The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

ANTONIA

The former citadel, Baris, was rebuilt by Herod, and renamed Antonia after Mark Antony. The ridge rose naturally about 30 feet higher than the level of the Priests’ Court, stretching on the north to the hill of Bezetha, or the new north-east quarter of the city, not as yet walled in. The citadel was divided off from this hill by a trench with vertical scarps cut in the rock: it was 60 feet deep and 165 feet wide. A great block of rock was left standing within this fosse; it measures 140 feet north and south, and 352 feet east and west, thus covering more than a third of the width of the outer Temple court, and rising at its highest 30 feet above the Priests’ Court. The block was scarped on all sides, and thus a flat rock surface exists south of it, extending on the level of the court as far as the north wall and cloister of the outer Temple. Steps led up—as they still do—from this flat courtyard to the block above it.

This castle is very clearly described by Josephus.[274] He applies to it the terms “Acropolis,” “stronghold” (phrourion), and “fortress” (purgos); but he never calls it Akra. There were four towers on the rocky block, one at each corner, that to the south-east being the highest. The flat space below on the south was paved, and in it were rooms, courts, bathing-places, and “broad spaces for parades.” Passages led below the Temple court—as already described in speaking of the Gate Ṭadi—but this area was on the level of the inner Temple court, as we learn from the exploit of the rash centurion Julian, during the siege by Titus; for, leaping down from the scarp, he charged the defenders of the Temple up to the gates, where his nailed shoes slipped on the Temple pavement, and he fell with a great clang of armour. Thus, the whole area of Antonia formed an oblong quadrangle, projecting on the north, and adjoining the north and west cloisters of the outer Temple enclosure. It was a citadel overlooking the whole of the sanctuary, and to the present day it is a barrack for Turkish troops.

The other Herodian citadel, which is also still a barrack, was at the north-west side of the upper city, by the upper market.[275] It defended the neck of land where the upper city was always attacked from the north, and it adjoined Herod’s palace. The three “royal towers” here strengthened the old wall.[276] Hippicus was farthest west and was only 25 cubits square. The present north-west tower of the citadel may be built on its site. Phasaelus was 40 cubits square, according to Josephus, with a solid base and a stoa round the tower itself. There can be little doubt that this refers to the present “Tower of David,” called the “Castle of the Pisans” in the Middle Ages. Its masonry is still untouched, being Herodian in style, with stones about 4 feet high and often 8 or 9 feet long.[277] It measures 56 feet (about 41 cubits) north and south, but is 70 feet long east and west. It has a narrow walk or “berm” outside, on the solid base. A sloping revetment was added later by the Crusaders, and the upper part of the tower is modern. The site of the third tower, Mariamne, is as yet unknown, but its solid base, 20 cubits high, may exist under the pavement of the present market-place. It was the smallest of the three, being 20 cubits square. The bases of these towers are probably of rock, now covered with masonry. The reason why the original masonry of Phasaelus remains standing is that Titus left these towers, and a bit of the west wall, standing to show the strength of the fortress he had taken, and to form a citadel for the legion he left at Jerusalem. The palace, adjoining the towers inwardly, appears to have been large and magnificent, but its extent is not described. It had walls which made it a citadel, large bed-chambers, and wooden roofs. It was adorned with cloisters and carvings, and had gardens full of trees, canals, cisterns, and fountains where the water ran from bronze statues, while the doves fluttered round its pools as they now flutter in the Ḥaram courts. The pagan character of its adornment must have been sorely repugnant to Israel in the holy city. Two of its chambers were named after Cæsar and Marcus Agrippa, the pagan patrons of Herod.[278]

