The Tombs of the Kings, which may never have contained a king, are extensive and interesting. They are surrounded by a wall, and to reach them the visitor must go down a very wide stairway. The steps probably do not number more than twenty-five, but the distance from one side of the stairs to the other is twenty-seven feet. There are channels cut in the rock to carry the water that comes down these steps to the cisterns, two in number, one of which is a good-sized room cut in the rock at the side of the stairway. It contained about three feet of water when I saw it, although there had been no rain in Jerusalem for half a year. The other one, at the bottom of the stairs, is much larger, and was empty. The vaulted roof is supported by a column, and there are steps leading from one level of the floor to another.
Turning to the left at the foot of the big stairway, we passed through an arch cut through the rock into a court made by excavating the earth and stone to a depth of perhaps twenty feet. It is ninety feet long and eighty-one feet wide. The entrance to the tombs is by a vestibule cut in the rock at one side of the court, and it appears that this once had a row of pillars along the front, like veranda posts. We went down a few steps and stooped low enough to pass through an opening about a yard high. Beyond this we found ourselves in a good-sized room, cut in the solid rock. There are five of these rooms, and so far as the appearance is concerned, one might suppose they had been made in modern times, but they are ancient. The bodies were usually buried in "pigeon-holes" cut back in the walls of the rooms, but there are some shelf tombs, which are sufficiently described in their name. One room seems never to have been completed, but there are burial places here for about forty people.
One of the interesting things about these tombs is the rolling stone by which they were closed. It is a round rock, resembling a millstone. The height is a little over three feet and a half, and the thickness sixteen inches. It stands in a channel cut for the purpose, but was rolled forward before the entrance when it was desirable to have the tombs closed. When Jesus was buried, a "great stone" was rolled to the mouth of the sepulcher, and the women thought of this as they went to the tomb on the first day of the week, saying: "Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the tomb?" (Mark 16:3.) They went on and found the tomb open; so, also, we may often find the stone rolled away if we will go forward in the discharge of our duties, instead of sitting down to mourn at the thought of something in the distance which seems too difficult.
On our way to the tombs just mentioned, we passed the American Colony, a small band of people living together in a rather peculiar manner, but they are not all Americans. I understood that there had been no marriages among them for a long time until a short while before I was in Jerusalem. Some of them conduct a good store near the Jaffa gate. We passed an English church and college and St. Stephen's Church on the way to Gordon's Calvary. This new location of the world's greatest tragedy is a small hill outside the walls on the northern side of the city. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher stands on ground which for fifteen hundred years has been regarded as the true site of our Lord's death and burial, but since Korte, a German bookseller, visited the city in 1738, doubts have been expressed as to the correctness of the tradition. Jesus "suffered without the gate" (Heb. 13:12), and "in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new tomb wherein was man never yet laid" (John 19:41), and it appears to have been near a public road. (Mark 15:29.) In 1856 Edward Robinson, an American, offered proof that the site sustained by the old tradition was inside the city walls at the time of the crucifixion, and more recent discoveries, made in excavating, confirm his proof. The new Calvary meets the requirements of the above mentioned scriptures, and gets its name "Gordon's Calvary," from the fact that General Gordon wrote and spoke in favor of this being the correct location, and a photographer attached his name to a view of the place. In the garden adjoining the new Calvary I visited a tomb, which some suppose to be the place of our Lord's burial.
On the way back to my lodging place we passed the Damascus gate, the most attractive of all the old city gates, and one often represented in books. It was built or repaired in 1537, and stands near an older gateway that is almost entirely hidden by the accumulated rubbish of centuries, only the crown of the arch now showing. As we went on we passed the French Hospice, a fine modern building, having two large statues on it. The higher one represents the Virgin and her child, the other is a figure of the Savior. The Catholic church already mentioned, where two sisters are to be seen in prayer at all times, is near the Hospice. It is a rather impressive sight to stand in this beautiful but silent place, and see those women in white robes kneeling there almost as motionless as statues.
