Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

On the south we have another indication. The Water-Gate of the Holy House was on this side, and was connected with a cistern outside the Court of the Priests. A glance at the plan shows that the shaft leading down to the long rock-cut reservoir No. 5, is on the present theory just outside the position of the Water-Gate as defined by the Mishna.

There is not space to go farther into detail, though the investigation has been pursued farther; but the above facts are, perhaps, sufficient to speak for themselves. We see the Holy House in its natural and traditional position, on the top of the mountain; we see the Courts descending on either side according to the present slopes of the hill; we find the great rock-galleries dropping naturally into their right places; and finally we see the Temple, by the immutability of Oriental custom, still a Temple, and the site of the great Altar still consecrated by the beautiful little Chapel of the Chain. Push the Temple a little to the north or south, and the levels cease to agree; lengthen the cubit to the Egyptian standard of twenty-one inches, and the exactitude of the adaptation is at once destroyed.

And now we must turn from this interesting question to one not less important—that of the position of Calvary. I have no wish to review the long controversies which have arisen on this subject. But I may give in detail some new indications which appear to me of importance.

It is a recognised fact that Calvary was outside the city-wall that existed in the time of Our Lord. This fact was also understood by the early fathers, and Eusebius gives a long description of the growth of New Jerusalem, to account for the position of Constantine’s site almost in the heart of the town. Sæwulf also, in 1108, says: “We know that Our Lord suffered without the gate, but the Emperor Hadrian, who was called Ælius, rebuilt Jerusalem and the Temple of the Lord, and added to the city as far as the Tower of David, which was previously a considerable distance from the city.” St. Willibald (723 A.D.) echoes the same feeling, speaking of “the place of Calvary which was formerly outside of Jerusalem,” and Sir John Maundeville (1322) says the same. Thus, even as early as the eighth century, attention had been drawn to the fact that the accepted site was apparently too near the middle of the city, but the modesty and faith of pilgrims rendered them willing to accept, without question, the answers which they received from the monks regarding their difficulty as to the site.

The main arguments in favour of the present site are two. The first, insisted on by the Comte de Vogüé and others, is the existence of an undoubted Jewish tomb, just outside the rotunda of the Church of the Sepulchre, and now called the Tomb of Nicodemus. This has been cited as evidence that the place was outside the old city-wall, but we know from the Rabbis that the Tombs of the Kings of Judah were left within Jerusalem, and there seems good reason to suppose that they actually refer to the ancient tomb now called the Sepulchre of Nicodemus. The second argument, brought forward by Chateaubriand, is that tradition had handed down the site, and that its exact position was known in the fourth century, because Hadrian had built a Temple to Venus on the spot. Of the latter fact we have no intimation in any known author of the time of Hadrian, though several buildings of his in Jerusalem are noticed by contemporary writers. Coins of Antoninus Pius representing a Temple to Venus in Jerusalem have been found, but no ancient author pretends that any tradition was handed down to the fourth century respecting the site of the Holy Sepulchre. Moreover, as regards continuity of tradition, we have a break during the time when the Christians, flying to Pella, were absent from the city; finally we have no sound reason for supposing that the early Christians paid any attention to the site of the Sepulchre. As Jews, their horror of dead bodies would naturally have prevented their visiting a place which would pollute them; and had it been considered important to hand down the exact position of the Tomb, we should surely have had sufficient indications in the Gospel narrative to fix its locality, whereas nothing can be gathered from the New Testament, further than the statement of the Epistle that “Christ suffered without the gate” (Heb. xiii. 12), with the incidental remarks of St. John, that the Sepulchre was “nigh at hand” to Calvary (John xix. 42), and that Calvary was “nigh unto the city” (20).

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands near the centre of the lower part of modern Jerusalem, but this is unimportant, if it can be shown to have been outside Jerusalem in the time of Christ.

On this question the new rock levels have a most important bearing, and the indications obtained from them will now be summed up as concisely as the subject will allow.

The account which Josephus gives of the site on which Jerusalem was built is explicit and easily understood. It was placed on two hills (B. J. v. 4) opposite each other, with a valley between. The hill of the Upper City was the highest and largest; the second, that of Acra, was lower; a third hill, lower still, was to the east, separated by another valley, which was filled up by the Hasmoneans. The first valley—the Tyropœon, which divided the Upper and Lower City—ran down to Siloam. Other deep valleys with precipices existed beyond the city on all sides, except on the north where three successive lines of fortification protected the town.

Turning to the plan of the rock beneath modern Jerusalem, which is given in illustration, we see just such a site before us. On the south is a large and high hill, the top 2540 feet above the sea, with a deep valley to the south and west, and a second valley, almost equal in size, to the north and east. Down the last-mentioned valley David Street now runs, but the accumulation of rubbish is in parts fifty feet deep. By the observations taken in making excavations in the old Hospital of the Knights of St. John, and in a vault farther east, as well as at the foundations of the Bishops’ Palace and of the hotel near David’s Tower, we ascertain the following details: that the valley, breaking down suddenly eastward, has its head at a narrow saddle at a level about 2500 feet above the sea, and that this saddle separates the head of the eastern valley from that of Wâdy Rabâbeh, which runs to the west of the Jaffa Gate: the eastern valley proves to have a depth of more than 100 feet below the summit of the southern hill. Other observations, farther east, show that the precipice, visible just opposite the great bridge from the south-west corner of the Haram, runs north and turns westward, where either a vertical scarp, or a very steep slope, forms the north-east angle of the southern hill above the corner where the great valley sweeps round southwards descending towards Siloam.

The plan further shows that the ground rises again north of the valley, and forms a small knoll in the neighbourhood of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with a second valley head to the east. This knoll is actually fifty feet lower than the top of the southern hill, and, from the lie of the ground, it appears to be still lower than it really is. The second valley on the east of the knoll separates off a third hill now occupied by the Mohammedan quarter of Jerusalem, and this is divided from the Temple Hill, of which it is really a part, by the rock-cut trench forty feet deep, hewn on the north side of the scarp, which I have endeavoured to show was the Castle of Antonia. The third hill is lower again by fifty feet than the knoll last mentioned.