Amid this scene of desolation three monuments arrest the eyes of the intelligent pilgrim,--the tombs of Zachariah, of Absalom, and of the king whose name still distinguishes the valley. The first-mentioned of these is a square mass of rock, hewn down into form, and isolated from the quarry out of which it is cut by a passage of twelve or fifteen feet wide on three of its sides; the fourth or western front being open towards the valley and to Mount Moriah, the foot of which is only a few yards distant. This huge stone is eight paces in length on each side, and about twenty feet high in the front, and ten feet high at the back; the hill on which it stands having a steep ascent. It has four semicolumns cut out of the same rock on each of its faces, with a pilaster at each angle, all of a mixed Ionic order, and ornamented in bad taste. The architraves, the full moulding, and the deep overhanging cornice which finishes the square, are all perfectly after the Egyptian manner; and the whole is surmounted by a pyramid, the sloping aides of which rise from the very edges of the square below, and terminate in a finished point. The body of this monument, we have already stated, is one solid mass of rock, as well as its semicolumns on each face; but the surmounting pyramid appears to be of masonry. Its sides, however, are perfectly smooth, like the coated pyramids of Sahara and Dashour, and not graduated by stages like those of Dijzeh in lower Egypt. Inconsiderable in size and paltry in its ornaments, this monument, as Mr. Buckingham observes, is eminently curious. There is no appearance of an entrance into any part of it; so that it seems; if a tomb, to have been as firmly closed as the Egyptian pyramids, and, perhaps, for the same respect for the repose of the dead. It is probable, indeed, that the original style and plan of the building are derived from the country of the Pharaohs; while the Grecian columns and pilasters may be the work of a much later period, when the Jews had learned to combine with the massy piles of their more ancient architecture the elegant lightness which distinguished the times of the Seleucidae.[96] In the immediate vicinity is the tomb of Jehoshaphat,--a cavern which is more commonly called the Grotto of the Disciples, from an idea that they went frequently thither to be taught by their Divine Master. The front of this excavation has two Doric pillars of small size, but of just proportions. In the interior are three chambers, all of them rude and irregular in their form, in one of which were several gravestones, removed, we may suppose, from the open ground for greater security. Like all the rest, they were flat slabs of an oblong shape, from three to six inches in thickness, and evidently a portion of the limestone rock which composes the adjoining hills.