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the soil;" and in this it differs materially from the Pool of Mamilla, "the sides of which are built up with hewn stones laid in cement," as is also the Pool of the Bath within the City; a fact strongly opposed to their great antiquity. The Pool of the Sultan is said by William of Tyre to have been celebrated in the times of the kings of Judah; but as he does not refer to any passages in Holy Scripture, it is impossible to determine what was the Christian tradition at that period relating to the Pool. The earliest distinct notice which we have of it is in the account of the rebuilding of the walls after the Babylonish captivity, in a passage which also assigns the "Sepulchres of David" to the part of Mount Sion above the pool, where they are still found". It has there no proper name given it, being described merely as "the pool that was made." The modern tradition which would make this the bath of Bathsheba, is worthy of no consideration; nor has any satisfactory reason been assigned for its present native appellation, which, however, would probably be found in an inscription on the Saracenic fountain at the South of the pool. This fountain, which is now dry, appears to have been formerly supplied by a branch of the aqueduct which has already been frequently alluded to, but which here demands a fuller notice.

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It formerly conveyed the waters of three fountains. from the neighbourhood of Solomon's Pools to the Holy

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City. It is now in ruins, but the water still runs as far as Bethlehem, and the aqueduct may be traced along the steep mountain-sides, throughout the whole of its winding course. The level is preserved almost entirely by following the natural formation of the ground, not by artificial contrivance; nor is the construction of the aqueduct at all remarkable for the solidity of its masonry. It is in some parts composed of earthen pipes, roughly covered with stones, but elsewhere the channel is formed by casing the stones with cement. On reaching the Valley of Hinnom, its waters were divided into two courses, one of which, as has been observed, crossed the valley below the Birket es-Sultan, while the other, after skirting that pool on its west side, was carried over nine low arches, which still remain in a state of decent repair'.

There is on this part of the aqueduct an Arabic inscription, which may well introduce an inquiry into its history, hitherto much involved in obscurity. It is to the following effect: "In the name of the most merciful God, our Lord the Sultan, el-Melik en-Nassir, the Lord of the Faith and of the Faithful, Mohammed, son of the Sultan el-Melik el-Mansûr Kelaûn, ordered this blessed aqueduct to be built." Unfortunately, where the date was, the stone is broken, but Sultan Mohammed, Ibn Kelaûn, one of the Baharite dynasty in Egypt, reigned between 693 and 741 of the Hegira,

1 Its further course round Mount Sion and along its eastern ridge within the modern city, where it is still to be traced under the foundation of the buildings, until it crosses the Tyropoon by the causeway, may be seen in the Plan, and has been already in part

described. (See above, p. 275.) Messrs. Wolcott and Tipping explored the part within the city for 400 or 500 feet along Mount Sion, but could not reach the causeway. See Biblioth. Sacr. PL I. pp. 31, 2.

(A.D. 1294-1340)2. The first direct allusion to it in Christian writers occurs about this time, and it is most improbable that, had it existed at an earlier period, it would have been passed over by the Chroniclers of the Crusades, who are so particular in their account of all that relates to the waters of Jerusalem. Yet there is a much earlier notice, which might be taken to refer to this part of the aqueduct, and which, independently of an ancient and well-authenticated Jewish tradition, would dispose me to believe that the Sultan here named did not originally build, but only restore the aqueduct after it had continued some centuries in ruins.

There

The Jewish writers, in their records of the second temple, with one voice relate that "in the way betwixt Hebron and Jerusalem is the Fountain of Etam, from whence the waters are conveyed by pipes into the great pool at Jerusalem5" for the uses of the temple. was too, towards the South of the temple-area, a place called "the coming down of the water," corresponding to the situation of the causeway, by which the present aqueduct is carried to the Haram. Now Etam or Etham, Josephus tells us, was the name of that place where the pleasure-gardens of the great king Solomon were situated; and it is reasonable to look for the gardens in the neighbourhood of the pools, since the latter

* I am here again indebted to Dr Schultz, his Prussian Majesty's worthy representative at Jerusalem.

3 The Itineraries of William of Baldensel and Rudolph de Suchem. (A. D. 1336-1350.) Bib. Res. 1. p. 516.

Arculfus, circ. 697, (cited by Dr Robinson, p. 516, n. 2) describes an

arched bridge of stone, crossing the valley in this place. De Loc. Sanct. I. xii.

5 See Lightfoot, Chorographical Inquiry, cap. v. sect. 5, and Fragmenta Topograph. cap. ii. sect. 1, and Prospect of the Temple, cap. xxiii.

6 Prospect of the Temple, 1. c.
7 Ant. VIII. vii. 3.

were constructed with a view to the former, as Solomon himself informs us'. It is a most gratifying fact, that not only has the name of this interesting locality been perpetuated among the natives to this day, but the very spot is still marked by gardens, the largest and most luxuriant that are to be met with in the whole of the mountain-region of Judea. The three Pools of Solomon, on the road to Hebron, which need not be here described, are situated at the head of a valley named Wady Etân, and the aqueduct, which derives its supply of water from three tributary fountains, has its proper commencement below the lowest of these pools, from whence it runs along the western side of Wady Etân to Bethlehem. In the bed of the valley, below the aqueduct, is another copious fountain, "Ain Etân," and around this fountain are the gardens just mentioned.

This remarkable and unlooked-for corroboration of the Jewish tradition must compel us to believe that there was an aqueduct from the Pools of Solomon to the Temple at Jerusalem during the later years of its existence. It need not prove more than this; for the Talmudic descriptions of the Holy House are obviously gathered from writings that date from the latest period of its existence; and there is not the slightest intimation of such an aqueduct in the Sacred Records, or in the Apocrypha. I am disposed to believe that

Eccles. ii. 5, 6. "I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees." The distance of Etham from

Jerusalem is stated by Josephus at 50 furlongs, exactly 'coinciding with the existing gardens, which I visited and explored, Sept. 20, 1842, and April 29, 1843. See Ishak Khelo and Uri, pp. 241 and 436, in Carmoly.

this work was originally planned and constructed by a Roman procurator, whose name has obtained a bad notoriety in the Christian Church; for among other tyrannical acts, whereby Pontius Pilate offended the prejudices and excited the indignation of the Jews, is mentioned that he expended the sacred treasure called "Corban" on aqueducts, whereby he brought water to the city from a distance of four hundred furlongs2. Now if this language may be taken to refer to the whole length of the aqueduct, as from the nature of the case I think it must, and not to the actual distance of its commencement in a direct line from the city, then it will very well describe the existing aqueduct, which must certainly traverse nearly eight times the direct distance between its commencement and termination: nor am I aware of any historical notices or present traces of an aqueduct in any other quarter which could be referred to Pilate, though it seems probable that some remains of a work so large, and comparatively so recent, should have continued to Christian times. The final designation of this supply of water to the Temple was probably the governor's plea for applying the sacred fund to this undertaking.

It has been already remarked, that in the event of a siege this aqueduct could only have been a boon to the enemy3, and hence it is probable that it would be cut off by the besieged on the first outbreak of hostilities. This will account for its disappearance from history for so many centuries, until it was restored by

2 Joseph. J. W. 11. ix. 4. The words are κατῆγε δὲ ἀπὸ τετρακοσίων σταδίων but some copies read τρια

κοσίων, and others διακοσίων,
Hudson's Annot, in loc.
3 See above, p. 454.

See

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