The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

THE TEMPLE STONES

There are, however, two buildings in which Herodian masonry still stands in situ—namely, first in the great outer walls of the Ḥaram enclosure, and secondly at the great tower now called “David’s Tower,” which is probably the Phasaelus tower of Josephus. The Ḥaram walls claim our special attention.

This magnificent masonry, with stones 3 feet (and in one course 6 feet) high, and often 20 feet long,[243] beautifully finished with the Greek draft, and a dressing to the stone[244] which is nowhere else found except in the sister sanctuary at Hebron, is familiar to visitors. The joints are exact, and no mortar was used. The wall above the level of the inner area was adorned (just as at Hebron) by buttresses, at intervals of 10 cubits. Two of these I discovered in 1873, at the north-west angle, but elsewhere all the upper rampart was thrown down, though the lower part resisted all attempts at destruction, and the strong south-east corner remained—after 70 A. D.—standing up alone like a “pinnacle.”

There are minor differences in this masonry, according as it was intended to be visible above ground or hidden under the earth. The stones have rough bosses, on the east and west walls, where they were covered over; and spoilt stones were used up in the foundations of the east wall (near the south-east angle), also below the level of the red earth outside the wall. The stones were not only finished in the quarry, but were inspected before they were put in the wall, as Sir Charles Warren proved, by noticing that the trickle of the red paint used in the texts written on the stones runs upwards, and not down, on the stone as it now stands. This masonry is found in situ on three walls, but not on the north side of the Ḥaram, where a wall of rougher Roman work runs west to the rocky scarp of Antonia, which bounds the court on the north-west. Sir Charles Warren also discovered that the east wall does not stop at the present north-east angle, and that there was no corner there till the Roman north wall was built—a point of great importance as regards the study of the Temple area.

HERODIAN GRAFFITI.

From Sir C. Warren’s copies.

THE PAINTED TEXTS

Still more important are the red-paint texts which he found on the spoilt stones. The two longest of these are on the third stone of the second course, and on the tenth stone of the fifth course,[245] respectively, in the east wall, counting from the foundation and from the south-east angle. They are clearly inscriptions in a Semitic script, yet they have never been read, partly because they were supposed to be Phœnician. They, however, present the characters of the Aramean alphabets used at Jerusalem and among Nabatheans. The first of these texts probably reads “carelessly chiselled,” and the stone has no draft at the top but one of double width at the bottom. The second text may be read, “for covering up, removal of it,” and this stone also is imperfect, the bottom draft being too narrow. Not only do these translations agree with the fact that the spoilt stones were covered over in the foundations, but the characters attest the fact that they were hewn in the later age of Herod, and not in the earlier time of Solomon—a conclusion which agrees with the character of the masonry. Had these texts been written in the clearer alphabet of the Siloam Inscription or of the Moabite Stone, they would no doubt have been read long ago; but they are rudely scrawled in the more slovenly script of the Aramean alphabet used in Herod’s time.[246]

The evidence of the masonry and of the inscriptions thus serves to confirm the conclusion of de Vogüé that these walls were built by Herod the Great. The south-west angle of the Ḥaram is identified with that of Herod’s enclosure by the existence of the Tyropœon bridge, which led to the south cloister of the Temple in his time. The south wall is fixed by the existence of the two Ḥuldah (or “Mole”) Gates, and the south-east corner by the recovery of the line of the Ophel wall, which joined the east cloister of the Herodian enclosure. The excavations showed that no ancient city wall existed farther west. The north-west angle is, in like manner, fixed by the recovery of the ancient west wall, with its buttresses built against the Antonia scarp. Only the north wall of the Temple thus remains to be fixed, and Sir Charles Warren discovered the ancient valley which defended Antonia on the east, and which runs to the Kidron across the north-east part of the Ḥaram enclosure. In his recent plan[247] he excludes this part from the old enclosure, and there can be little doubt that some 5 acres were here added later to the original 30 acres of the outer courts. The present north wall is Roman or Byzantine, and the cisterns within it are of modern masonry. Antonia projected as a smaller oblong quadrangle on the north-west, and thus—as Josephus relates[248]—when the Antonia cloisters were destroyed the “temple became quadrangular,” being roughly about 1,000 feet either way. The line of its original north wall[249] may be best drawn along the line of the north side of the platform surrounding the Dome of the Rock, where an ancient scarp with projecting buttresses was found by Sir Charles Warren in 1868; and the rock outside this scarp is at least 20 feet lower, which makes it about 40 feet below the level of the Ṣakhrah crest.