is scarcely fit for drinking. At the siege by Titus the well of Siloam may have been in possession of the Jews, i. e. within the walls; but at the siege by the Crusaders it was certainly held by the besieging Franks, and yet the latter perished from thirst, while the besieged had " ingentes copias aquse." Wa cannot here go through the evidence whicli by combination and comparison might throw some light on this remarkable tiuestion. There is, however, good ground to conclude that from very ancient times there lias been under the Temple an unfailing soune of water, derived by secret and subter- raneous ihannel.s from sjirings to the west of the town, and communicating by other subterranean passages with the Pool of Siloam and the Fountain of the Virgin in the east of the town, whether they were within or without the walls of the town.
The existence -of a perennial source of water below the Temple has always been admitteil. Tacitus knew of it {Ilht. v, 12) ; and Aristeas, in describing the an- cient Temple, informs us that " the supjily of water was unfailing, inasmuch as there was an abundant natural fountain flowing in the interior, and reservoirs of admi- rable construction under grountl, extending five stadia round the Temple, with pipes and conduits unknown to all except those to whom the service was intrusted, 'by which the water was brought to various parts of the Temple and again conducted off." The INIoslems also have constantly affirmed the existence of this fountain or cistern ; Init a reserve has always been kept up as to the means by which it is supplied. This reserve seems to have been maintained by the successive occupants of Jerusalem as a point of civic honor; and this fact alone intimates that there was danger to the town in its be- coming known, and points to the fact that the supply came from without the city by secret channels, which it was of importance not to disclose. Yet we are plainly told in the Biljle that Hezekiah "stopped the upper water-course of Gihon, and brought it down to the \vest side of the city of David" (1 Kings i, 33, 38); from 2 Chron. xxxii, 30, it seems that all the neighboring foun- tains were thus "stopped" or covered, and the brook which they had formed diverted by subterraneous chan- nels into the town, for the express purpose of preventing besiegers from finding the " much water" which previ- ously existed outside the walls (comp. also Ecclus. xlviii, 17). Perhaps, likewise, the projihet Ezekiel (xlvii, 1- 12) alludes to this secret fountain under the Temple when he speaks of waters issuing from the threshold of the Temple towards the east, and flowing down towards the desert as an abundant and beautiful stream. This figure may be drawn from the Avaters of the inner source under the Temple, being at the time of overflow dis- charged by the outlets at Siloam into the Kidron, v.-hich takes the eastward course thus described.
There are certainly ^vells, or rather shafts, in and near the Temple area, ^vhich are said to derive their waters through a passage of masonry four or five feet high, from a chamber or reservoir cut in the solid rock under the grand mosque, in which the water is said to rise from the rOck into a l)asin at the bottom. The ex- istence of this reservoir and source of water is affirmed by the citizens, and coincides with the previous intima- tions, but it must be left for future explorers to clear up all the obscurities in which the matter is involved. Even Dr. Barclay, who gave great attention to this sul>- ject, was unable fullv to clear it up {City of the Great King, p. 293).
The jiools and tanks of ancient Jerusalem were verj' abundant, and, each house being provided with what we may call a bottle-necked cistern for rain-water, drought within tlic city was rare; and history shows us that it was the besiegers, not the besieged, that gener- ally suffered from want of water f Gul. Tyr. bk. viii, p. 7 ; De Waha, Luborcs Godfredi, p. 421), though occasion- ally this was reversed (Josephus, War, v, 9, 4). Yet neither in ancient nor modem times could the neigh- borhood of Jei usalem be called " waterless." as Strabo
JERUSALEM
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JERUSALEM
describes it (Cfoz/r. xvi, 2, 3G). In summer the fields and hills around are verdureless and gray, scorched with months of drought, yet within a radius of seven miles there arc some thirty or forty natural springs (Barclay's Citij of the Great King, p. 295). The artificial provision for a supply of water in Jerusalem in ancient times w^as perhaps the most complete and extensive ever under- taken for a city. Till lately this was not fully credited ; but Barclay's, "and, more recently, Whitty's and Pierot- ti's subterraneous excavations have proved it. The aqueduct of Solomon (winding along for twelve miles and a ijuarter) pours the waters of the three immense pools into the enormous Temple wells, cut out like cav- erns in the rock ; and the pools, which surround the city in all directions, supply to a great extent the want of a river or a lake (Traill's Joseplats,\o\. i; Append, p. 57, 60). For a description of these, see Thomson, Lund and Book, ii, 523 sq.