DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5074#0243
Helena's cistern.
225
for its cleansing-, has been allowed to get choked, yet
there is water in many of the cisterns now,—there is,
therefore, some reason to suppose that another subter-
raneous passage will be found some day carrying water
from a concealed fountain without the Walls. Water
may be heard at any time rushing by underneath the
ground just outside the Damascus gate. The finest of
all the reservoirs of the City is an enormous place,
excavated wholly in the solid rock which rises only a
few feet directly behind the eastern end of the Holy
Sepulchre : it is worth seeing, and is considered to be as
old as the time of Helena,—but, although her name
has been attached to it, it does not probably owe its
excavation to her: the water stored there was so low
when we visited it that we descended upwards of twenty
steps of the fine massive staircase before we reached it
— and it was said that so many had never been un-
covered before. It is close to the Convent of the Copts,
in which there are several interesting fragments of early
Byzantine architecture.
The fountain of the Virgin and that of Siloam both
lie in the valley of the Kedron at the foot of Ophel,—
they are connected by an underground conduit, and, as
we have said, with the " noble cave " beneath the Sacred
Rock ; the first is reached by a double flight of stairs
within a cave, and is very picturesque from the figures
of the women always washing there: the pool of Siloam
is an oblong basin with some old shafts of columns
stuck in the modern walls — it is pretty, but from being
open to the sun it does not give the same idea of re-
freshino- coolness that its sister fountain does. Below
these is the Well of Nehemiah or En-rogel, called by
the Arabs the Well of Job; it is arched over with large
hewn stones of great antiquity about which the weeds
VOL. II. Q
225
for its cleansing-, has been allowed to get choked, yet
there is water in many of the cisterns now,—there is,
therefore, some reason to suppose that another subter-
raneous passage will be found some day carrying water
from a concealed fountain without the Walls. Water
may be heard at any time rushing by underneath the
ground just outside the Damascus gate. The finest of
all the reservoirs of the City is an enormous place,
excavated wholly in the solid rock which rises only a
few feet directly behind the eastern end of the Holy
Sepulchre : it is worth seeing, and is considered to be as
old as the time of Helena,—but, although her name
has been attached to it, it does not probably owe its
excavation to her: the water stored there was so low
when we visited it that we descended upwards of twenty
steps of the fine massive staircase before we reached it
— and it was said that so many had never been un-
covered before. It is close to the Convent of the Copts,
in which there are several interesting fragments of early
Byzantine architecture.
The fountain of the Virgin and that of Siloam both
lie in the valley of the Kedron at the foot of Ophel,—
they are connected by an underground conduit, and, as
we have said, with the " noble cave " beneath the Sacred
Rock ; the first is reached by a double flight of stairs
within a cave, and is very picturesque from the figures
of the women always washing there: the pool of Siloam
is an oblong basin with some old shafts of columns
stuck in the modern walls — it is pretty, but from being
open to the sun it does not give the same idea of re-
freshino- coolness that its sister fountain does. Below
these is the Well of Nehemiah or En-rogel, called by
the Arabs the Well of Job; it is arched over with large
hewn stones of great antiquity about which the weeds
VOL. II. Q