The summit of Mount Moriah, the centre of which formed the threshing-floor of Araunah, had to be levelled in order to serve as the site of the structure of the temple. In one place the hollows had to be filled, in another the ridges had to be cut away. The central crest was therefore surrounded by an immense quadrangular rockwork bounded by Cyclopean walls of the height of the truncated summit. These supporting walls, extraordinarily thick, formed of enormous blocks fastened by iron clamps, were also embanked on the outside at the base, and all the empty spaces and interstices between the interior wall and the living rock were filled up with a nucleus of rockwork, so as to form on the upper part a square platform. A F G L is the threshing-floor thus surrounded. At the north-western angle--that is to say, A B C D--it was necessary not to construct a supporting rampart and fill up the declivity of the mount, but, on the contrary, to cut away the natural rock into the form of an angle, so that at this point the enclosure of the temple was bounded by a natural wall rising perpendicularly to the height of 26 ft. A trench dug by the English explorers at the north-eastern angle B L K proved that at this point, on the contrary, the artificial rockwork of the temple basement must have reached the colossal height of 123 feet. On the south, at E F G H, a labyrinth of vaults and corridors, supporting a mass of collected material, was contrived in the substructure, which at the south-eastern angle, at the point G, forms at the present day a terrace 45 ft. high; and yet the accumulated rubbish causes the foot of the wall to be more than 65 ft. below the present surface of the ground! By the system of levelling which we have described an irregular quadrilateral was obtained, the eastern and southern sides of which are 1520 ft. and 1611 ft. long, and the northern and southern side 1017 ft. and 921 ft. As Mount Moriah extended in a northern direction beyond the temple enclosure, the platform was on this side accessible to all comers. To remedy this inconvenience, and turn the new structure into an isolated citadel as well as a temple, a broad trench was hewn in the rock on the north-east, A B; and on the north-west, B L, a gigantic moat called Birket-Israîl, which at the present day, though filled up to the extent of two-thirds, is still 104 ft. broad and 65 ft. deep. “Thus,” concludes M. de Vogüé, “we have a large quadrilateral excavated on the north, supported on the south by vaulted substructures, and surrounded on three sides by terraces and on the fourth side by a broad moat. Such is the entirely homogeneous whole of the Haram esh-Sherif; such almost it has existed for long centuries, for successive destructions and rebuildings have little altered the primitive plan.”[79] We shall see directly, in the company of the same scholar, that this immense pedestal, the work of Solomon, was only modified and enlarged by Herod on one of its sides.