Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/423

 n s. xii. NOV. 27, i9i5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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the place any more than they were permitted by the Christians. Perhaps the treasure- trove idea was in the air, and the Moslems suspected the intentions of the Jews as much as the Christians had done, and for the same reasons. Better to understand the position of affairs, it is necessary to recapitulate briefly the history of the " Cenaculum."

The " Cenaculum " is mentioned as a church of importance by Bishop Arculf in 697, and his description is said to have been accompanied by an elaborate plan drawn by himself, but no mention is made of any royal sepulchre or Tomb of David. The Englishman Ssewulf, who visited Jerusalem in 1102 as a pilgrim, likewise makes no mention of anything of the kind amongst the holy sites he describes. Then follows the period of the Crusading kingdom, with the anarchy and confusion immediately succeed- ing its fall in 1187. We now hear for the first time of the Jewish legend and the story of Benjamin of Tudela.

Rudolph von Sudheim, a pilgrim of the period immediately succeeding the Crusades, is our best authority on the history of the " Cenacu- ium " and its fate. He states that, about 1337, the buildings protected by Robert the Wise, King of Naples (1309-43), were in the charge of Franciscan friars who kept a hos- pice for Latin pilgrims, evidently the original of the present " Casa Nova." He is one of the first Christians to mention " sepulchra regum luda," as amongst the sacred treasures preserved within the convent, although the legend must ha\e been in full currency before his time.

The Jewish treasure-trove legends are indefinite and confusing. Benjamin of Tudela's story refers to the "Tomb of David," and, incidentally, to the treasures contained within it, which, according to other legends, had been buried by Solomon. Josephus, however, states that this treasure of Solomon was appropriated by Hyrcanus or Herod. By the time of St. Jerome the original tomb had so far been forgotten by the Jews as to allow of another taking its place near Bethlehem.

Another chain of legends attaches to the mystery of the " Ark " of the ancient Jewish religion, which contained the Tables of the Law, the Pot of Manna, and the Rod of Aaron. The " Ark " was the equivalent to an oracle, or the centre of that religious sentiment which seeks, in all religions^ for some material object for reverence. But it has been supposed that at a later time (before ttie Babylonish captivity) it may have ceased to occupy this position, as we hear of its

being " reinstated " by King Josiah. It is not mentioned at the time of the Babylonian^ destruction of the first Temple in B.C. 605, nor was it restored as a religious object in> the later Temples.

Later legends suggest the idea that the- arcana of ancient Israel were hidden in the deep valley which circles round Mount Ophel r and yet other traditions represent its having been removed by supernatural means at or before the destruction of the first Temple. It is not very clear whether these arcana are supposed to have been buried in David's- and Solomon's tombs, or whether, if not removed to heaven, they were deposited in some hiding-place by themselves. In any case there seems to have been a vague idea with the more credulous humanity of past times, both Jewish and Gentile, that a store of treasure dating from Solomonic times,, and including the articles of Jewish religious use not mentioned as carried to Babylon, nor shown upon the famous bas-relief of Titus' s Arch at Rome, has been awaiting the speculative enterprise of grave-robbers ever since archaeology became associated with the rifling of tombs.

So much for the ancient stories and traditions. When we come to modern research of a scientific kind we find the whole subject of the topography and archaeology of Jerusalem involved in a maze of controversy very difficult to epitomize. After fifty years' work on the part of the Palestine Exploration. Societies, with the enthusiastic co-operation , of many most distinguished scholars, the chief result obtained, as regards primitive Jerusalem, has been the identification of the Ophel or " City of David " with the now barren slope or spur of the Temple mount to the south, which is bounded on the east by the Valley of Jehosaphat, and on the west by the Tyropeon. Here the only Phoenician or ancient Hebrew antiquities ever found in situ are situated. This identification of the Ophel site, of course, upsets the merely mediaeval location of the " City of David " on the modern Mount Sion, the hill west of : the Tyropeorr; and, as a consequence, the " Tomb of David," dating from the period of the Crusades, and now venerated by the Moslems, is on the wrong hill according to, the Bible account and modern investigation. In addition to this identification little more has been discovered which throws any light upon primitive Jerusalem. The famous Siloam tunnel with its unique Hebrew in- scription, which passes through the rock of Ophel, is a thing by itself, and has but little reference to anj'thing else.