The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER II

[46] Ps. cx. 4; Heb. v. 6, 10, vii. 1–4.

[47] Ps. lxxvi. 2.

[48] Gen. xiv. 17, 18; 2 Sam. xviii. 18; Josephus, “Ant.,” I. x. 2; “Ant.,” VII. x. 3.

[49] Gen. xxxiii. 18 (A.V. marg.), called Sâlim el Kebîra (“Great Salem”) in Samaritan Chronicle (Neubauer, Journal Asiatique, Dec. 1869, p. 433). See “Mem. West Pal.,” ii. p. 230; Tal. Jer., Abodah Zara, v. 4; John iii. 23; Onomasticon, s.v. Jerusalem and Salem; Chron. Paschale, quoted by Reland, “Pal. Illustr.,” ii. p. 977. Jerome (“Ep. ad Evang.”), “Salem oppidum est juxta Scythopolim quod usque hodie appellatur Salem et ostenditur ibi palatium Melchisedec,” etc.

[50] Gen. xiv. 1; Josephus, “Wars,” VI. x. 1. See my article in “Murray’s Bible Dictionary,” 1908, “Chronology.” The date is now ascertained from the Babylonian Chronicle’s through-reckoning, and from a text of Nabu-nahid, while the same result was reached by Dr. Felix Peiser (Zeitschrift für Assyr. vi. pp. 264–71) in 1891 from the statements of Berosus.

[51] Ariel (Isa. xxix. 1, 2, 7) may stand for Babylonian eri-ilu, “city of God,” as a name of Jerusalem.

[52] Ezek. xvi. 3, 45.

[53] See my volume “The Hittites and Their Language,” 1898. Dr. Sayce (“The Hittites,” 1888) also (p. 14) calls them “Mongoloid.”

[54] Gen. xxii. 2 (LXX. hupsēlē); in 2 Chr. iii. 2 it is not translated in the Greek. In Babylonian mur-iahu would mean “seat of Yahu.”

[55] Gen. xxii. 14 (see R.V.); possibly to be rendered “in the mount Jehovah appears.” The LXX.: “In the mount the Lord was seen” (see 2 Sam. xxiv. 16).

[56] Akkadian ab (or ub), “abode,” us, “strong”; Turkish eb and üs. Isaiah refers to the meaning of the Semitic name as “a quiet habitation” (xxxiii. 20).

[57] In Akkadian Ṣi-an is “palace” (in the Behistān dialect), and Zi-una, “chief’s building” or “God’s place.” Gesenius compares the Arabic ṣahweh, “fortress,” and ṣahyûn.

[58] See Isa. xxx. 33, “deep and large.”

[59] Araunah (2 Sam. xxiv. 16, 20); Heb. Aranieh in ver. 18; Ornan (1 Chr. xxi. 15–28); no doubt originally written with the signs UR-AN-EN, which would read either Ur-ena or Ur-nun; in LXX. always Orna.

[60] These synchronisms show that the approximate dates given by Brugsch for Amenophis III. and IV. are correct. The recent discoveries of Dr. H. Winckler in Cappadocia also prove that Rameses II. was ruling about 1330 B. C., as Brugsch supposed. The later dates given by some Egyptologists are based on a fallacious astronomical calculation, and do not agree with the known Assyrian and Babylonian dates.

[61] Taylor cylinder text. See also my “Tell Amarna Tablets,” 2nd edit. 1898, pp. 117–20, 193.

[62] “Tell Amarna Tablets,” pp. 8, 14, 187, 193, 200, 202, 210; Deutschen Orient Gesellschaft, No. 35, 1908, discoveries of Dr. H. Winckler, pp. 33–6.

[63] “Amarna Tablets,” pp. 170, 188.

[64] The signs used are those for “man,” “good,” and “do,” variously rendered Arad-Khi-ba and ’Abd-Ṭobba, but perhaps better ’Abd-ṣadaḳ, “servant of the just.” Cf. Melchi-ṣedeḳ (“my king is just”), Adoni-ṣedeḳ, “my lord is just.” See “Tell Amarna Tablets,” pp. 139–51.

[65] Lepsius, “Letters from Egypt,” 1844, English trans. 1853, pp. 484 seq.

[66] Gen. xlvii. 11; Exod. i. 11.

[67] Josh. x. 3. See “Tell Amarna Tablets,” p. 137, and Josh. x. 33.

[68] Ruth i. 2.

[69] Amarna Tablets, No. 102, Berlin Collection: “tarayamu ... amili ’Abiri.”

[70] Sarru b’elu.

[71] Pitati, an Egyptian word, either from pet, “bow,” or pet, “foot”—bowmen, or otherwise infantry, and not a chariot force such as is often mentioned in the plains, in the Amarna letters.

[72] No. 106, Berlin Collection.

[73] Baalah = Kirjath-jearim (Josh. xv. 10), near which was Rabbah (ver. 60). See Josh ix. 17.

[74] No. 104, Berlin Collection.

[75] ina Bit-amilla-ma.

[76] No. 103, Berlin Collection, line 54 on back of the tablet.

[77] No. 199, Berlin Collection.

[78] ’Ati, see Isa. x. 28, = Ai.

[79] Josh. xv. 8, xviii. 16; Judg. i. 8, 21, xix. 11, 12, xx. 28; 2 Sam. xxiv. 23 (“Araunah a king”); Josephus, “Ant.,” V. ii. 2, 5, 8.

[80] Josephus, “Ant.,” XV. xi. 5.

