the present north-west angle. The Damascus Gate is "over against" the so-called Tombs of the Kings, for a spectator standing at the Tombs would look down directly upon that gate. The "royal caverns" we may identify with the Cotton Cavern, the quarry whence the kings of Judah obtained the stone for the great buildings of the city. The entrance to them is in the face of the scarped rock, about 300 feet east of the Damascus Gate, and the city wall runs right across the entrance. At the north-east corner of the present wall we find the tower which Josephus assigns to that point—"the most colossal ruins after those at the north-west corner." A trench cut in the rock at the foot of the eastern wall is deflected here, passes round the corner, and goes west; it does not go any further north as we might expect it to do if the wall ever extended further north. And then the wall from the north-east corner is brought southward and joins the Haram wall, the junction not being at the north-east angle of the Haram, but much nearer to the Golden Gate, at the deep valley which Pompey began to fill up. We have to bear in mind that this third wall had been built before the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, in A.D. 70.
Titus began by investing the city on the north and the west. The place he selected for his attempt on the outer wall was just west of the Pool of Hezekiah, because there the wall of the High Town was not covered by the second wall, and he thought to capture the third wall and then at once assault the first.
When Titus had taken the outer wall he encamped in the north-west part of the city between the second and third walls; and at the same time extended his line from the "Camp of the Assyrians" to the Kedron Valley. His attempt to storm the High Town at the uncovered portion of the wall failed because of the strength of Herod's towers. He then made an attempt on the Temple platform from the
