Usually a chamber was excavated in the living rock below the surface, in the sides of which receptacles were prepared large enough to receive a human form, and arranged in tiers with much regularity; when these were occupied, a door was cut in the perpendicular rock, and other chambers were adjoined either on the sides, in the rear, or below. Selected alike for its seclusion and its rocky sides, the Valley of Jehoshaphat is a vast cemetery. At its head are located the “Tombs of the Judges.” Though their origin is involved in mystery, they are generally supposed to have contained the remains of the members of the Jewish Sanhedrim, and the supposition is confirmed by the seventy niches within them, coinciding with the number of members composing that venerable tribunal. Excavated in the side of a low rock, the entrance is reached by a descending path. The exterior is tastefully ornamented with a pediment resting on plain but handsome mouldings, adorned with tracery of leaves and flowers, and with a blazing torch in the centre and one at either end. Over the façade a few olives bend down their branches droopingly, and before it are the accumulated mounds of many centuries. Descending into the vestibule, which is thirteen feet long and nine wide, we passed through a richly moulded doorway into an ante-chamber eight feet high, twenty long, and nineteen wide. On the sides of the vault are thirteen loculi, or receptacles for the dead. In the southern wall a door opens to another chamber eight feet square, having in its sides nine arched recesses. In the east wall a second door leads to a similar vault, from which a flight of steps descends to chambers below. Silence and darkness now reign supreme in these mansions of the dead, and of all that was once human not a bone remains. Illustration: TOMBS OF THE JUDGES. Less than two miles to the northeast are the “Tombs of el-Messahney,” discovered by our distinguished countryman of Joppa.[135] Around them are the remains of what was once a large town, such as hewn stones and broken columns. The rock in front of the tomb has been beveled in imitation of Jewish masonry. Formerly an imposing entablature surmounted an open porch, but only a portion of it remains. The entrance is through a large doorway spanned by a round arch, and the spacious chamber within differs from all others in Palestine by having a window. Of the seventeen recesses which enter the wall endwise, there is one nobler than the rest and twice as large. Here, no doubt, the lifeless form of some distinguished person lay in state, under the light of the window, till his successor in office became his successor to the tomb.