[81] The dome of the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre Cathedral is fixed in N. lat. 31° 46´ 45´´, E. long. 35° 13´ 25´´.

[82] Bliss, “Excavations at Jerusalem,” 1898, pp. 231–3; Warren, “Recovery of Jerusalem,” 1871, pp. 306–8; G. A. Smith, “Jerusalem,” 1907, vol. i. p. 284.

[83] This is the usual explanation, but I have some doubts whether the word is not really malaḳeh, meaning “smooth stone.”

[84] In 1878 I consulted the late Prof. A. B. Davidson as to this translation of the sentence in 2 Chron. xxxii. 30, and I retain still his letter of December 30, 1878, pronouncing that this is “the natural translation of the words.”

[85] Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly, Jan. 1902, p. 32.

[86] The channel starts at the level 2,087 feet above the sea. Bottom of Pool of Siloam, 2,081 feet. The channel north of the old pool at Siloam is about 2,120 feet.

[87] 2 Chron. xxxii. 4.

[88] “Fountain of the fuller,” or “of the spy,” with reference to David’s spies. See Josh. xviii. 16, 2 Sam. xvii. 17. I suggested many years ago a comparison with the Arabic rujeileh, “water-channel.” Dr. G. A. Smith (“Jerusalem,” 1908, i. p. 109) takes the same view, and compares the Syriac rogûlo, a “water-channel.”

[89] 2 Macc. i. 18–36; Brocardus, 1283 A. D.; Zuallardo, “Dev. Viag.,” p. 142; Robinson, “Bib. Res.,” i. p. 332, note 5; Warren, “Recov. of Jer.,” pp. 256–64; Wilson, “Ord. Survey Notes,” p. 84; “Mem. Survey West Pal.,” Jerusalem vol., pp. 371–5.

[90] Ḳorân xxxviii. 40, 41; see 1 Kings i. 9.

[91] See my account, “Mem. Survey West Pal.,” ii. pp. 18–23.

[92] Neh. ii. 13; Josephus, “Wars,” V. iii. 2, xii. 2.

[93] Isa. xxii. 9. See 2 Kings xviii. 17; Isa. xxxvi. 2.

[94] Sir C. Wilson, “Ord. Survey Notes,” p. 85, and Pl. xxii. Explored October 29, 1864.

[95] 2 Sam. v. 7; 1 Kings viii. 1; 1 Chron. xi. 5; 2 Chron. v. 2. The word “Zion” occurs also in poetic passages in 2 Kings xix. 21, 31. Outside the historic books it is found thirty-eight times in Psalms, forty-seven times in Isaiah, thirty-nine times in Jeremiah, and in twenty-four other poetic passages. See especially Ps. ii. 6, ix. 11, 14, xlviii. 12, lxxvi. 2, lxxxvii. 1, 5; Isa. iv. 5, x. 24, 32, xii. 6, xxx. 19, xxxiii. 14, 20, lx. 14; Jer. xxvi. 18, xxxi. 12; Lam. v. 11, 18; 1 Macc. iv. 37, v. 54, vi. 48, 62, vii. 33, x. 11. In 1 Macc. the word Zion means the Holy City, but is not specially restricted to the Temple hill. It is mentioned six times only in this book, as cited.

CHAPTER III
THE HEBREW KINGS

From the citadel of Zion the Jebusites looked down on David’s men arrayed beyond the dividing valley. Like many other defenders of a doomed city, they mocked their foes, and they set the lame and the blind on the wall, “saying, Thou wilt not enter here unless thou removest the blind and the lame: meaning, David cannot enter here. Nevertheless David took the hilltop of Zion: it is the city of David. And David said that day, Every slayer of the Jebusite will also reach by the ravine both the lame and the blind. They hate David’s self, wherefore they say, Blind and lame he will not come into the place. So David dwelt on the hilltop, and called it the city of David. And David built round about from the Millo and inwards.”[96]

DAVID’S CITY

The city of David is here identified with the hilltop of Zion; but as Jerusalem grew larger, the term seems to have been expanded to include all the Jerusalem of David’s time, and in later days it was applied to the lower city. This term is used forty times in the Old Testament, and in four passages it is equivalent to Zion.[97] Josephus never uses it except in relating David’s capture of the citadel. He always, in other passages, substitutes the name “Jerusalem.” He says that David—like all later captors—first took the lower city, but that the citadel held out till Joab crossed “one of the underlying ravines” (which would probably be the Tyropœon), and “ascended” to the citadel itself. He continues that David afterwards made buildings in the lower city. He identifies the citadel with the upper city of his own time, and places the lower city to the north. He is only following the Bible account as he understood it, but there is no reason to doubt that he is right. He was not merely writing his own fancies, for “the Millo” had already been long identified, by the Greek translators of the Bible, with the Akra or “citadel” which defended the lower city.[98] We can, of course, only conjecture what “the Millo” was, since its position and character are not explained in the Bible. It was a “filling” of some kind, whether a valley filled in with earth or a filling place—perhaps the old Jebusite pool cut in rock immediately outside the north wall of the citadel. Jewish writers always connect it with the lower city, and Solomon “built up the Millo, and shut up the breach of the city of David his father,” or, according to the Greek translators, “founded the Akra closing the fence of the city of David,” or otherwise “made the Akra to fence in the fence of the city.” Considering that the “city of the great king” (or overlord) is described as being on the “flanks of the north,”[99] there seems to be no improbability in the view taken by Jewish writers of early date. There was in Jerusalem, somewhat later, a place called the Maktesh,[100] or “hollow,” apparently a quarter of the city; this was probably the lower city in the wide Tyropœon Valley north of the citadel, and it is possible that the Millo was on that narrow isthmus of land to defend which the “broad wall,” or “wall of the broad place,” was built.[101] The fact that the lower city was first fortified by David seems to show that it was only an open town, beyond the citadel, in Jebusite times.[102]

