Me'arat Tzedkiyahu or Cave of Zedekiah, more commonly known as the Quarries of King Solomon, is a deep cavern, opening beneath the wall of the Old City of Jerusalem, and extending  for hundreds of meters below the surface of the city in the direction of the Temple Mount.   The cave's entrance, which had become lost in the course of centuries of vandalism and neglect,  was rediscovered in 1854. The opening lies at the base of the wall, 100 meters north of  Damascus Gate and near King Herod's Gate. It is one of the most extensive caves in Israel,  measuring about 220 meters in length and some 900 meters in circumference.   According to tradition. the cave extends all the way to the plain of Jericho. The last King of  Judah, Zedekiah, is said to have fled through this cavern when Jerusalem fell into the hands of  Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, in the summer of 587 B.C. It was Josephus Flavius, the  great Jewish historian of the first century C.E. who for the first ti...
 
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