90 feet of rubbish under David Street, which leads east to the Temple ridge. Yet even now there is a sharp descent eastwards along this street, and steep side streets lead up southwards thence to Zion.[81] [Sidenote: OPHEL] Such, then, was the natural fortress which made the capture of Jerusalem so difficult, and which appears to have been occupied from the earliest times. The temple ridge on the east was 60 feet lower than Zion even at its highest point; and, as this ridge became narrower and tailed off towards the south, it sank--on the Ophel spur--to about 200 feet below the level of the upper city. The Ophel spur was unfit for a fortress, and the part south of the temple contained an area of only about 15 acres. It is impossible, therefore, to regard it as having at any time been by itself a “city,” for the more important cities of Palestine were much larger than such a small hamlet would have been. Tyre covered 100 acres, Cæsarea and Samaria about 300 acres each, while even Gezer--a town of less importance--included 40 acres within the walls. Ophel is not mentioned in history till three hundred years after David’s time. Nor are the remains of caves or cellars on this narrow tongue of land apparently of any remote antiquity, though some writers have supposed them to be of Jebusite origin, and have even called them “neolithic”--a term which has no meaning in Palestine, because (as in Egypt and in Babylonia) instruments of stone and of flint are found at all levels in the excavations, and are contemporary with others of bronze and of iron. The remains found in connection with these caves are of Roman origin, and one of the largest of them was a dyeing establishment, in which Byzantine objects were discovered. There are similar caves or cellars on the hill of the upper city, and these may be equally late.[82]