In the city of David’s time were his palace, and the place where the Ark was kept in a tent. Here also David and many of his successors were buried. The civilisation of Babylonia, as then extending to Phœnicia, was the model for the new Hebrew kingdom, as it had been for the Canaanite even in Abraham’s time. The “house” of David was built by Phœnician artisans, and seems to have been in the lower city, below the Temple ridge and Ophel, but the great palace of Solomon was outside the city of David. The Ark, apparently, was established at the original palace, until the Temple was built.[103] The royal tombs were perhaps just inside the north wall of Jerusalem, as will be explained in speaking of the later Hebrew kings.

ABSALOM’S HAND

The story of David’s life is told in one of the most vivid and picturesque books of the Old Testament, and contains scattered allusions to places at Jerusalem. The scribe—perhaps the prophet Nathan[104]—does not spare his hero in his account of Bathsheba; but, in spite of his crime of passion, the generosity of David’s character accorded with that ideal which we find most admired among free Semitic races, from the days of Job to those of Muḥammad or of Saladin; and “whatsoever the king did pleased all the people.”[105] His sin met its nemesis when Ahitophel—Bathsheba’s grandfather[106]—rose to be a court favourite, and then deserted to the rebellious Absalom. His schemes soon failed; but David, looking back to the day when Uriah was betrayed to death, must have recognised his punishment, and humbly submitted to the rod. To save the city, he marched out[107] with his faithful guards—the old band that followed him to Gath in earlier days—and on crossing the Kidron he sent back the Ark into the town. By the Anathoth road he ascended Olivet, praying on its northern summit, and so took the way to the wilderness and to Gilead. His faithful spies were hidden in the cave of En-rogel; and after the defeat and death of Absalom we are told that this rebel son had erected a “hand,” or monument, in the “King’s Dale,” which still remained when the chronicle was written, being—as already mentioned—perhaps somewhere to the south in the Valley of Hinnom, though mediæval pilgrims thought that they had found it at the Greco-Jewish tomb east of the Kidron, where—ever since the fifteenth century A. D. at least—the Jews have raised heaps of stones, each pilgrim casting his pebble at the supposed monument of the wicked son.

David’s adventurous life drew towards its end. An old man at the age of seventy years, the king was nursed by the fair Abishag of Shunem. His fourth son, Adonijah—the two eldest having met violent deaths, and the third being perhaps also dead—was supported by his cousin Joab and by Abiathar the priest. On the rock Zoheleth,[108] beside En-rogel—a precipice visible from the upper city—he slew sacrifices, and proclaimed himself king. The old lion was roused by the news to renew his oath to Bathsheba. Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the commander who had superseded Joab, were sent with the swordsmen and light troops—two regiments of guards distinguished like those of Assyrian and Egyptian armies—to escort Solomon, on the king’s mule, “down to Gihon.” There he was anointed by Zadok the priest, with oil brought from the tent in which the Ark still abode; and apparently the choice of the place was due to the position of Zoheleth, which was nearly opposite to it on the east side of the Kidron ravine, Gihon being thus in sight of Adonijah’s adherents. The piping of pipes, the shouts of the people, and the sound of the trumpet were heard by Joab and Adonijah as they feasted, and they fled to take sanctuary at the altar.[109]

GIHON

It is here assumed that Gihon was another name of the spring En-rogel, though this is, of course, not absolutely certain. The word means “spouting forth,” and the title is not applicable to a tank, while it recalls the sudden gush of the Kidron spring as already described. Gihon lay in a ravine (naḥal), a term which is applied in many passages to the Kidron Valley, as contrasted with the gai or gorge of Hinnom. It is also described as a “source” (moṣa), which word is used of the Kidron spring in Hezekiah’s inscription at Siloam. The wall of Ophel, moreover, is said to have run “westwards to Gihon in the naḥal,” so that it is clear that this “source” was not on the west side of Jerusalem.[110] In the fourteenth century, it is true, the old map of the city shows the “Upper Pool of Gihon” (at the Birket Mâmilla), and the “Lower Pool of Gihon” (at the Birket es Sulṭân), but such pools are never mentioned in the Bible, or by Josephus, though the misunderstanding survives even now. The lower of these pools was made by the Germans about 1172 A. D., and it is not mentioned by any writer before that age. Gihon was not a pool or tank, and the term seems most clearly to apply to a source which spouted out at intervals in the Kidron ravine, and which was otherwise named En-rogel because of a water channel down which the stream was led.

