Being unquestionably a quarry, many facts lead to the conclusion that here were hewn the stones for the construction of Solomon’s magnificent temple. The material, both as to grain and color, is the same as that found in the antique walls and buildings of the city; the extent of the quarry, together with the vast amount of stone removed, and in such large blocks, suggest the erection of some grand temple; the ancient tradition coming down from the days of Jeremiah and pointing to this quarry; the remarkable absence of another adjacent to the city; and the important fact that the mouth of the quarry is many feet higher than the surface of the Temple area, which must have facilitated the transportation of those immense blocks of limestone, which were no doubt conveyed on rollers down the inclined plane of the quarry to the site of the Temple, where, hewn and finished, they were silently elevated to their destined place――the magnificent fane of Solomon, with all its courts and porticoes, rising noiselessly into being, as of old the world rose from naught, at once explaining and fulfilling the words of sacred history: “The house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither, so that there was neither hammer nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was building.”[82] Nothing more impressively indicates the complete destruction of ancient Jerusalem than the impossibility of identifying with exactitude the location of its former gates, the scene of so many thrilling events. Fire and sword, plunder and time, have removed those landmarks of great historic deeds. These gone, we are left to conjecture as to the location of the “Valley Gate,” through which Nehemiah passed on his nocturnal exploration to ascertain the condition of the city;[83] of the “East Gate,” from which Jeremiah went forth with the ancients of the people to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to illustrate the destruction of the Jews by breaking in their presence a potter’s vessel;[84] of the “Horse Gate,” out of which the ambitious Queen Athaliah was led to execution;[85] of the “Gate betwixt the two walls,” “whence Zedekiah and all his men of war fled before the King of Babylon;”[86] and of the “Gate of Benjamin,” where the king sat when the kind Ebed-Melech, the Ethiopian, interceded in behalf of Jeremiah, then in a loathsome dungeon beneath the royal palace.[87]