The rock-hewn church of Dayn Aboo Hannes, "the convent of Father John," in Egypt, near Antinoe, has its walls painted with subjects from the New Testament; the church is thought to date back to the time of Constantine. The passion for associating grottoes with sacred themes is shown in the location of the site of the Nativity at Bethlehem. There is nothing in the Gospel to lead us to suppose that the event took place in a cave, though it is not improbable that it did so. The scene of the Annunciation was also a rock-hewn cave, now occupied by a half- underground church, out of which flows the Virgin's Fountain. In Gethsemane, "the chapel of the Tomb of the Virgin, over the traditional spot where the Mother of our Lord was buried by the Apostles, is mostly underground. Three flights of steps lead down to the space in front of it, so that nothing is seen above ground but the porch. But even after you have gone down the three flights of steps you are only at the entrance to the church, amidst marble pillars, flying buttresses, and pointed arches. Forty-seven additional marble steps, descending in a broad flight nineteen feet wide, lead down a further depth of thirty-five feet, and here you are surrounded by monkish sites and sacred spots. The whole place is, in fact, two distinct natural caves, enlarged and turned to their present uses with infinite care. Far below the ground you find a church thirty-one yards long and nearly seven wide, lighted by many lamps, and are shown the tomb of the father and mother of the Virgin, and that of Joseph and the Virgin herself. And as if this were not enough, a long subterranean gallery leads down six steps more to a cave eighteen yards long, half as broad, and about twelve feet wide, which you are told is the Cavern of the Agony." [Footnote: Geikie (C.), "The Holy Land and the Bible," Lond. 1887, ii.p.8.]