The building of the Temple was Solomon’s first great work. It stood on the ridge east of the city, where the threshing-floor of Araunah was consecrated by David’s altar. There is no doubt that it was placed on the “top of the mountain,”[111] and that the site of the holy house itself remained unchanged in later times, when it was rebuilt by Zerubbabel, and again enlarged by the priests in the time of Herod the Great. The area of the enclosure was then increased, especially on the west, by the banking up of earth supported in places on vaults within the great Herodian walls; but the natural site was very restricted. The strata are tilted up towards the north-west, so that the ridge presents an almost precipitous slope on the west side, sinking nearly 200 feet from the level of the Ṣakhrah, or “rock,” to the valley in which the west Ḥaram wall was built. The eastern slope is less steep, but the ridge—which was naturally highest on the north-west—is narrow throughout, except in the neighbourhood of the Dome of the Rock, which now covers the Ṣakhrah. In this part there is a small plateau measuring about 200 yards across, and sinking on the east and south about 20 feet below the crest of the Ṣakhrah itself. As to this rock site, which forms the natural position for a building surrounded by courts which were at lower levels, there is no doubt at all. The visitor can see the rock for himself on the surface to east, south, and north-west of the platform on which the Dome of the Rock stands, and the levels of this bare rock have been accurately ascertained. The Ṣakhrah rises on its west side about 4 feet above the level of the pavement, and slopes gently eastwards. On the north-west part of the platform the rock is flat, and is found just under the pavement. It is just under the floor east of the Ṣakhrah, within the walls of the Dome of the Rock. Its level north of the building has been ascertained in the well mouths of the two rock tunnels now used as tanks, and also in that of a similar excavation to the south-east of the Dome. Rock scarps are visible on the north and north-east sides of the platform, while on the south-east and south-west sides there are vaults in which no rock is found at all. These facts I verified by descending into the tanks and examining the small vaulted chambers under the platform. If the platform itself could be removed, there is little doubt that we should find beneath it two rocky terraces at two levels, that to the east being some 10 feet lower than that to the west.

SOLOMON’S TEMPLE

The Ṣakhrah itself is the controlling feature, because it rises at its crest 8 feet above the average level of the surrounding rock terrace. If the Holy House was built over the Ṣakhrah, then the levels of the descending courts naturally agree with those of the rock site. But if the Temple itself is placed to the south or to the west of the Ṣakhrah, it is no longer on the top of the mountain; and any student who draws a section, in accordance with the ascertained levels of the rock, will find that he has, in these cases, to suppose foundations of masonry of at least 30 feet necessary to support the heavy walls of the building. On the west the rock is found in a cistern mouth, only 100 feet from the Ṣakhrah, but already more than 20 feet lower; and it descends steeply to the foot of the west Ḥaram wall, where it is found to be nearly 200 feet lower than the Ṣakhrah crest, which—on these suppositions—would be the level of the outer court, since it cannot have been left protruding above that level. Thus, although to the student who merely considers the plan of the building it seems allowable to propose any position he prefers, near the Ṣakhrah, as the exact site of the Holy House, we are in reality very strictly confined to the conclusion that this sacred “rock” was the foundation on which it rose. For the later Temple was more than 100 feet long, and it is unnatural to suppose that it would have been built on the west slope, or on the lower part of the small plateau, to the south, and raised up by foundations of such height as would be needed, when there was just room for the Temple and its inner court on the higher part of the small plateau. Josephus appears to be quite right in saying, not only that the Temple was on the “top of the mountain,” but yet more definitely that “at first the highest flat part barely sufficed for the Holy House and the altar: for the ground about it was very uneven and precipitous.” He says that Solomon “built a wall on its eastern side,” but that “on other parts the Holy House stood naked.” The west enclosure wall was apparently not erected till much later; and although when Pompey besieged Jerusalem there was already a bridge from the upper city to the Temple ridge, the west side of the hill was even then “abrupt,”[112] and not filled up with earth, within the rampart, to bring it to a level with the Temple courts. “New banks”—according to Josephus—were added in later times, and thus “the hill became a larger plateau.”

Such practical considerations and historic statements fully agree with Jewish tradition. No Jerusalem Jew doubts that the Temple stood over the Ṣakhrah “rock,” which they identify with that “Stone [or, Rock] of Foundation” which, even in Herod’s time, was visible in the Holy of Holies. The Mishnah was composed in our second century, and records the statements of rabbis who had witnessed the great destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A. D., and who had seen the ruins of the Temple as the Romans left them. In the Mishnah we read[113] the description of the awful Day of Atonement, when—once a year—the high-priest, in fear and trembling, entered the Holy of Holies, where there was no longer any Ark. “When the Ark was removed, a stone was there, since the days of the first prophets” (that is, of David), “and it was called the ‘foundation’: it was three fingers above the ground, and on it he put the censer.”

THE PIERCED STONE

The Ṣakhrah is a very remarkable rock cut in steps on the west, as though to form the base of a wall, and having a cave beneath on the east, with a shaft through its roof to the surface. It is also said to have another excavation below the floor of the cave,[114] and this cave was very probably a granary originally connected with the threshing-floor, and resembling an ancient example near Nazareth.[115] To identify the rock with the Altar of the Temple is to upset the whole section of the building, and the altar was of stones, and not of rock. In the fourth century we find the Jews wailing at this “Pierced Stone,” as the site of their Holy House.[116] The Moslems have adopted their tradition, and speak of the Ṣakhrah as the foundation of the world, a rock of Paradise suspended over the abyss where souls dwell till the judgment. The Christians of the Middle Ages equally regarded the Dome of the Rock as the “Temple of the Lord.” The site is one of the very few as to which there is a general agreement and an unchanging tradition.

