The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

Herod’s reign was stained by many cruel crimes, but it cannot be denied that he was a strong and successful ruler, during whose time Jerusalem enjoyed prosperity and peace, and was adorned by many new buildings of great magnificence. His principal works included the new Temple, and the royal palace in the upper city, defended by the three “royal towers,” Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne. Antonia also was rebuilt, and a theatre was erected in the city. In describing these buildings we are able to check the accounts given in the works of Josephus and in the Mishnah by actually existing remains, visible on the surface or unearthed by explorers. The account of Herod’s Temple in the Mishnah is so fully detailed as to allow of a plan being made. The statements were written down at Tiberias in our second century, and in this form are later than the “Wars of the Jews” composed about 75 A. D., and than the “Antiquities of the Jews,” written about 93 A. D., both at Rome; but the Mishnah quotes the words of rabbis who were youths when the Temple was destroyed in 70 A. D.[236]

As regards Josephus, it is best to found a critical estimate of his writings on actual facts. Not only have I compared his statements about Jerusalem with extant remains of the city, but I have measured and planned other cities and buildings which he describes—at Samaria and Cæsarea, at the fortress of Masada, and the round castle of Herodium, and at Jotapata, which he defended. I have carefully studied his Galilean topography, and his accounts of the palace of Tyrus in Gilead, and of the spring of Callirrhoe, both of which I visited in 1881. The impression made by such studies is that the Jewish historian was honest and well informed; that he had seen the places which he describes, and gives a generally reliable account. Our present text is often corrupt in numerals referring to dates and measurements, and Josephus (writing from memory in Rome, many years after the events described) is not always accurate in his estimate of dimensions, heights, and distances. The accounts of the Temple, by rabbis at Jamnia who were able to visit the ruins left by Titus, are to be preferred as more exact, but they do not conflict with the general account given by Josephus, and he could have had no object in misrepresenting the facts, though—like other historians—he sometimes exaggerates the size of buildings, the numbers of enemies, and the value of treasures. These are small and natural blemishes in narratives which must always remain our chief source for this history. That he wilfully misrepresented facts to please the Romans, or to excuse his own nation, there is no reason at all to suppose. His knowledge of Jerusalem topography was personal and contemporary, and he is more likely to have known the facts than any scholar writing in the west of Europe or in America to-day.

THE HERODIAN CITY

We may consider, therefore, by the light of exact surveys of the city and exact plans of its remains, and under the guidance of the rabbis and of Josephus, first the city in general, then the Temple and the fortress of Antonia, and finally the palaces and other buildings, and the alterations made in the water-supply in Herod’s time. Our task has already been lightened by detailed consideration of the earlier topography.

“The city stood on two opposite ridges, divided from each other by a central valley where the respective houses ended: of these ridges that which had the upper city on it was much the highest and widest. So it was called the citadel by King David, ... but we call it the Upper Market-place. But the other, called Akra, and defending the lower city, was gibbous; and opposite this was a third ridge, naturally lower than the Akra, and at first divided from it by a flat valley.... But the valley called Turopoiôn was that we have mentioned, separating the upper city and the lower ridge; it reached to Siloam.... Outside, the two ridges of the city were girt with deep valleys, and—on account of the precipices on both sides—access was impossible.”[237]

It is difficult to see how this description can be understood in any other way than that described in the preceding chapter. The upper city was David’s citadel, and that to the north was the citadel of the Macedonian garrison. The account goes on[238] to tell us that: “The old wall was hard to be taken, both on account of the valleys, and of the hill above them on which it was built. But besides the great advantage of situation, it was also very strongly built, because David and Solomon and the succeeding kings were very zealous about this work. Now this wall began at the tower called Hippikos, and reached as far as a place called Xustos, and adjoining the Council-house ended at the west cloister of the Temple. But if we go the other way, on the west side, it extended through a place called Bethso to the Gate of the Essenes, and then on the south side, it bent above the fountain of Siloam, and there again bent, facing east over the Pool of Solomon, and reached as far as a certain place which they called Ophla, where it was joined to the east cloister of the Temple. But the second [wall] had its beginning from a gate which they called Gennath, being of the first wall, and encircling the north quarter only, it went on as far as Antonia.”

