many years were wont to be healed. But these pools have water which, when agitated, is of a kind of red colour."
There had been a disposition in recent years to identify these twin pools with two souterrains or tunnels existing under the Convent of the Sisters of Sion at the north-west corner of the Haram area, but that fancy is now dissipated. The manner in which most of the previous speculations have been set aside by the actual discovery of the Pool of Bethesda is an instructive testimony to the value of excavation work in Jerusalem.
A Tablet from Herod's Temple.—Josephus, in his "Antiquities of the Jews,"[1] after describing the cloisters of the Temple and the Court of the Gentiles, goes on to describe the inner court, and the middle wall of partition which divided Jews from Gentiles. He says, "Thus was the first enclosure; in the midst of which, and not far from it, was the second, to be gone up to by a few steps. This was encompassed by a stone wall for a partition, with an inscription which forbade any foreigner to go in under pain of death." Again, in his work on the "Wars of the Jews,"[2]—"When you go through these first cloisters, unto the second court of the Temple, there was a partition made of stone all round, whose height was three cubits. Its construction was very elegant; upon it stood pillars, at equal distances from one another, declaring the law of purity, some in Greek, and some in Roman letters, that no foreigner should go within the sanctuary,—for that second court of the Temple was called the Sanctuary, and was ascended to by fourteen steps from the first court."
In the year 1871, M. Clermont Ganneau had the good fortune to discover one of these pillars or tablets, partly buried in the foundations of a building not far from the
