measurements; and it appears that the northern end of the platform consists of rock which has been scarped away perpendicularly. On the south the boundary would come to within a few feet of the entrance of El Aksa mosque, and would fall short of the south wall of the Haram by 300 feet. On the east and west the boundaries would fall a little way within the present walls of the Haram. We may reasonably conclude that the present east and west walls of the Haram either represent walls of the Temple enclosure, or else were built a little without them, as retaining walls for gradually accumulating debris.
When the Temple of Solomon was destroyed, with all the buildings that surrounded it, the debris would be piled up in the courts. Probably it would never be thought worth while to remove it all from the lower courts, but rather to cover it over and lay a neat pavement on the surface. Spaces and corners where the rubbish was less gathered would be filled in or built up to complete the levelling; and as the rubbish increased, both within and without the walls, after successive sieges, the walls themselves were further built up, to keep them of sufficient height. It never was intended in the first instance, to build walls up from the foundation and make them 150 feet high. By successive changes, the result of calamities as much as the fruit of improvement, the terraced mountain grew to be an elevated plateau, such as the Haram enclosure is at the present day. Josephus says that when Herod rebuilt the Temple he extended the area of the courts and made it twice as large as it was before. With that, however, we need not concern ourselves while we are seeking to restore the city of Old Testament times.
Solomon's Palace we find reasons for placing south of Solomon's Temple, on the slope of the terraced mountain, with its south-eastern angle coinciding with the present south-eastern corner of the Haram. Those deep-buried
