The water-supply has been thus described in detail, because it is often assumed that the Jebusite city must have depended entirely on the En-rogel spring in the Kidron ravine, which was clearly not the case; but, even if it were so, it would not follow that the Jebusite town must have stood on Ophel, for cities in Palestine were built on the highest and strongest sites available, even if these were not very near the springs. Thus at Samaria the springs are a mile away from the nearest point of the city wall on the east, and other instances might be cited where cities, like Tyre and Cæsarea, depended on water brought by an aqueduct from a distance of some miles. Jerusalem, before the time of Pilate, depended entirely for water on the rainfall of a comparatively small area east of the Judæan watershed; but, as we have seen, the storage of this natural supply in caves and tanks gave a sufficient amount of water on each side of the upper city, and the various rock channels served to bring this supply close under, and within, the city walls. There is therefore no difficulty in supposing that Josephus is right in describing the upper city of his own times as having been the “mountain top of Zion” captured by David. [Sidenote: ZION] The name Zion was older than David’s time. Since the fourth century A. D. it has always been applied to the hill of the upper city, and it may have been so placed in the earliest ages. But in the Bible it is not restricted to this position, but appears as a poetical name for Jerusalem at large. Josephus never uses this name, but speaks of “Jerusalem” instead. Zion is mentioned 154 times in the Old Testament, but only four passages[95]--all referring to early times--are in the historical narratives, the large majority of the other notices being in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Psalms. Zion was a city with gates, and a “holy hill.” It is constantly used as a name equivalent to Jerusalem. It had walls and towers and “dwelling-places”; it is “the city of Jehovah, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel,” a high mountain, and a “city of solemnities.” It has been thought that, in the Greek age, the name applies specially to the Temple hill, but the passages cited do not really necessitate this conclusion. Ancient names are commonly preserved in the poetry of a nation, and Zion was a very ancient word, which--as we have seen--may possibly have meant a “chief’s abode,” or a “god’s abode,” even when the Hittites and Amorites still held Jerusalem, and when it was the sacred city of Melchizedek, long before the Temple of Jehovah was built on the ridge outside, at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. Hence it is in the poetry of the prophets and psalmists of Israel that the name Zion occurs; and, though there is nothing really wrong in the Christian application of the word to the south-western hill, yet the term is only vaguely equivalent to the city generally. But there is one quarter to which it should not be