Whatever doubts, however, may still hang over the date of the inscription, there can be no question that it has thrown most important light on the topography of Jerusalem in the period of the kings. It is now clear that the modern city occupies very little of the same ground as the ancient one; the latter stood entirely on the rising ground to the east of the Tyropœôn valley, the northern portion of which is at present occupied by the mosque of Omar, while the southern portion is uninhabited. The Tyropœôn valley itself must be the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, where the idolaters of Jerusalem burnt their children in the fire to Moloch. It must be in the southern cliff of this valley that the tombs of the kings are situated; the reason why they have never yet been found being that they are buried under the rubbish with which the valley is filled. Among the rubbish must be the remains of the city which was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and whose ruins were flung into the gorge below. Between the higher part of the hill, now occupied by the mosque of Omar, and its lower uninhabited portion, Dr. Guthe has discovered traces of a valley which once ran into the valley of the Kidron at right angles to it, not far from the Virgin’s Spring, and divided in old days the City of David from the rest of the town. Here, as well as in the now obliterated Valley of the Cheesemakers, there probably still lie the relics of the dynasty of David; but we shall only know the story they have to tell us when the spade of the excavator has come to continue the discoveries which the inscription of Siloam has begun. CHAPTER V. THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES. _Discovery of traces of an ancient Hittite Empire.—Scripture references to the Hittites.—Professor Sayce’s discovery.—The inscriptions at Hamath.—The Hittite race.—Hittite art._ Five years ago there was no one who suspected that a great empire had once existed in Western Asia and contended on equal terms with both Egypt and Assyria, the founders of which were the little-noticed Hittites of the Old Testament. Still less did any one dream that these same Hittites had once carried their arms, their art, and their religion to the shores of the Æegean, and that the early civilisation of Greece and Europe was as much indebted to them as it was to the Phœnicians.