The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

We thus arrive at the west road, where was the “Gate of the Gai” at the head of the Hinnom Valley. Whether this was identical with the “Corner Gate,” or merely near it, depends on whether we should read (in 2 Chron. xxvi. 9) “the Corner Gate even the Valley Gate”; but Jeremiah describes the breadth of Jerusalem, east and west, by the expression, “from the Tower of Hananeel to the Gate of the Corner.” The description next follows the west wall of the upper city to the Dung Gate, which was 1,000 cubits from the Valley Gate, or more if the whole of the wall was not in ruins. To the present day the dung-hills outside the city are found in this direction. It is generally agreed that the wall extended south to the great rock scarp by the English school, which was explored by Mr. Henry Maudeslay in 1874, and which formed the south-west angle of ancient Jerusalem, where a square tower projected at the corner.[167] From this angle the scarp runs south-east for about 350 feet, to where a broad entrance between two lower scarps cuts the line. There was probably a gate at this point, which may have been the Dung Gate, though it is more than 1,000 cubits from the west road, and thus from the Gate of the Valley. No other ancient gate is noticed on the south side of the upper city, nor was one required, as no road led across the deep Hinnom gorge. The wall ran east—perhaps on the line of the later Byzantine wall—and the next points mentioned are “the Gate of the Spring,” “the wall of the Pool of Siloah by the king’s garden,” and “the stairs that go down from the city of David,”[168] which were at “the going up of the wall.” An artificial rock scarp runs northwards on the west side of the Pool of Siloam, about 20 feet above the level of the flat walk which existed on each side of the pool; and between this and the pool is a broad flight of rock-cut steps. These steps have been traced for 700 feet northwards, ascending the Tyropœon Valley in the direction of the south-west angle of the Ḥaram enclosure. They seem to be indicated also, near this latter point, on the old fifth-century mosaic map, and are noticed again in 570 A. D., as will appear later. We can hardly doubt that they represent the “stairs that go down from the city of David”—that is, from the quarter immediately west of the Temple. The “Gate of the Spring” is noticed before the “wall of Siloah,” which would stand on the scarp to the west of the pool, and it may best be placed at the angle where the south wall of the upper city now turned north, and where a path still exists. The term “going up of the wall” obliges us to suppose that it crossed the Tyropœon Valley north of the Siloam Pool, where the level was about 100 feet higher than at the corner; and here, passing the stairs, it ran east to a scarp visible above the surface, and about 120 feet higher than the ground round the pool. The wall passed the “King’s Garden” and the “sepulchres of David,” already noticed,[169] and reached a tower called “the House of Heroes,” turning again north along the east side of the Ophel spur, at the “going up of the Armoury,” or otherwise of the “junction.” For the wall ran up-hill all the way to the Temple from this point. The line thus traced is the same that Josephus describes in later times, excluding, but yet defending, the Pool of Siloam. As regards the stairs, it is possible that we have another allusion to them where the “going down to Silla” (or “the stairway”) is connected with the “house of Millo,” probably a building in the lower city. We also read of a “causeway of going up” (more correctly an “ascent of steps”) in connection with the west gate of the Temple, but this may have been a distinct flight.[170]

THE OPHEL WALL

On the Ophel spur the east wall, south of the Temple, had another “turning” close to the palace or “king’s high house,” and a projecting tower near the “Water Gate” which—as explained already—must have been above the Kidron spring.[171] It ran north-east, on the line already noticed as fortified by Manasseh, to the “Horse Gate” which was at a corner. This part was called especially “the wall of the Ophel,” a term which does not signify a “tower” but a “mound,” such as ancient cities were built on, and a “place,” as Josephus calls it later, where were the houses of the Nethinim.[172] The rest of the course, on the east side of the Temple, is briefly described from the “Gate of the Muster” (Miphkad), or “of the Guard” (the “Prison” Gate), to the “going up of the corner” at the north-east angle of Jerusalem, and thus to the “Sheep Gate” where the description begins.[173]

Jerusalem thus described was a city of about 200 acres—that is, of the same size as the modern town within the walls, but extending farther south and less far to the north. The account above given places each of the main gates on a main road still existing. The gate on the line of the stairs from the city of David is not named in the book of Nehemiah, but it is clearly the “gate between the two walls by the king’s garden,” which we have already seen to be the one by which Zedekiah fled down the Kidron Valley to Jericho. The “two walls” were the two flanks of the city wall, which defended the Pool of Siloah (lying outside the city) on the west and on the north-east.

Such was the Jerusalem not only of Nehemiah but of Nebuchadnezzar’s time, and with this description we close the account of the Hebrew city: for after the departure of Nehemiah, in 433 B. C., we have no further notice of Jerusalem during about two centuries and a half of Jewish history.

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER IV

[150] This term elah (or elohi) hash-shemim is distinctive of the age after the return from the captivity (Ezra v. 11, vi. 9, 10, vii. 12, 21, 23; Neh. i. 4, 5, ii. 4, 20; Dan. ii. 18, 19, 28, 37, 44); it never occurs in any of those passages in the Pentateuch which some critical writers assign to this later age.

[151] Brugsch, “Hist. Egt.,” ii. pp. 294–96; Prof. H. Gunkel, Deutsche Rundschau, January 1908. Sanballaṭ (“Sinu has given life”), Delaya (“set free by Ya”), and Shelemya (“friend of Ya”), are Semitic and apparently Babylonian names.

[152] Ezra iii. 12; Hag. ii. 3.

[153] Ezra iv. 6, 8, 12, 21, 24.