Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/253

 (By permission of the Palestine Exploration Fund.)

From the south-east angle the foundation of the wall rises, to about the middle of the eastern side, and then falls again, down to the Golden Gate and beyond. The construction of the Golden Gate is still a vexed question; it is possibly a reconstruction of comparatively late date, but it stands on the ancient foundations of a gateway, which in some measure correspond with those of the Triple Gate. North of the Golden Gate the rock still falls, and the depth of rubbish in the depression is in the deepest part 125 feet. Yet the wall is built up from the bottom, and is carried across the depression to the higher rock surface north of it. It extends beyond the north-east angle of the Haram without showing any break at that point; and this seems to favour the idea that a break may be found more to the south, where the Haram terminated before Herod enlarged its area. In fact the masonry north of the Golden Gate is of a rougher sort than that south of it. But it is impossible to examine the buried por-