THE PALACES

Other palaces were built later in Jerusalem, and Agrippa II. rebuilt the palace of the Hasmonæans,[279] which was in the north-east part of the upper city, near the great Tyropœon bridge and the Xystos. The latter Greek word signifies a covered gymnasium, and there is no reason to doubt that this building was the same as the gymnasium built by the high-priest Jason before 170 B. C., which is described as being “under the Acropolis” or upper city. It lay north of the bridge,[280] but its remains, and those of the neighbouring council-house, have not been identified with certainty. There were gates in the west wall of the Temple above it; and as these seem clearly to be the two central gates on that side, it must have been south of the ancient causeway, and down in the Tyropœon Valley. An “ancient hall” discovered by Sir Charles Warren, which he considers to be “one of the oldest buildings in Jerusalem,” may have some connection with either the Xystos or the council-house. It lies partly under the street leading to the Gate of the Chain, and measured about 23 feet by 20 feet; its floor is about on the level of the Herodian street pavement; its roof is less ancient than its walls; at each corner inside there are rude pilaster capitals of semi-Ionic character. The outer masonry is drafted and resembles that of Herod’s age. Herod assembled wrestlers and other athletes at his games every five years, but it is doubtful if his “theatre” was the same as the gymnasium; a “hippodrome” which lay towards the south of the Temple may, however, have been connected with the Xystos. It has been sought farther south by Mr. Bliss, but no remains of such a building were there found.[281]

Some alterations seem to have occurred in the water-supply in consequence of the building of the west outer wall of Herod’s Temple, and these indicate that the wall is later than two rock-cut aqueducts which it cuts across. The southern one of these ran from the Pool of the Bath to Siloam, and has been traced in parts by Sir Charles Warren and Mr. Bliss. The second led from north-west to the Antonia fosse, where possibly the “Pool Strouthios”[282] was made by Herod when he rebuilt Antonia. This aqueduct merely served to collect the rain-water north of the city, and carried it originally to a rock tank which is included within Herod’s west sanctuary wall. The supply being thus cut off, the water of the aqueduct would serve to fill the Antonia fosse, or the Pool Strouthios in that fosse—known later as the “Twin Pools”—supposing that these were cut as early as Herod’s time. The great tunnel of this aqueduct under the Antonia rock stops dead at the Temple wall, and the only use that could afterwards be made of it would be as a secret exit, through the window which I discovered in this wall just south of the Antonia scarp.

THE TEMPLE BRIDGE

The description of Herod’s Jerusalem may be concluded by notice of the Tyropœon bridge. The spring of the arch from the west wall of the outer Temple is still visible. The voussoirs are dressed with the peculiar criss-cross dressing already described as distinguishing Herodian masonry. The position and the breadth of the bridge closely agree with the dimensions given by Josephus (in Greek feet) for the three walks of the “Royal Cloister,” which ran east and west inside the south wall of the Temple enclosure[283]: since the south wall is about 9 feet thick, and the side aisles of the cloister were 30 feet wide, the central one 45 feet wide, and the pillars about 6 feet in diameter. This bridge replaced the older one, which was broken down at the time of Pompey’s siege in 63 B. C. The older voussoirs are under the Herodian pavement. The fallen voussoirs of Herod’s bridge lie on that pavement. The bridge, as explored by Sir Charles Warren, consisted of two great arches (about 42-feet span), with a pier 12 feet thick rising from a rock foundation in the Tyropœon Valley. The roadway was 95 feet above the valley bed, or 75 feet above the pavement. This is now buried to a depth of no less than 40 feet. The cloister within was the finest of those surrounding the Temple, and its pillars were of the Corinthian order. All other cloisters of the outer Temple were double, but this was triple. Those of the inner Temple were single.

Such generally was Jerusalem as Herod built its Temple and palaces, shortly before the birth of our Lord. The Temple was probably begun in 22 B. C. and finished eight years later. The fifteenth of Herod is preferable to the eighteenth,[284] because Herod’s meeting with Marcus Agrippa appears to have occurred after the completion of the Holy House, and Agrippa died at Rome in 12 B. C. But additions continued to be made to the Temple down to 64 A. D.[285] Thus, as we read in the fourth Gospel, the building had been continued for “forty-and-six years” before the time when the Jews were speaking to our Lord.