Of the Temple courts we have no full description in the Old Testament. The Holy House itself is said to have been double the size of the Tabernacle, not counting the three tiers of small chambers built against the walls. In the details of its architecture it recalls the art of Babylonia or of Phœnicia, rather than of Egypt, and its masons and artificers came from Tyre. The combination of large, well-hewn masonry with cedar roofs, and adornment of bronze and of gold, carved figures on the wall, and sacred Ark within, reminds us not only of the temples in Babylon which Nebuchadnezzar describes in his inscriptions, but of that famous account, in the Akkadian language, which Prince Gudea of Zirgul in Chaldea has left us, on his cylinders and statues, describing the temple which—perhaps as early as 2800 B. C.—he adorned with precious metals and with cedar wood from Lebanon. We think of the Cherubim as many-winged angels, such as Italian artists have painted; but the word Kirubu is written in Assyria over a representation of one of those winged bulls which, as “guardians,” stood in temples, or are represented flanking the mystic tree of life, just as Solomon’s cherubs flanked the palm trees. They were not painted, like the figures in the dark interior of Egyptian shrines, but carved on the walls in low relief, and overlaid with gold. They were seen by none save priests, and even to them they were only dimly visible in the darkness of a shrine unlighted from without, by the glimmer of the seven-branched golden lamp. Yet Solomon—like many later kings even down to the seventh century B. C.—disregarded the command written on the ancient “token tablets” still stored in the Ark, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”; for besides these carvings and the huge olive-wood cherubs which overshadowed the older golden guardians of the Ark itself, he also placed his bronze laver on the necks of bronze bulls, and adorned the steps of his ivory throne with lions, after the fashion of Babylonian and Phœnician kings. In his old age the princesses from Sidon and Moab, and the daughters of the Hittites, Ammonites, and Edomites, whom he wedded, “turned away his heart after other gods.” But even in his youth he followed the ways of the Canaanites, while seeking to honour Jehovah by a splendid shrine. The making of images, in his day as in all times, was the sure sign of superstition creeping in, to guard against which the commandment of Moses was written.

THE TEMPLE GATES

The description of the Temple need not be further detailed,[117] as it is clearly understandable in the Bible narrative. The buildings included an “inner court,”[118] and probably, therefore, an outer one as well, but we are not told what space these covered, though it has been conjectured that the former was double the size of that of the Tabernacle, which would mean roughly about 300 feet east and west by 150 feet north and south.[119] In late accounts we read of a Court of the Priests and of a great court, and there are passing allusions to gates, on each side of the enclosure at different levels, and to a “higher court” by the “new gate.” It would seem that there was a west gate called that of “Departure” or “Casting Out,” in various passages, a north gate called “the High Gate of Benjamin,” a “Foundation Gate,” perhaps in the lower court, and—in the outer wall, which was that of the city itself—a gate where the “guard” or garrison of the Temple mustered, by the “Court of the Guard” (or “Prison,” as rendered in the English). The gate of “Runners” (light troops), on the way to the palace south of the Temple, was perhaps not the same. The king held his court of justice at the High Gate, which was “towards the north”; but another “King’s Gate” seems to have been on the east side of the outer court. All these were swept away when the Temple was enlarged and its courts rebuilt by Herod; but the general impression is that the Temple courts were at first confined to the immediate neighbourhood of the plateau surrounding the holy house, and that outside them there was only the city wall on the east; while on the west the natural slope of the hill remained visible, and no wall divided the Sanctuary from the city. On the south also the ridge sloped down to Ophel, where the great court of the palace extended towards the Horse Gate and the Court of the Guard.[120]

After the Temple the new palace of Solomon was built. It was not in the city of David, for “the daughter of Pharaoh” remained there “until he had made an end of building his own house,” and then “came up out of the city of David unto her house which he had built for her.”[121] Thus Josephus is apparently right in saying that the queen’s house “adjoined” that of the king, being in fact the ḥarîm of the palace. This palace resembled those of Assyrian or of Egyptian kings, as well as that of later times at Persepolis. It included a main building measuring 100 cubits by 50 cubits, with cedar pillars and a cedar roof. There were also separate halls, each 50 by 30 cubits, and two residences, for the king and queen, as well as a hall of justice, or throne-room, in which was the ivory throne. Round and within these buildings there were open courts, besides the “Great Court,” which apparently included the stables for the king’s horses, which came in by the “Horse Gate” in the city wall, at which gate Queen Athaliah, fleeing back from the Temple to her palace, was slain: this gate was to the south of the Temple courts, as described by Nehemiah. In the latter book also we find that the “King’s High House” lay on Ophel, near the “Water Gate,” which was above the Gihon spring, and which had a rock shaft leading down to the water. In Nehemiah’s time this palace was called “the house of David,” meaning, apparently, that of David’s family, just as certain royal tombs are called—in the same account—“sepulchres of David,” because certain kings of Judah were there buried; for David would himself evidently not need more than one sepulchre.

THE PALACE

The description is not sufficiently detailed to allow of any plan of these buildings being drawn,[122] but—including the courts—it is clear from the dimensions that the palace covered the greater part of the little Ophel spur, which became the royal quarter, where also—in later times at least—the high-priest had his house, and where the Nethinim lived. Moreover, the “king’s garden” was in the Tyropœon Valley, near Siloam, and in or near it were the “king’s wine-presses,” which are noticed as marking the south limit of the later city. The city of David was no doubt densely crowded, and there was no room in it for a new palace. This was, moreover, placed close to the Temple for convenience in attending the daily services. In later times Ezekiel denounces the proximity of the dwelling of idolatrous kings to the Temple of Jehovah, and the building of a wall of separation, as well as the burial of the kings inside the city.[123]

The latest buildings of Solomon were shrines in honour of foreign gods, including Ashtoreth, Milcom, Chemosh, and Molech.[124] The three former were on “the hill facing Jerusalem”; the last named was no doubt at Topheth, in the valley which was devoted to the worship of this savage deity. They are again noticed in the time of Josiah, nearly four centuries later, and (except Molech) stood on “the Mount of Corruption” (or, more correctly, of “anointing”), which was apparently the Mount of Olives. A much-defaced Phœnician text, found by M. Clermont-Ganneau at the village of Silwân, contains the words “Beth-Baal,” and has been supposed to be possibly connected with one of these shrines.

