Opposite to this, on the east, is the reputed tomb of Absalom, resembling nearly in the size, form, and decoration of its square base that of Zachariah already described; except that it is sculptured with the metopes and triglyphs of the Doric order. This is surmounted by a sharp conical dome, having large mouldings running round its base, and on the summit something like an imitation of flame. There is here again so strange a mixture of style and ornament, that one knows not to what age to attribute the monument as a whole. The square mass below is solid, and the Ionic columns which are seen on each of its faces are half-indented in the rock itself. The dome is of masonry, and on the eastern side there is a square aperture in it. Generally speaking, the sight of this monument rather confirms the idea suggested by the tomb of Zachariah, that the hewn mass of solid rock, the surmounting pyramid and dome of masonry, and the sculptured frieze and Ionic columns wrought on the faces of the square below were works of different periods; being probably ancient sepulchres, the primitive character of which had been changed by the subsequent addition of foreign ornaments. There is, besides, every reason to believe that this monument, represented below, really occupies the site of the one which was set up by him whose name it bears. "Now Absalom in his lifetime had reared up for himself a pillar, which is in the King's Dale: for he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance; and he called the pillar after his own name: and it is called unto this day Absalom's Place."[97] Chateaubriand is of opinion, that except the Pool of Bethesda at Jerusalem, we have no remains of the primitive architecture of its inhabitants. This reservoir, a hundred and fifty feet long and forty broad, is still to be seen near St. Stephen's Gate, where it bounded the Temple on the north. The sides are walled by means of large stones joined together by iron cramps, and covered with flints imbedded in a substance resembling plaster. Here the lambs destined for sacrifice were washed; and it was on the brink of this pool that Christ said to the paralytic man, "Arise, take up thy bed and walk." It receives a melancholy interest from the fact that it is probably the last remnant of Jerusalem as it appeared in the days of Solomon and of his immediate successors. It cannot be denied that the tombs in the Valley of Jehoshaphat display an alliance of Egyptian and Grecian taste; and, in naturalizing in their capital the architecture of Memphis and of Athens, it is equally certain that the Jews mixed with it the forms of their own peculiar style. From this combination resulted a heterogeneous kind of structure, forming, as it were, the link between the Pyramids and the Parthenon,--monuments in which you discover a sombre, yet bold and elevated genius, associated with a pleasing and cultivated imagination.