The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

Only forty years after the day of the Crucifixion the blood of the rejected Messiah came on the heads of those who had invoked it on themselves and on their children; and the soldiers of Titus nailed the Jewish deserters to crosses outside the city to the north, till “room was wanting for the crosses and crosses for the bodies.”[321] We may briefly examine the course of events that led to the final catastrophe.

The death of Herod the Great was the signal for revolt against Rome.[322] Archelaus and Antipas sailed at once for the imperial city, to urge their claims before Augustus. In their absence Sabinus acted as Cæsar’s procurator, under Varus the governor of Syria. He appears to have exacted money, and to have otherwise oppressed the Jews, and at the Feast of Pentecost—about the middle of May—the city was filled with pilgrims from Jericho, Galilee, and beyond Jordan, and with Idumæans from the south. Their indignation at injuries inflicted by Sabinus led to revolt, and while some held the west cloister of the Temple, and others the “Hippodrome” (perhaps the Xystos) towards the south, a third band besieged the Romans in Herod’s palace on the west side of the Upper City. Sabinus, from the top of the Phasaelus tower, directed a sally, and drove the rebels back to the Temple. The west cloister was set on fire, and the soldiers plundered the Temple treasure; but the siege closed in again, and the Jews attempted to undermine the palace walls. Varus hastened to march on Palestine, which was reduced to anarchy, and he advanced on Samaria, set fire to Emmaus Nicopolis, and finally reached Jerusalem, reinforced by Arab auxiliaries sent by Ḥârith, king of Petra. The Jerusalem Jews excused themselves before him, and the strangers abandoned the siege and dispersed. Sabinus, fearing to meet his superior, stole away to the seaside, probably to Cæsarea; the revolt was quelled, and two thousand of the rebels were seized and crucified. Varus returned to Antioch, leaving a legion at Jerusalem, and pacified the Jews by allowing them to send an embassy to Rome, petitioning that they might be permitted to live according to their own law. Archelaus was given the government of Judæa and Samaria by Augustus, but only held it for ten years. Antipas received Galilee, and Peræa (beyond Jordan), which he held till 39 A. D., and Herod Philip had Bashan and Abilene.

The time was, however, now come for direct Roman rule; and when Archelaus was banished to Vienne, Coponius became the first procurator,[323] and Pontius Pilatus was the fifth (25 to 35 A. D.). The character of these governors depended on that of the emperor under whom they served, and Pilate was a placeman under Tiberius in the later years of that hated emperor. But, as Tacitus says, the Jews, as a whole, “had rest” under Tiberius, and the prosperity of the country increased. Agrippa was a popular ruler, though in his last year he persecuted the Christians at Jerusalem; and in his time the city was fortified by a new wall on the north. Tacitus again says that “the Jews had patience till Gessius Florus was made procurator” (by Nero); “under him it was that the war began.”

PILATE’S AQUEDUCT

Even when Pilate attempted to benefit the city by making an aqueduct, he roused bitter wrath by appropriating the “sacred money” for the purpose. He also introduced statues of Cæsar secretly into the Temple, and was soon forced by Jewish opposition to remove them. He put down a Samaritan outbreak with cruelty, and Vitellius, governor of Syria, ordered him to Rome, where he arrived in 37 A. D. to find that Tiberius was dead. Marcellus was appointed procurator in his stead, and Vitellius pacified the Jews by granting to them the custody of the high-priest’s vestments, which were kept till then under Roman custody in Antonia.[324]