The prosperity of Jerusalem declined on the death of Solomon, when the kingdom was divided; and five years later the city was sacked by Shishak—the first king of the twenty-second Egyptian dynasty—about 960 B. C. Topographical details are, however, very scanty, though Jehoash of Israel (about 820 B. C.), attacking Amaziah of Judah, is said to have broken down the wall from the Gate of Ephraim (which would be on the north) to the Corner Gate (which was pretty clearly at the north-west corner of the upper city), a distance of 400 cubits. He thus made his assault, as usual, on the weakest point in the fortifications.[125] He again carried off the treasures of the Temple and of the palace. The next king of Judah, Azariah (otherwise Uzziah), strengthened this point by building towers at the Gate of the Corner and at the Gate of the Gai—a term used exclusively of the Hinnom Valley. Both these gates—as will appear later—were near the isthmus which exists inside the present Jaffa Gate; and the towers were the predecessors of Herod’s “royal towers,” which defended the upper city at this neck of high ground. Uzziah is also said to have placed engines—no doubt like those of the Assyrian bas-reliefs—on the walls.[126]

THE OLD POOL

Jotham (about 745 B. C.) is the first Hebrew king who is said to have built a wall on Ophel,[127] though he may merely have made it stronger, as it possibly formed part of Solomon’s wall round Jerusalem, including the Temple and the palace. He was no doubt alarmed at the progress which was then being made by the Assyrians in the conquest of Syria. His successor, Ahaz, was attacked by Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Damascus some ten years later, though they failed to take the city.[128] We have some details of interest as to the water-supply of Jerusalem at this time, before the great works of Hezekiah were carried out[129]; for, in connection with this attack, Isaiah notices the “conduit of the upper pool,” and the “waters of Shiloah that go secretly”; he speaks also rather later of the “collection of the waters of the lower pool,” and of the “place where the waters of the old pool flowed together between the two walls.” Whether we are to understand that the Siloam tunnel was begun as early as the time of Ahaz, or that the older conduit—already described—was then made, there is apparently no connection between the secret water-supply of Shiloah and the other pools noticed by Isaiah. It is certain that the Upper Pool must have been on the west side of the city, since it was there that the Assyrians appeared in 703 B. C., and the site of the Assyrian camp was still pointed out as late as 70 A. D. in this direction.[130] The conduit from this pool to the “lower pool” was no doubt that which also existed in the time of Herod, and which still carries water to the so-called “Pool of the Bath” or “of Hezekiah.” The last named may very well be regarded as the “Old Pool,” being “between the two walls”—that is to say, inside the wall of the lower city and outside that of the upper city. This important reservoir, which was “old” even in the time of Isaiah, thus seems to have been possibly of the Jebusite age. The work of Ahaz consisted in forming an upper reservoir (now called Birket Mâmilla) to supply the old pool by a conduit leading into the city.

The fall of Damascus to Tiglath-pileser, in 732 B. C., caused general consternation in Palestine. Ahaz had already asked aid of the Assyrian against Israel and the Syrians, and he now hasted to offer tribute to the conqueror, whose troops were overrunning Gilead and Galilee, and raided even to Philistia. On the occasion of his visit to Damascus, Ahaz is said to have seen an altar on which he sacrificed, and a copy of which he introduced into the Temple at Jerusalem, displacing Solomon’s bronze altar which he reserved “to inquire by.”[131] There appears to have been a “covered place” in the Temple adorned with gold or silver, as was also the “king’s entry,” and these were now stripped to pay Tiglath-pileser.[132] Ten years later Samaria was captured by Sargon, and it was then perhaps—or in 711 B. C., when Sargon captured Ashdod—that the Assyrian outposts appeared at Nob near Mizpeh, where the most distant glimpse of Jerusalem is caught from the north.[133]

SILOAM

Ahaz had been succeeded by Hezekiah six years before the fall—in 722 B. C.—of Samaria. Preparations for a siege, such as might now be expected, continued to be made at Jerusalem. The older account merely tells us that Hezekiah “made a pool and a conduit, and brought water into the city”; the later independent statement says that besides adding a new outer wall, and repairing “the Millo in the city of David,” he stopped all the fountains and “the brook that flowed through the midst of the ground,” and moreover “dammed the source of the waters of the Upper Gihon, and made it straight below, westwards to [or, for] the city of David.”[134] Whether this was a completion and improvement of the Siloam tunnel begun by Ahaz, or a new tunnel to supersede the older one which may perhaps have already led from the Kidron spring, is not clear; but the characters in which the Siloam inscription—recording the making of the tunnel—are written seem to be nearest to those found on Phœnician weights, in Assyria, which are rather later than the time of Ahaz. This inscription is the oldest of Jerusalem monuments as yet found, and is indeed the oldest purely Hebrew text known. It is of great importance as showing the civilisation of Hezekiah’s age, which, however, is equally attested by the historic cylinder of Sennacherib.

