rolling in a groove explains the anxious inquiry of the Marys, “Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?” Creeping through the low entrance, we lit our candles, and found the interior to consist of five chambers, connected by narrow aisles, and in the sides of the chambers are arched recesses for the dead. The largest of these chambers is nineteen feet square. Its walls are of solid rock, hewn smooth. On its south side are two low doorways which lead to as many chambers, and on the north side a third doorway opens to another vault, which is strewn with fragments of elegantly sculptured marble. Here was found that magnificent lid of a sarcophagus which is at present in the Louvre in Paris, where it bears the name of “David’s Tomb.” Beneath these vaults are two others, reached by an inclined plane and a flight of stone steps. Being more concealed than the rest, and containing the most elegant sarcophagi, they were designed, no doubt, for the final repose of the most distinguished persons. But, despite such extraordinary precautions, these tombs have been plundered, the dust of the dead scattered, the sarcophagi broken, and the treasures they contained extracted. Though by common consent they are called the “Tombs of the Kings,” yet there are no sepulchres beyond the walls of Jerusalem as to the origin and founder of which there is such a variety of opinions. On these points the tombs themselves are dumb, as they contain neither device nor inscription; and, with one or two ambiguous exceptions, history is likewise silent. M. de Sauley declares them to be the “Tombs of the Kings of Judah;” Mr. Ferguson pronounces their “architecture to be later than the reign of Constantine;” Mr. Williams asserts them to be the “sepulchral monument of Herod the Great;” Dr. Schultz identifies them as the “Royal Caverns,” mentioned by Josephus as being on a line with the Agrippian Wall; Dr. Robinson ascribes them to Helena, the widow of King Monobazus, of Adiabene, who, with her son Izates, having espoused the Jewish faith, settled in Jerusalem in the reign of Claudius Cæsar, and her son, dying in the Holy City, was here interred;[136] while Dr. Thompson and Dr. Barclay regard them as having been constructed by the Asmonean kings. The latter conclusion is most in harmony with the facts of sacred and profane history. The kings of Judah were interred on Mount Zion; Herod the Great was entombed at Herodium, where there are other vaults for his descendants; other caverns along the Agrippian Wall correspond in location with the words of Josephus better than these; and the thirty loculi within this mausoleum are twenty-eight too many for Helena and her son Izates.