Fig. 170.—The Jews’ Wailing-place (after M. de Vogüé).
The system of construction immediately above the drafted blocks is characterised by Roman masonry formed of smooth stones without grooves, their outer surface being carefully fluted by means of a chisel with very fine teeth. The blocks, about a yard square, are laid with sharp-edged joints. This system is especially remarked on the western and southern sides. The following systems, in the order of their position one above the other, do not deserve to be described; they are relatively modern and belong to all epochs, but chiefly to the Saracenic period.
Not far from the Wailing-place, 39 ft. from the south-eastern corner, is the celebrated beginning of the bridge which united the temple to the city, crossing over the Tyropœon; it belongs to the first system of the substructure, and forms part of it. The English excavations have brought one of the piers to light; they have shown that the roadway of the bridge is 295 ft. long, and that the breadth of each arch amounts to 16 yards. While digging at the foot of the pier a pavement was discovered which no doubt represents the street which passed along there before Herod’s epoch, or rather even before the destruction of the Temple by the Chaldæans. Some foundation is formed for this conjecture by the fact that when the English broke up this pavement and dug lower still they found the extrados of a vault: this was nothing less than the arch of another bridge of colossal masonry, which in the course of centuries had been buried under masses of rubbish: Herod, and perhaps Zerubbabel before him, built over the ruins without even trying to clear away the bridge. Who knows whether this arch, called Robinson’s arch, from the excavator’s name, is not the remains of a bridge erected by Solomon?
In the mass of substructure beneath the Haram, the existence of vaults and of a network of corridors of drafted masonry has been proved, and these must, from the character of the work, be contemporary with Herod. On the platform, two cisterns are seen which probably date from Solomon’s time, if they are not even earlier, though it must be admitted that they have been subjected to successive restorations. One is under the rock Sakhra, the other in front of the mosque of El Aksa: the latter, especially, which is the largest, is a superb artificial grotto, upheld by pilasters contrived in the side of the rock. The descent into that under the rock Sakhra is by a flight of fifteen steps; in the centre is a well which by means of a subterranean canal opens into the valley of Kedron, and was perhaps used by Araunah the Jebusite.