The present Pool of Siloam has been found (by Dr. Guthe in 1881) to be much narrower than that which was probably first cut by Hezekiah in connection with his tunnel, which perhaps required the reservoir to be deeper than the older pool there existing. The pool thus became 30 feet deep and 60 feet square,[135] having a flat walk on each side about 7 feet wide. The tunnel from the Gihon spring is a third of a mile long, and it was begun from both ends. The spring and the pool lie in a south-west direction respectively, but the tunnel winds, and the lower part runs west, either because some soft stratum of rock was followed, or more probably because, working in the dark, the direction was lost till a shaft, 30 feet high, was driven down from the surface, and the correct direction recovered. At the spring a short passage was driven in west, from the back of the cave, and from this the main tunnel (1,707 feet long) began. Here also it is first cut in the wrong direction, westwards, and then bends round south; and here also a great shaft (discovered by Sir Charles Warren), with a rocky stairway, was carried down from the surface of Ophel. This no doubt marks the site of the “Water Gate”; and access to the spring from within the city wall was so attainable, which may be what is intended by “brought water into the city.” Finally, when the two parties of miners heard each other calling, a short cross-cut was made east and west. This point I examined in 1881, and found that each of the tunnels had been abruptly stopped where this cross-cut (about 4 feet long) occurs. It seems also to have been then found that the tunnel was not at a sufficiently low level in its southern part, and that the water would not flow freely, which would account for the Siloam end of the tunnel being much more lofty than the part nearer the spring, the floor level having been cut down.[136]

THE SILOAM TEXT

The famous inscription was carved on the east side of the tunnel near its mouth, in ancient characters of the alphabet of Hezekiah’s age, presenting some minor peculiarities which became distinctive of the script of Israel. It was discovered in 1880 by a Jewish boy, and was reported by Herr Schick, and visited by Dr. Sayce. The first correct copy published was taken from my squeeze, and an excellent copy was almost simultaneously published by Dr. Guthe, through whose courtesy I had been enabled to work with ease in the tunnel. A cast was also fortunately made, for the text was afterwards cut out of the rock by a Greek villain, who was duly punished. Unfortunately, though now preserved in the Museum of Constantinople, this valuable inscription has been broken and damaged. When first found, the letters were full of lime deposit, which Dr. Guthe removed with hydrochloric acid without injuring the stone, and a true copy could not be made till this was done. The text may be thus translated, the ends of the lines being injured, when first found, by the scaling off of the rock.

THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION.

From the Author’s squeeze.

(1) “The tunnel, and this is the method of the tunnel: while (the miners) raised

(2) the pick each towards his fellow, and while yet three cubits were ... the voice of one calling

(3) to his fellow, for there was an excess in the rock to the right ... they struck to the right

(4) in the tunnel: they hewed this cutting each towards his fellow, pick to pick, and flowed

(5) the waters from the source to the pool for two hundred and one thousand cubits,

(6) and ... a cubit was the height of the rock at the top of this cutting.”

The hewing to the right hand in both the excavations was what actually occurred. The measurement—in round numbers—of 1,200 cubits gives us roughly a cubit of 17 inches, but the “three cubits” gives us more exactly a cubit of 16 inches, which appears to have been that used by Hebrew masons.[137]

This remarkable engineering work had perhaps not long been finished when, in the third year of his reign, Sennacherib invaded Philistia in 703 B. C., and sent his Tartan or “general,” his Rabsaris or “chief eunuch,” and his Rabshakeh or “chief headman” from Lachish “with a great host against Jerusalem.” The curled and oiled Assyrian mockers stood beneath the wall, beside the “conduit” at the west gate, and parleyed in Hebrew with the men above. The Hebrew politicians were much divided in opinion, whether to submit to Assyria or to seek aid from Egypt. Isaiah alone seems to have relied on the help of Jehovah in that hour of danger, which passed away when misfortune overtook Sennacherib on the borders of Egypt. In his own boastful inscription[138] the invader gives us no reason why the city escaped, though it appears from his account, as well as from the Bible, that Hezekiah had already offered tribute. “As for this Hezekiah,” says Sennacherib, “he shut himself up, like a bird in a snare, in Jerusalem, his royal city. He raised forts for himself. He was forced to close the gates of his city.”[139] But no siege or capture is recorded, and it is only claimed that the priests and warriors of the city subsequently sent tribute, and Hezekiah large presents, including gems, slaves, and an ivory throne. Never again, apparently, did Sennacherib attempt the conquest of Jerusalem: he “went and returned and dwelt at Nineveh,” and was busy fighting in Babylonia and Elam till his murder about 681 B. C.

Manasseh succeeded his father Hezekiah in 699 B. C., and was also a tributary of Assyrian kings; of him it is recorded[140] that he “built a wall outside the city of David, westwards to Gihon in the valley, and to the entrance of the Fish Gate, and surrounded Ophel and raised it very high.” This apparently refers to the line of the Ophel wall, which, in later times at least, ran south-west from the corner by the Horse Gate, for about 250 yards, to the Water Gate above the Kidron spring. The Fish Gate, as will appear later, was on the north side of the city.