There is no mention of any aqueducts at Jerusalem before the time of Pilate, except the Siloam one, and the “Conduit of the Upper Pool,” dating from the reign of Ahaz. Nor do the remains of the great reservoirs at Etam (near Urṭâs), and of the two aqueducts from the south, give any indications of construction earlier than the work of the Romans. The high-level aqueduct indeed was probably not in existence till the time of Hadrian, as will appear subsequently. It was the low-level aqueduct that Pilate made.[325] It was fed by the spring at Etam, south of Bethlehem, by a reservoir farther south, and by the lowest of the three great tanks near the spring. When in repair it still carries water to the Temple enclosure, having a serpentine course of about thirteen miles, and passing through two tunnels at Bethlehem and near Jerusalem. The three pools at Etam are fed by rain water, and by the spring known as the “Sealed Fountain.” The channel crossed the Valley of Hinnom (on arches) above the present Birket es Sulṭân, and ran on the south slope of the upper city and along its east side, crossing the Tyropœon, and passing (near the present Gate of the Chain) through the Herodian west rampart, and thus to a rock-cut tank south of the inner Temple court. Josephus does not over-estimate its length, if he refers to that feeder of the “low-level” aqueduct which runs from the spring of Kueizîba, far south of the Etam pool, to feed the three reservoirs. Even the shorter distance from near the pool makes Pilate’s aqueduct much longer than any other known in Palestine. That it should be attributed to Solomon is due to later traditional conjecture, and there is no notice in the Bible of any such work as executed by him. The three reservoirs are now called “Solomon’s Pools,” but the masonry is Roman. Josephus says that Solomon had gardens “abounding in rivulets of water” at Etam, but does not speak of any aqueduct. The legend of the “Sealed Fountain” may be founded on his allusion, which Christian writers connected with a verse in the Song of Songs, “A garden enclosed is my one bride, A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.”[326]

Under Agrippa I. Jerusalem reached the summit of its prosperity, and as early as ten years after the Crucifixion the city had so greatly increased in size, on the north, that a new wall was necessary to defend the new suburbs. This wall was built by Agrippa after 41 A. D., but the building was stopped by command of the Emperor Claudius, whose suspicions were roused by Marcus, the governor of Syria.[327] Josephus says, “The beginning of the third wall was at the tower Hippicus, whence it reached as far as the north quarter of the city and the tower Psephinus. Then it extended opposite the monuments of Helena, which Helena was queen of Adiabene, the daughter of Izates, and being prolonged across the Caverns of the Kings, it bent at a corner tower called the Monument of the Fuller, and joined the old wall at the valley called the Valley of Kedron.” For a fourth hill, north of Antonia, had become an inhabited quarter beyond the outer fosse of that citadel, and this was called “Bezetha” in Aramaic, or in Greek “the New City.” The word Bezetha comes from a root meaning to “divide,” and seems to refer to the ridge being here cut across by the fosse. From other passages we learn that there was a gate opposite Helena’s monument, with towers called the “Women’s Towers.” Psephinus was a great octagonal tower at the north-west corner of the wall; it was 70 cubits high, and Josephus says that Arabia, and even the Mediterranean, could be seen from it. This seems impossible, but at least it may have had a view of the mountains of Arabia near Petra, which can be seen from the high ground near the modern Russian buildings, as I have personally observed in winter when they were covered with snow.

AGRIPPA’S WALL

We may consider in detail the positions of the monuments of Helena and of the Caverns of the Kings, which are the two fixed points on the line, as well as the question whether any remains of Agrippa’s wall can be supposed to exist. Helena’s monument is perhaps one of the best fixed sites at Jerusalem; and, if we may believe Josephus, who says that it was “no more than three furlongs from the city,”[328] we have a measurement which determines the position of the Women’s Towers as being about due west of the “House of Stoning,” described in the last chapter. The tomb was adorned with three pyramids, and held the bones of Helena, who had become a convert to Judaism, and of her son Izates, named after his grandfather. They died about the same time, apparently not earlier than 50 A. D. Pausanias describes this tomb as having a rolling stone at its door, and Jerome says that it lay east of the north road. These indications point to the great Greco-Jewish rock-sepulchre which is commonly called the “Tombs of the Kings,” or by Arabs “Tombs of the Sulṭâns.”

TOMB OF HELENA