Travels Along the Mediterranean and Parts Adjacent in Company with the Earl of Belmore, During the Years 1816-17-18 (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1822. Excerpt: ... We now proceed to examine the ravine on the west of the city; and the first object that arrests the attention, is a large square cistern in the bottom of it, a little below, or to the south of, the gate of Bethlehem. This answers to the description of the pool that was made by Hezekiah, mentioned in 2d Chron. xxxii. 30. This same Hezekiah stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. This cistern is evidently of Jewish workmanship; and, I have no doubt, is the pool alluded to both in the chapter of the Chronicles, quoted above, and in the 3d chapter and 16th verse of the book of Nehemiah. Above, or to the north of this pool, the ravine is said to have been called the valley of Gihon, and below it, the valley of the Son of Hinnom. Proceeding down the ravine, we find a number of sepulchres on the right-hand side, that is on the side which is opposite to the city. They are cut in the rock, and are very well executed; and many of them have a series of small apartments communicating with each other. They are formed in the same style, both in the cutting at the entrance and in the excavations within for receiving the body, as the other tombs of the ancient Jews; and are probably the sepulchres of the city of David which stood on Mount Zion, directly opposite, and both they, and the Castle of David, and the cistern above mentioned, answer to the description in the 16th verse of the 3d chapter of Nehemiah: "After him repaired Nehemiah, the son of Azbuk, the ruler of the half part of Bethzur, unto the place over against the sepulchres of David, and to the pool that was made, artd unto the house of the mighty." Some of these tombs bear the Greek inscription of Ti ayias ZlflN, but both the workmanship and the place which it occu...