2 SAMUEL, XXIV. 24, 25.

"So David bought the threshingfloor [of Araunah] and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. And David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings."

The present ground-plan of Mount Moriah, or the hill on which the Temple stood, with the foundations of the wall which once fortified its top.- From Catherwood's Survey in Bartlett's Walks about Jerusalem.

V W. The south wall, 940 feet long.

b. A plot of ground, or rock terrace, 15 feet high,

and measuring 550 feet by 450.

a. A round rock, 5 feet high and 60 feet across, now under the dome of the Turkish mosque

of Omar.

d. A garden.

D. The castle.

K. Steps cut in the rock, leading to a tunneled passage by which the castle is entered.

The hill once sloped from Y to W; but the ground at K has been cut down, and the ground at W built up, so as to make the hill-top flat, and to leave the ground D, on which the castle stands, high above it.

z is the place of the ruined bridge which once joined the hill-top to Mount Zion, crossing over a dry valley.

We now recognise,-

a. The threshingfloor, afterwards the altar of burnt offering, which was in front of the House of the Lord.

b. The great court (1 Kings, vii. 12), called the "great terrace," or "platform," in the Hebrew (2 Chron. iv. 9).

K. The steps on which the Apostle Paul stood when he was dragged from the Temple proper across

the Court of the Gentiles into the Castle. (Acts, xxi.)

See the plan of the city in Note on Neh. iii., and a further identification of the spots in Note on Acts, xxi. 30.

1 KINGS, VII. 23, 25.

"And [Solomon] made a molten sea [or watercistern], ten cubits from the one brim to the other It stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the east ; and the sea was set above upon them, and all their hinder parts were inward."

The marble fountain in a court of the Alhambra. It is a basin resting on twelve lions, and would seem to have been copied from Solomon's water-cistern.- From Owen Jones's 'Alhambra.

1 KINGS, X. 11, 22.

"And the navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees and precious stones.

.....

Once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks."

Tribute-bearers bringing, among other gifts, ivory, ebony, apes, ostrich eggs, and feathers, from Ethiopia to Thothmosis III., being part of a procession sculptured on the walls of an underground tomb near Thebes. As Ophir, the port to which Solomon traded, was probably near to Souakin, on the west coast of the Red Sea, in the neighbourhood of the Nubian gold-mines, his ships naturally brought home some of the same rarities as Thothmosis received from that country. The almug wood was, probably, ebony. The Tak-here translated peacocks-probably meant parrots, which are natives of

F

Ethiopia. It is the root of the Greek word "psittakos a parrot. Peacocks are not found so far to the south, and the situation of Ophir must be fixed by the goldmines. That Solomon's ships made this short voyage only once in three years is easily explained by the trade winds, which change every six months, by the slowness of the ancient navigation, and by the delay at either end. The voyage out with a north wind would occupy six months, bartering with the natives at Ophir twelve months, the voyage home with a south wind six months, and the carriage from the coast to Jerusalem and back the third twelve-month.

1 KINGS, X. 29.

"A chariot came up and went out of Egypt for six hundred shekels [or three hundred ounces] of silver."

An Egyptian war-chariot, with two horses.—From the sculptures of Rameses II. The king, standing in it,