Mount of Olives from Silwan

This is a photo I took of the Mount of Olives from a slightly different angle than one usually sees, from the villiage of Silwan. Silwan is, now, mostly Arab, but the name itself is a corruption of the ancient Hebrew place-name Shilo'akh, known to the west as Shiloah, with the final guttural tossed in the gutter of pronunciation mutation. Now, that isn't the end of it, as this place-name has yet another version well-known in the west, but usually applied to the healing waters anciently at the well-visited spring: Siloam. The final 'm' came from the Greek, I think.

Silwan/Shilo'akh/Shiloah/Siloam is also home to the archaeological dig Ir Dahveed, aka City of David. This area was actually inside the walls of Jerusalem at one time, and a strong minority archaeological opinion says this may have been the temple site, and not the temple site a few hunded meters away.