Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/299

Rh describing the outer scarp I showed how a wall might have stood on top of it, but warned the reader I might nullify the theory. A wall might have stood back of it. That the outer scarp was hewn for fortification is sure. Was it crowned by a wall destroyed before this one was built, and following the line of bastion? Or was this the original wall, and, if so, why does it not follow the bastion? Interesting questions which our further excavations may answer.

Indeed we have only this morning completed the connection between the gate and fosse, only this morning have the stones been studied and measured, as during the past week, while preparing the plans for this report, I have been able only to see that the tunnels were taking the right course. Hence there are many things to be settled in the next few days, such as the width of the gate, the finding of the socket of the gatepost, &c.

There still remain to be described the curious rock-cuttings near the fosse, mentioned in my last report, but uncovered more thoroughly since. The large chamber extends into the fosse (see plan), the counter-scarp of which seems to have been cut away to make place for it. This points to a date when the fosse was no longer used. The mosaic is late, the pattern being almost identical with the border of the Armenian mosaic on the Mount of Olives, which dates from the fifth or sixth century A.D., and also with the recently-found Armenian mosaic north of the Damascus Gate, which I have described in an intermediate report, and which dates from the same period. This last-mentioned mosaic is the floor of a mortuary chapel, the walls of which are of modest rubble and rough lime, thickly plastered inside; the chamber of which our mosaic is the floor is surrounded by walls of exactly similar construction. Thinking this also might be a mortuary chapel we searched for a cave below, but found nothing. The section shows the curious rock-cuttings. A bath is hewn in the solid rock, to its right is a rock platform, and to its left a shallow cutting, on the level with the platform, plastered and having a partition, only a few inches high, in the middle. The section of the bath shows the rubble elevation at the north end with the fireplace covered by a sort of half-dome. The broader north end of the bath was once arched over. In my last report I mentioned that "against the south rock-wall of the chamber there was what I must describe as the silhouette of a stairway, as the steps projected only an inch or two from the rock, which was cut away to form the three steps. It looks as if they had been intended as rests for a wooden stairway." Two small channels lead to the top of the bath. South of the rock platform occurs Cistern I, largely taken up with the rock-hewn steps which descend from the south end. The dimensions are hardly any smaller at the top than they are at the bottom (or as they would be without the steps), and there is no sign that the cistern (or pool) was arched over. Cistern II (to the south-west of I), however, has a small mouth hewn in the rock, the cistern widening out below. Cisterns III and IV may have been originally one, as they are separated merely by a wall. Part of