact, in this manner only that the quarter of Sion could be separated from Acra; since, as we have observed in speaking of Acra, the high place marked in the plan, and on which the angle in question seems to depend, undoubtedly formed part of the eminence known by the name of Acra, and probably that which most overlooked, and consequently was most distinct from Sion.

Josephus having described the northern part of the area of Sion, from the tower of Hippicos to the temple, begins again at that tower and follows it to the west, and afterward of course to the south as far as the fountain of Siloe. This fountain is situated at the bottom of a deep ravine, which bounds the base of Sion, prolonged to the edge of the valley of Cedron, and which separates it from a portion of the city seated along this valley, as far as the foot of the temple. At this ravine terminated the hollow, or valley, which parted mount Sion from the hill of Acra, and which Josephus terms των Τυροποιων, cascariorum, of the cheesemongers. Edrisi, who makes mention of this valley, and that very distinctly, says, that on going out at the gate of which he had spoken by the name of Sion, you descend into a hollow, in fossam, according to the version of the Maronites, which, he adds, is called the Valley of Hell, and in which is the fountain of Seluan, or Siloan. This fountain was not included within the ancient city. St. Jerom alludes to it in these words, in Matth. xxiii. 23. In portarum exitibus, quæ Siloam ducunt. As the valley in which Siloe is situated, extends from southeast to northwest, Josephus must be considered very accurate, when he says that the wall which looks down upon the fountain of Siloe, runs on the one hand tow

ard the south, and on the other toward the east: for it is almost exactly in this manner that this wall followed the edge of the two declivities which form the ravine. The Itinerary of Jerusalem agrees in its account of the fountain of Siloe: Deorsum in valle, juxta murum, est piscina quæ dicitur Siloa. Be it here remarked, that mention is thus made of this wall in a document of the age of Constantine the Great. It may hence be inferred, that the rebuilding of Jerusalem, after the destruction of the city by Titus, which we know to have been the work of Adrian, who gave the new town the name of Elia Capitolina, extended to Sion, as well as the rest of the city: so that the reduction of Sion to the state in which it now appears, must have originated in the ravages committed by Chosroes, king of Persia, by whom the city was taken in 614. It would therefore be wrong to take in a literal sense what is said by Abulpbaragius, Dinast. 7. that the Elia of Adrian was near the destroyed city. By this nothing else can be meant, but that the site of the city at the time when the historian wrote, and after the establishment of Mahometanism, did not exactly correspond with that which it occupied at a more remote period. It must not be imagined that the use of the name of Ælia was strictly confined to the duration of the Roman power, since the Oriental writers sometimes employ the denomination of Ilia to denote Jerusalem.

But to resume the course of the wall beyond Siloe, this wall was continued across Ophla, and terminated at the east front of the temple, which brings us in fact to its angle, between the west and the south. In several passages of Scripture mention is made of Oph'l, or Ophel. This term is even used metaphorically; but it is impossible to determine, from the context of the original, whether it signifies rather presumption or pride, than blindness or infatuation. Commentators are divided, some insisting that Ophel means a high place, and others a deep place. The contrariety of this interpretation is not more extraordinary than that which we find in the use of the Latin word altus, which is sometimes applied to depth as well as to height. The Greek version, Reg. Ñ. 5, 24. has rendered Ophel onstεy, a covered, and, as it were, gloomy place; and in fact, if it be remarked that Opbla applies in Josephus precisely to that part of the wall which passes through this glen, which, as we have observed in speaking of mount Moriah, was overlooked by the south front of the temple, it cannot be denied that the interpretation of Ophel, as a deep place, is justified by a circumstance of this nature, and that all doubts of its propriety are removed.

The site assigned to Ophel will agree with what is said by Josephus, War of the Jews, book vi. chap. 7. when speaking of the factions or parties by which Jerusalem was divided; namely, that one of these parties occupied the temple and Ophla, and the valley of Cedron. In the second book of Chronicles, xxiii.

