For some years past a site has been coming into favour, outside the present north wall, not far from the Damascus Gate. Here is a rounded knoll with a precipice on the south side of it, containing a cave known to Christians as Jeremiah’s Grotto, from the tradition that Jeremiah lived in it and composed his Lamentations there. When this knoll is looked at from the south-east, especially from the southern shoulder of the Mount of Olives, it appears to many observers to bear a striking resemblance to a huge skull. As long ago as 1871, Mr Fisher Howe of Brooklyn proposed the identification, in a little book called “The True Site of Calvary,” published in New York.[48] Dr Chaplin and Major Conder have given additional probability to it by bringing into prominence the Jewish tradition which regards this knoll as the place of public execution. When the death was by stoning, the condemned person was hurled from the top of the cliff, which is about 50 feet high, and if he was not killed by the fall, stones were cast at him till he died. The place was called the House of Stoning, and Christian tradition has regarded it as the place of the martyrdom of Stephen. The circumstance that Jesus Christ was put to death in the Roman manner, being crucified and not stoned, makes little difference to the argument for the site of Calvary, since there is no reason to suppose that Jerusalem possessed two places of execution. It may be added that the surface of the knoll is now used as a Mohammedan burial ground; and this may also have been its character in Jewish times. About 200 yards west of the Grotto, Conder made the interesting discovery of an indisputably Jewish tomb judged to belong to the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era. It would be bold to hazard the suggestion that this is the very tomb in which the body of Christ was laid--the new tomb in the garden belonging to Joseph of Arimathea--yet its position so near the old place of execution is certainly remarkable. “Thus,” says Conder, “to ‘a green hill far away, beside a city wall,’ we turn from the artificial rocks and marble slabs of the monkish chapel of Calvary.” [_Authorities and Sources_:--“Tent Work.” Major Conder. “The Recovery of Jerusalem.” Colonels Warren and Wilson. “Sinai and Palestine.” Dean Stanley. “Walks about Jerusalem.” W. H. Bartlett. “Quarterly Statements of Palestine Exploration Fund.”] CHAPTER V. MESOPOTAMIA AND THE BIBLE. 1. _Assyria._