The city of Jerusalem occupies at the present day the southern extremity of a plateau bounded on the east by the Valley of Kedron, and on the west and south by the Valley of Hinnom. This plateau is cut in two from north to south by a ravine called the Tyropœon Valley, so that it forms two hills--one on the east, Mount Moriah, the southern extremity of which, called Ophel, was Sion or the city of David; the other on the west, of much larger extent, to which the name of Sion is improperly given at the present day, and to which the city began to extend only under the kings of Judah. When Solomon ascended the throne, Jerusalem consisted only of Sion or the city of David--that is to say, the narrow hill of Ophel, between the Kedron and Tyropœon valleys. Mount Moriah, on the north, was given up to cultivation, and a rich man of Jerusalem, Araunah, possessed some ground there, with a threshing-floor on which camels and oxen trod out the corn at the time of harvest. David had bought the field of Araunah in order to build upon it the Temple of the true God, and before beginning the construction he had erected an altar on the threshing-floor in order that sacrifice might at once be offered to Jehovah. The materials were collected in great part before the work began; architects, workmen and artists recruited at Tyre, thanks to the assistance of King Hiram, hastened to the spot, and the building began in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign (B.C. 1013). [Illustration: Fig. 168.--Site of the Temple on Mount Moriah.[78]]