From the Syro-Chaldaic, meaning field of blood, so called because it was purchased with the blood-money which was paid to Judas Iscariot for betraying his Lord (see Matthew xxvii, 7-10; also Acts 1, 19). The reader will note that the second letter of the word is sounded like k. It is situated on the slope of the hills beyond the valley of Hinnom and to the south of Mount Zion. The earth there was believed, by early writers, to have possessed a corrosive quality, by means of which bodies deposited in it were quickly consumed; and hence it was used by the Crusaders, then by the Knights Hospitaler, and afterward by the Armenians, as a place of sepulture, and the Empress Helena is said to have built a charnel-house in its midst. Doctor Robinson (Biblical Researches, volume 1, page 524) says that the field is not now marked by any boundary to distinguish it from the rest of the field, and the former charnel-house is now a ruin. The field of Aceldama is referred to in the ritual of the Knights Templar.