Thursday and a part of Friday was taken up with a trip to Jericho, but we got back in time to spend the afternoon in looking around Jerusalem, and we had an interesting visit to the home of Mrs. Schoenecke, a German lady, whose father, named Schick, spent fifty-six years of his life in Jerusalem. From what information Mr. Schick could gather from the Bible, Josephus, the Talmud, and his personal observations during the time the Palestine Exploration Fund was at work, he constructed large models of the ancient temples that stood on Mount Moriah from the days of Solomon to the time of Herod and Christ. I was told that the original models were sold to an American college for five thousand dollars. Mr. Schick then constructed the models shown to us, and explained by Mrs. Schoenecke. We were also shown a model of the tabernacle used while Israel was marching to the promised land.
The Wailing Place is a rectangle one hundred feet long by fifteen feet wide on the outside of the Temple Area, on the western side, where the wall is about sixty feet high. Some of the stones in this section are of large size, and authorities admit that they are of Solomon's time, but the wall in which they now stand may be a reconstruction. The Jews come here on the Sabbath, beginning at sundown on Saturday, for a service which one author describes as follows: "Nearest to him stood a row of women clad in robes of spotless white. Their eyes were bedimmed with weeping, and tears streamed down their cheeks as they sobbed aloud with irrepressible emotion. Next to the women stood a group of Pharisees—Jews from Poland and Germany. * * * The old hoary-headed men generally wore velvet caps edged with fur, long love-locks or ringlets dangling on their thin cheeks, and their outer robes presented a striking contrast of gaudy colors. Beyond stood a group of Spanish Jews. * * * Besides these there are Jews from every quarter of the world, who had wandered back to Jerusalem that they might die in the city of their fathers, and be buried in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, under the shadow of the Temple Hill. The worshipers gradually increased in number until the crowd thronging the pavement could not be fewer than two hundred. It was an affecting scene to notice their earnestness; some thrust their hands between the joints of the stones, and pushed into the crevices, as far as possible, little slips of paper, on which were written, in the Hebrew tongue, short petitions addressed to Jehovah. Some even prayed with their mouths thrust into the gaps, where the weather-beaten stones were worn away at the joints. * * * The congregation at the Wailing Place is one of the most solemn gatherings left to the Jewish Church, and, as the writer gazed at the motley concourse, he experienced a feeling of sorrow that the remnants of the chosen race should be heartlessly thrust outside the sacred inclosure of their fathers' holy temple by men of an alien race and an alien creed." So far as I know, all writers give these worshipers credit for being sincere, but on the two occasions when I visited the place, I saw no such emotion as described in the foregoing quotation. The following lines are often rehearsed, the leader reading one at a time, after which the people respond with the words: "We sit in solitude and mourn."
"For the place that lies desolate;
For the place that is destroyed;
For the walls that are overthrown;
For our majesty that is departed;
For our great men who lie dead;
For the precious stones that are buried;
For the priests who have stumbled;
For our kings who have despised Him."
This solemn practice has been observed for about twelve hundred years, but the same place may not have been used all the time. "She is become a widow, that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces is become tributary! Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is become as an unclean thing" (Lam. 1: 1, 8).
On Friday evening we entered some of the many synagogues yet to be found in Jerusalem and observed the worshipers. On Saturday we went to the House of Industry of the English church, where boys are taught to work. Olive wood products are made for the tourist trade. We passed a place where some men were making a peculiar noise as they were pounding wheat and singing at their work. This pounding was a part of the process of making it ready for food. An old lady was standing in an open door spinning yarn in a very simple manner. We watched her a few minutes, and I wanted to buy the little arrangement with which she was spinning, but she didn't care to part with it. She brought out another one, and let me have it after spinning a few yards upon it. I gave her a Turkish coin worth a few cents, for which she seemed very thankful, and said, as Mr. Ahmed explained: "God bless you and give you long life. I am old, and may die to-day." She told us that she came from Mosul, away beyond the Syrian desert, to die in Jerusalem. We visited the synagogue of the Caraite Jews, a small polygamous sect, numbering in this assembly about thirty persons. They also differ from the majority of Hebrews in rejecting the Talmud, but I believe they have a Talmud of their own. Their place of worship is a small room almost under the ground, where we were permitted to see a very fine old copy of the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament. The work was done by hand, and I was told the man who did it was sixteen years of age when he began it, and was sixty when he finished the work, and that the British Museum had offered five thousand dollars for the book. Some of these people speak English, and we conversed with one woman who was quite intelligent. They kindly permitted us to go up and view the city from the housetop.