Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/266

 In the next section Josephus tells us that as the city grew more populous it crept beyond its old limits, "and those parts of it that stood northward of the temple and joined that hill to the city, made it considerably larger, and occasioned that hill, which is in number the fourth, and is called Bezetha (or New City), to be inhabited also. It lies over against the Tower of Antonia, but is divided from it by a deep valley, which was dug on purpose, and that in order to hinder the foundations of the Tower of Antonia from joining to this hill."

When we read these descriptions in the light of our plan, things become tolerably plain. The south-western hill was the Upper City—a large flat-topped hill surrounded with deep valleys, and having a level of about 2550 to 2500 feet above the sea. The eastern hill is known to be the Temple Hill, which is number three in Josephus's description. Bezetha (number four) is distinctly described as the hill north of the Temple Hill, and only divided from it at one point by an artificial cutting. The explorers have found this cutting, carried through a narrow neck of high ground, at the north-western corner of the Haram. Thus there is no room to question that "the second hill, which was called Akra and sustained the Lower City" is the hill projecting down from the north-west like a promontory, gibbous in its form. The Upper City was divided from Akra "by a broad valley," now partly filled up, which was called the Tyropœon Valley, and beginning near the Jaffa Gate, "extended as far as Siloam Fountain." The summit of Akra is not more than 2480 feet above sea level—considerably lower than the Upper City—and looks lower than it is, because the whole site of Jerusalem is tilted up from the west like an inclined plane, and because the valleys about the Upper City are deeper. Josephus says the Akra hill used to be higher, and sustained the Macedonian fortress called the Akra, which dominated the