14. king Manasseh is said to have enclosed Ophel within the area of the city; which is the more remarkable as it would hence follow that the city of David had not previously exceeded the natural limits of mount Sion, which is actually bounded by the ravine of Siloe. The literal translation of the text is as follows: Edificavit murum exteriorem civitati David ab occidente Gihon, in torrente, procedendo usque ad portum Piscium, et circuivit Ophel, et munivit eum. These words, murum exteriorem civitati David, would allude to the consequence that has just been drawn respecting the accession of Ophel; cir cuivit Gihon, according to the commentators, is the same as Siloe; and in this case, ab occidente must mean from what lies to the west of Siloe, that is to say, from Sion, which really lies westward of that fountain, the bank of the brook, in torrente, which may naturally be presumed to mean Cedron. Nothing can more clearly coincide with the situation of the place itself than this interpretation, which teaches us that a distinction ought to be made between the city of David, properly so called, and what was afterward included in the same quarter of Sion. We have therefore traced the extent of that whole quarter, together with its dependencies, to the foot of the temple.

The second wall mentioned by Josephus has nothing to do with our subject, because it was situated in the interior of the city. It began at the gate called Genath, of the Gardens, as this word may be rendered; which gate was opened in the first of these walls, or that which separated Sion from Acra: and this second wall, running toward the north side of the city, turned again upon the tower of Antonia, where it terminated. This wall was consequently but an intersection of Acra, connected at one end with the wall of mount Sion and at the other with the tower which covered the northwest angle of the temple. It is natural to suppose that it owed its existence only to its having preceded an ulterior wall, such as that which extended the limits of the quarter of Acra, and of which we have yet to speak. I shall merely add that it is this interior wall that we ought to adopt in preference, if we would trace the limits of the city rebuilt by Nehemiah; as it is much more reasonable to attribute to the Asmonean princes, and to that period when their affairs were most prosperous, the erection of a new wall which doubles the former and comprehends a much more considerable space.

The third wall, which, when joined to the first, completes the circumscription of the area of Jerusalem, begins, according to Josephus, at the tower of Hippicos. The description of the first wall has already made us acquainted with the site of this tower. What the same historian says of the wall in question confirms the accuracy of that site. Beginning then at the tower of Hippicos, this wall ran directly northward to another very considerable tower called Psephina. Now we still see that the present wall of Jerusalem,

retaining the advantage of standing on the brow of the hill on which the ancient Lower City was seated, extends, from south to north, from the northern angle of Sion to the castle denominated the castle of the Pisans. The tower of Psephina, according to what we are elsewhere told by Josephus, was not inferior to any of those that belonged to the fortifications of Jerusalem. The Pisans' castle is still a kind of citadel to this city. Here resides the aga, and here is stationed the garrison under his command. Phocas, the Greek, who visited the holy places in 1185, and whose travels were published by Allatius, in Symmictis sive Opusculis, observes that this tower, or rather this castle, to come a little nearer to the terms which he employs, augyos naμμege DeσTatos; turris insigni admodum magnitudine, was denominated, by the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Tower of David. He places it in the north part of the city; Epiphanius of Hagiopolis, near the gate facing the west, which is more correct, particularly in regard to the modern city of Jerusalem. According to the account of Brocard, the monk, whom I have already quoted, David's Tower must have been comprehended in the area of Sion, and stood near the angle formed by the valley which separates that mount from Acra, with the western declivity of Sion; a situation more suitable to Hippicos than to Psephina. We nevertheless meet in the same account with a particular mention of the place which agrees with the site of the castle PiIt is clearly delineated in these words: Rupes illa, super quam ex parte occidentis erat extructus murus civitatis, erat valde eminens, præsertim in angulo ubi occidentalis muri pars connectebatur aquilonari; ubi et turris Neblosa dicta, et propugnaculum valdè firmum cujus ruinæ adhuc visuntur, unde tota Arabia, Jordanis, Mare Mortuum, et alia plurima loca, sereno cœlo videri possunt. This latter circumstance, demonstrating the great advantage of the situation of the place, is well calculated to determine our opinion respecting the site, which is much more suitable to the ancient tower of Psephina than to the modern castle Pisano. We will go still further and observe that this account of Brocard's agrees with what we read in Josephus, Jewish War, book vi. chap. 6. that, at sunrise, the tower of Psephina commanded a view of Arabia, the sea, and the remotest part of Judea. Though it is not probable that the present castle is the structure which originally occupied this place, and it is erroneous, as Phocas justly remarks, to attribute it to David himself; yet it does not thence follow that it differs from the former in regard to its site. Benjamin of Tudela even asserts that the walls erected by the Jews, his ancestors, were standing in his time, that is, in the twelfth century, to the height of ten cubits.

sano.

If we have already discovered such a concordance between castle Pisano and the tower of Psephina, the following circumstance will incontestibly establish their identity. Josephus expressly says that this tower