The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

En-rogel has, it is true, been placed in quite another position. Brocardus, in the thirteenth century, supposed it to be the well at the junction of the Kidron and Hinnom valleys which Christians called “Nehemiah’s Fountain,” in connection with the apocryphal legend of a fire fountain which was in Persia and not at Jerusalem at all.[89] The Moslems called it the “Well of Job,” from a legend of the fountain which sprang up when Job stamped on the ground[90]—perhaps confounding Job with Joab, since En-rogel was near the “Stone Zoheleth” where Joab proclaimed Adonijah king. But a well is not a spring, and Zoheleth is supposed by M. Clermont-Ganneau to be the rock still called Zahweileh (“the slippery”), close to the village of Silwân, and opposite the cave spring already described, which is the only spring on this side of Jerusalem. Neither Josephus nor any ancient pilgrim speaks of the well in question before 1184 A. D., when it was cleared out. There is no doubt that this well is ancient, but how old it is not easy to say. It is now 125 feet deep, and at 113 feet below the surface the old well-shaft rises from a rock-cut cave below. After the rains, in March, when the Kidron is full of water beneath the surface, a stream here rises to the surface, and flows down the valley for some distance. West of the well is a remarkable aqueduct, with another rock reservoir fed by two channels. This aqueduct is 90 feet below the rock surface, and runs south for 600 yards. It was discovered by Sir Charles Warren in 1869, and he suggests that this may be the “brook that flowed through the midst of the earth” which has been noticed above. These works were evidently intended for the storage of the winter rain waters; but, on the other hand, the description of the tunnel, with its flights of steps leading to the water, recalls the aqueduct of Cæsarea,[91] which is certainly not older than the time of Herod, and may be considerably later. Whatever be the age of these remarkable waterworks, they have no connection with a “spring,” such as we must suppose En-rogel to have been.

WATER SUPPLY

The fortress of the upper city was not, however, dependent entirely on the natural supply of water in the Kidron Valley, or—afterwards—at Siloam. Even in the time of Nehemiah another spring existed on the west side of Jerusalem, in the upper part of the Valley of Hinnom.[92] It was called the “Spring of the Monster,” or, according to the Greek translators (who regarded the word as Aramaic), the “Spring of the Figs.” It appears to have been unknown to Josephus, though he speaks of the “Serpent’s Pool”—apparently the present Mâmilla reservoir, which was called the “Upper Pool” in the time of Hezekiah. The “Spring of the Monster” seems to have been buried under the rubbish which has partly filled the Hinnom Valley, but in the Jebusite age it no doubt formed a supply on the west side of the upper city. It is also possible that the rock-cut tank within the city, immediately north of Zion (now called the “Patriarch’s Bath,” or “Hezekiah’s Pool”), was already ancient in Hezekiah’s time, when it was known as the “Lower Pool,”[93] and that it also supplied the original Jebus. There is, in addition to these supplies, another probably of great antiquity west of the Temple, outside the north-east corner of the upper city. This is now known as the Ḥammâm esh Shefa,[94] or “healing bath,” and it is connected with an ancient rock aqueduct which has been partly cut across by the Herodian wall of the Temple enclosure. This channel is now 60 feet under ground and 20 feet under a pavement which is older than the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A. D.; it is apparently even older than the time of Pompey’s siege in 63 B. C., since a voussoir of the bridge then existing has fallen into the aqueduct. The shaft to the “healing bath” itself is now 86 feet deep, and—at the bottom—a vaulted passage of the Roman or Byzantine age leads to the original cave, which has a conduit opening out on the south side. The shaft is comparatively modern throughout, and the cave must have been on the surface in the Jebusite age. It receives the drainage of the valley (now filled in by some 40 to 80 feet of rubbish), which has its head outside the Damascus Gate north of the city. This supply was carried down the Tyropœon valley, on the east side of the upper city, apparently to Siloam.

The water-supply has been thus described in detail, because it is often assumed that the Jebusite city must have depended entirely on the En-rogel spring in the Kidron ravine, which was clearly not the case; but, even if it were so, it would not follow that the Jebusite town must have stood on Ophel, for cities in Palestine were built on the highest and strongest sites available, even if these were not very near the springs. Thus at Samaria the springs are a mile away from the nearest point of the city wall on the east, and other instances might be cited where cities, like Tyre and Cæsarea, depended on water brought by an aqueduct from a distance of some miles. Jerusalem, before the time of Pilate, depended entirely for water on the rainfall of a comparatively small area east of the Judæan watershed; but, as we have seen, the storage of this natural supply in caves and tanks gave a sufficient amount of water on each side of the upper city, and the various rock channels served to bring this supply close under, and within, the city walls. There is therefore no difficulty in supposing that Josephus is right in describing the upper city of his own times as having been the “mountain top of Zion” captured by David.

ZION

The name Zion was older than David’s time. Since the fourth century A. D. it has always been applied to the hill of the upper city, and it may have been so placed in the earliest ages. But in the Bible it is not restricted to this position, but appears as a poetical name for Jerusalem at large. Josephus never uses this name, but speaks of “Jerusalem” instead. Zion is mentioned 154 times in the Old Testament, but only four passages[95]—all referring to early times—are in the historical narratives, the large majority of the other notices being in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Psalms. Zion was a city with gates, and a “holy hill.” It is constantly used as a name equivalent to Jerusalem. It had walls and towers and “dwelling-places”; it is “the city of Jehovah, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel,” a high mountain, and a “city of solemnities.” It has been thought that, in the Greek age, the name applies specially to the Temple hill, but the passages cited do not really necessitate this conclusion. Ancient names are commonly preserved in the poetry of a nation, and Zion was a very ancient word, which—as we have seen—may possibly have meant a “chief’s abode,” or a “god’s abode,” even when the Hittites and Amorites still held Jerusalem, and when it was the sacred city of Melchizedek, long before the Temple of Jehovah was built on the ridge outside, at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. Hence it is in the poetry of the prophets and psalmists of Israel that the name Zion occurs; and, though there is nothing really wrong in the Christian application of the word to the south-western hill, yet the term is only vaguely equivalent to the city generally. But there is one quarter to which it should not be solely applied—namely, the small spur which is called Ophel in the Bible.

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.