The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

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.”