THE TWO WALLS

Very few words are necessary to explain this account, which agrees with that of the city walls as rebuilt by Nehemiah. Hippicus was the most western of the three “royal towers,” and stood at the north-west angle of the upper city. It defended the narrow neck which separated the broad Tyropœon from the head of the Gai, or Hinnom gorge. The Hasmonæan Valley joined the Tyropœon from the north, on the west of the Temple, and the two together descended rapidly to Siloam, separating the upper city from the Ophel. The north face of the old wall ran on a precipitous rock, and the Xystos lay north of the great Tyropœon bridge. The name of the place on the south-west side of the upper city “called Bethso” is generally supposed to mean “House of Dung,” being near the old Dung Gate, which seems here to be called the Gate of the Essenes. The wall ran “above” Siloam; and “Solomon’s Pool” was the Kidron spring—the Gihon where he was anointed. Ophla is the Aramaic form of the Hebrew Ophel, and the course of the wall here coincides with the line of fortification discovered by Sir Charles Warren. As to the second wall, the description is brief because the wall was short in extent. The junction with Antonia must have been at the north-west angle of that fortress, for the great counterscarp of the fosse which defended it on the north is known to continue some way west of the fortress, thus forming the counterscarp of the north wall as well. No bends or angles are noticed, but, on the contrary, it is said to “encircle” the north ridge. The name of the Gate Gennath is usually thought to mean “the Garden Gate,” but not impossibly it may stand for the “Gehenna Gate,” and it answers to the old “Valley Gate.” The second wall—as already urged—must have crossed the saddle near Hippicus, but the junction was not exactly at that tower, where was a smaller postern.[239] As the Gennath Gate was in the first wall, there was evidently a re-entering angle, and in later times the third wall started from Hippicus, but was “not joined on” to the second wall.

It is very doubtful whether any remains of the masonry of the two walls have as yet been found. The precipices on which the north wall of the upper city stood are traceable, in places, as far as that from which the Tyropœon bridge started. The scarps on the south-west of the upper city, and on the south, and at Siloam, have already been described as they existed in the time of Nehemiah, and earlier. The Ophel wall discovered by Sir Charles Warren is, in his opinion, later than the (Herodian) wall of the east cloister of the Temple, near which it was also found to be based not on rock but on red earth. The stones, as he states, appear to have belonged to a former wall, and the first 20 feet from the foundation are of “rough rubble of moderate dimensions.” Similar rough rubble was found by Mr. Bliss at the base of the south wall of the upper city.[240] This might represent early work, on which the later Byzantine wall was built; but the drafted masonry shown to me by Dr. Guthe, in 1881, on Ophel and at Siloam, was certainly not older than the fourth century A. D., yet appears to be similar in all respects to that found by Warren and Bliss. It seems to be certain that the old wall of Jerusalem has disappeared, and that very little can exist except the wall that Eudocia built about 450 A. D., which did not follow the line described in the Book of Nehemiah, and by Josephus, as crossing the Tyropœon “above” Siloam.

In the same way it is also doubtful if any remains of the “second wall” on the north side of the upper city still exist. The Rev. Selah Merrill[241] gives a drawing of a wall found south of the Holy Sepulchre Church, and about 20 feet below the surface, which he thinks to have been that built by Jonathan (as already noticed) in the middle of the city. He also claims[242] to have been the discoverer of another wall which runs northwards to the west of the “Pool of the Bath,” and which was uncovered in 1885 and reported by Herr Konrad Schick. Both these walls have drafted masonry, but neither has, unfortunately, been described in detail, or photographed, so that it is impossible to say what their age may be. The latter wall runs approximately where we might expect to find the second wall, but drafted masonry of much this kind was used both by Romans and by later Byzantines, and these remains may possibly belong to the city of Hadrian. There is no doubt that—as at Rome also—the old masonry was re-used later in other buildings; and when we consider how entirely the mighty Temple fane has disappeared, not one stone being left on another of the Holy House itself, we must conclude that the destruction of the city in 70 A. D. was singularly complete, and the effacement of its remains afterwards increased by local pillage of the masonry.