RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Jerome of Pragrae Jerusalem
this and the valley which joins it are now filled up, but their importance for the old city must have been great. The name as given by Josephus (War, V., iv. 1) is the Tyropceon valley. A fourth tributary valley empties into the Kidron still farther south than the Tyropoeon. It begins in the watershed west of the present Jaffa Gate, runs south and then east till it joins the Kidron opposite the southern end of Silwan, falling a distance of 650 feet in its course. It has different names for different parts, but is in general known as the valley of Hinnom (Josh. xv. 8 and often; cf. Gehenna). It is remarkable that Eusebius and Jerome place the valley of Hinnom to the east of Jerusalem, but they were probably influenced by Zech. xiv. 3-4. In the eighteenth century it became the erroneous fashion to call the upper and middle part of this valley the Gihon.
II. Water Supply: The preceding description shows that the drainage of the region is from north to south or from northwest to southeast. While the watershed is at an elevation of 2,675 feet, the union of the Kidron and Hinnom valleys is only 2,065 feet above the Mediterranean; there is therefore no deadwater in the brooks which in the rainy season flow through these valleys. Part of the drainage is subterranean. The hill country of Palestine is poor in water, and such expressions as " the brook Kidron " may convey a false impression if it is not recalled that " brook " means no more than the Arabic " wadi," a natural channel of drainage for the flow of the rainy season, dry the rest of the year except near a spring. In the upper and lower parts the valleys are tilled; between the city and the Mount of Olives the floor of the valley is denuded of soil. In the Kidron water flows only during exceptional rainfall or when there is a quick melting of a heavy snowfall. A shallow brook runs even yet in the Tyropceon after long-continued rains, forming a pool called the Birkat al-Hamra. In the Hinnom valley a small ditch between the garden plats suffices to carry off the drainage. The region is poor in springs, the Old Testament naming only three, Gihon, En-rogel, and the Dragon's Well. The Gihon was in the Kidron valley (II Chron. xxxiii. 14), and its waters were led by Hezekiah into the City of David (II Chron. xxxii. 30). These data serve to identify it with the only spring which is found to-day in the Kidron valley near Jerusalem and feeds the pool of Siloam through the Siloam conduit. It is known now as the Virgin's Fount and the Fountain of Steps, the second name due to the fact that the water is reached by a stone stairway. The spring is covered by an arch to protect it from debris, and lies in a deep hollow some seventy-five feet lower than the heaps of debris round about. It is intermittent, but rather irregularly so; in winter it may flow three or four times a day, in summer once or twice, in autumn at most once. This peculiarity is probably to be explained by the fact that the spring has two sources in the hill, one constant and one variable, the latter intermittent and fed from below. Doubtless the action of this spring influenced the prophetic representations in Ezek. xlvii. 1-12; Joel iv. (iii.) 18; Zech. xiv. 8, which went upon the supposition that there
were great chambers of water in the interior of the mountain. Josephus calls the water of this spring sweet; at present it is brackish. The second spring, En-rogel (Josh. xv. 7, xviii. 16), was on the boundary between Judah and Benjamin, and at some distance from the city (II Sam. xvii. 17; I Kings i. 9, 41 sqq.), in the royal gardens south of the city (Josephus, Ant. VII., xiv. 4); therefore it is to be sought near the union of the valley of Hinnom with that of Kidron. There is now no spring in the region, but there is a well, called by the Arabs Job's Well, by Jews Joab's Well, and by Christians Nehemiah's Well, having a depth of 122 feet, partly walled and partly sunk in the rock. In very wet seasons it fills up and drains off a part of its water, a circumstance regarded by the inhabitants as presaging a fruitful season. From this overflow it probably got its name as a spring, though in earlier times, when the country was wooded, its overflow may have been constant and so justified the name of spring. About a third of a mile south and on the west side of the valley is a spring which flows during the rainy season, and in early times may have been constant. A third spring, the Dragon's Well, appears to be mentioned in Neh. ii. 13 (LXX, " Spring of Figs "), as approached from the valley gate, which was probably at the southwest corner of the old city. It should therefore lie in the lower Hinnom valley or in the Kidron valley; but no spring or well besides those already mentioned is now known.
III. Soil and Formation: The old city was built upon the naked rock. The situation is altogether unfavorable to the formation of vegetable soil and to the retention of any which may be artificially created, since the heavy rainfall of winter washes it into the crevices of the rocks or sweeps it into the valleys. Disintegration of the rock produces a rich loamy soil which adheres well to the rocky substratum where the lie of the land permits it. The rock is a crystalline chalk of the middle cretaceous period, and of dark gray color. Varieties distinguished at the present are: a pure hippuritic chalkstone, granular, not hard, esteemed for building, not blemished by cracks, when quarried generally pure white, and hardening with exposure to the atmosphere; a second variety, of three kinds, either gray or marked with red and gray veins and not found in such large masses as the first variety; a variety which laminates and does not break in the fire; a fourth variety, so soft as to receive and retain the imprint of the fingers, sometimes, however, hard and worked with the saw, reddened often through infiltration of iron, and generally used for the little sarcophagi so numerous in the neighborhood.
IV. Climate: The usual rainy season is from October to May, rarely September to June, while the average rainfall for the year is about twentythree inches, and the southwest and west winds carry the rain clouds. Snow may fall from December to March, rarely in April, though it does not often lie long. The temperature ranges from 25° to 102° Fahrenheit, with high average for July of 77° and for January of 43° Ice may form at night in January, but melts during the day except in shady
Jerusalem