INTERESTING DISCOVERY AT JERUSALEM.
THE following, from a letter dated Jerusalem, May 16, 1853, has been sent by Mr. James Cook Richmond, for publication. "I was spending a couple of days in Artas, the hortus clusus of the monks, and probably the 'garden inclosed' of the Canticles, when I was told there was a kind of tunnel under the Pool of Solomon. I went and found one of the most interesting things that I have seen in my travels, and of which no one in Jerusalem appears to have heard. I mentioned it to the British Consul, and to the Rev. Mr. Nicolayson, who has been here more than twenty years, and they have never heard of it. At the centre of the eastern side of the lowest of the three pools, there is an entrance nearly closed up; then follows a vaulted passage some 50 feet long, leading to a chamber about 15 feet square and 8 feet high, also vaulted; and from this there is a passage, also arched, under the pool, and intended to convey the water of a spring, or of the pool itself, into the aqueduct which leads to Jerusalem, and is now commonly attributed to Pontius Pilate. This arched passage is six feet high, and three or four feet wide. Each of the two other pools has a similar arched way, which has not been blocked up, and one of which I saw by descending first into the rectangular well. The great point of interest in this discovery is this: It has now been thought for some years that the opinion of the invention of the arch by the Romans has been too hastily adopted. The usual period assigned to the arch is about B. C. 600. We thought we discovered a contradiction of this idea in Egypt, but the present case is far more satisfactory. The whole of the long passage of 50 feet, the chamber 15 feet square, the two doors, and the passage under the pools in each case, are true 'Roman' arches, with a perfect keystone. Now, as it has never been seriously doubted that Solomon built the pools ascribed to him, and to which he probably refers in Ecclesiastes ii. 6, the arch must of course have been well known about or before the time of the building of the first temple, B. C. 1012. The 'sealed fountain,' which is near, has the same arch in several places; but this might have been Roman. But here the arched ways pass probably the whole distance under the pools, and are therefore at least coeval with them, or were rather built before them, in order to convey the water down the valley. What I saw convinced me that the perfect keystone Roman arch was in familiar use in the time of Solomon, or 1,000 years before the Christian era."