TOMBS OF THE KINGS

Manasseh was not buried with his fathers, but in the palace garden near Siloam, where also, in the “field of burial,” the leper Uzziah had probably been buried, and perhaps Ahaz also. This cemetery is afterwards noticed as the “sepulchres of David,” but we may now inquire where the seven kings who were buried, “in” or “at” the city of David, with David himself and Solomon, were most probably entombed; for the site was clearly not the same,[141] and was either within or close to the old city of David’s time. The seven later kings buried “with their fathers” were Rehoboam, Abijah, Jehoshaphat, Amaziah, Jotham, Hezekiah, and Josiah, and of these Hezekiah is said to have been laid in the “upper chamber” (m’aalah) of the tomb, which was still known in the time of Herod, and yet later in that of the apostles.[142] Josephus gives a remarkable account of this tomb, which was opened by John Hyrcanus in 134 B. C., and “another room” by Herod yet later, in search of treasure. He says that the latter “did not come to the coffins of the kings themselves, for their bodies were buried underground so artfully that they did not appear even to those that entered into their monument.” The sepulchre was evidently one of the kind used by the Hebrews, and by the Phœnicians, with kokîm, or “tunnels”—one for each body—running in lengthwise from the sides of the chamber. But it had the peculiarity that some at least of these were under the floor, as in the earlier Phœnician examples—an arrangement which is not usual in Hebrew tombs; while the mention of an “upper chamber,” in which Hezekiah was buried, shows that a second tier, on the ground level, was excavated for later kings thought worthy to rest with David and Solomon who lay below. There is only one known ancient sepulchre at Jerusalem, in the city of David, to which this account applies—namely, the tomb in the west apse of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,[143] traditionally containing the graves of Joseph of Arimathæa and of Nicodemus. A wall has been built across it, but it appears to have had originally nine kokîm graves, of which six are on the ground level, while three (on the south) are under the floor, together with a pit[144] probably used for the purpose of funereal deposits, such as Josephus says were taken out by Herod, including “vessels of gold and precious things.” The mouths of the kokîm were originally closed by slabs, and, if these were like others which I have myself removed, it would be possible to enter the chamber without knowing—till very closely examined—that there were any kokîm behind them, while those under the floor would be even less suspected. The remarkable correspondence between the statements above noticed—in the Bible and in the accounts by Josephus—seems to make it highly probable that we have here, still existing, the tombs of the more famous kings. Whether they were just inside or just outside the north wall of the city of David is perhaps uncertain, but that they were visible in a low scarp, facing east, even later than Herod’s time, seems to be clear. This tomb of David was distinct from the cemetery in the garden of the palace near Siloam, which has not as yet been found, but to which the term “field of burial belonging to the kings” seems to be first applied in speaking of Uzziah, “for they said, He is a leper.”[145] The above suggestion has met with acceptance by several writers since I first made it thirty years ago, but it unfortunately leaves us without hope of recovering either the treasures which were abstracted by Hyrcanus and Herod, or the bodies of the kings, which, if they had not crumbled away, appear to have been removed by later desecrators of this very ancient sepulchre.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR

Passing on to the history of the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, it may be noted that the empire of Assyria collapsed suddenly on the death of Assur-bani-pal in 626 B. C. He was a very remarkable ruler who imitated ’Ammurabi by concentrating in his own hands even the most minute details of government. We possess his political letters, which give us a high opinion of his justice and courtesy. On his death, Nabopolassar, governor of Babylon, became independent, and about 610 B. C. he took Nineveh in alliance with the Medes. He died apparently in 608 B. C., when his son Nebuchadnezzar became king of Babylonia in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, king of Judah. This new race of Babylonian monarchs was apparently native to the city, for Nabopolassar says in a recently discovered text: “I and the chief rulers of the great city have purified Babylon where we dwell—our land which the oppressor seized—to establish in its midst the throne of righteousness.”[146] He refers to Nebuchadnezzar as his eldest son, the “delight of his heart,” “upholding the dominion faithfully and gloriously with my hosts.” The first attack on Palestine was made by Nebuchadnezzar as prince, after the defeat of Necho the Pharaoh at Carchemish. The latter had aided the attack on Nineveh, but the allies soon quarrelled. Josiah had been slain by Necho in 612 B. C., and Nebuchadnezzar was obliged to hurry back from Palestine on his father’s death four years later; but the respite was short, and Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians about 590 B. C.

We do not as yet possess any monumental account of Nebuchadnezzar’s campaigns in Palestine, though he has left rock texts in Lebanon and near Beirût. These record his piety in erecting temples, but one recently found attests his widespread conquests,[147] for, speaking of contributions to a temple, he says: “I gathered revenues from all peoples of mankind, from the upper sea to the lower sea, from distant lands of widespread peoples of mankind, kings ruling the mountains and the sea coast.... Princes of the land of the Hittites, near the Euphrates on the west—for by command of Merodach my lord I had swallowed up their power—were made to bring strong beams from Mount Lebanon to my city Babylon.”

IDOLATRY

There are many passing allusions in the Book of Jeremiah to the Jerusalem of this age.[148] When the city fell, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the men of war fled towards Jericho by night, “by the way of the gate between two walls which is by the king’s garden.” This gate, as we shall see later, was at the recess above Siloam where the wall crossed the Tyropœon Valley at a re-entering angle. The whole city was then burned, and its treasures carried away, with its chiefs, priests, and all but the “poor of the land, vine-dressers and husbandmen.” Jerusalem had become a pagan city, full of ugly little statues of Ashtoreth, and of Baal shrines at each street corner; for “according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to Bosheth, altars to burn incense to Baal.”[149] The ancient human sacrifices, offered to Molech, continued to be celebrated in the Valley of Topheth as in Isaiah’s time. The city in extent was the same which Nehemiah found in ruins, and its ancient walls were then merely rebuilt, but a more detailed account of this topography will be conveniently deferred till the next chapter, in which the work of Nehemiah’s time is to be considered.