No one besides Josephus has handed down to us a detailed account of the topography of Jerusalem in the time of the Herods and Titus: since then he lived in this period and is our sole authority, I follow his account entirely. In endeavouring to identify the spots mentioned by him, in a place that has undergone such frequent alterations, I have not imitated the example of most writers, in ancient and modern times, who have copied one from another, and based their arguments on mere hypotheses; but, during a period of eight years, have devoted myself to a thorough examination of every part of Jerusalem; have carefully studied the terrain, the rocks, the stones, which I have sought under the accumulated ruins of centuries; have made deep excavations to trace the course of the ancient walls, underground passages and conduits; have watched the digging of numbers of foundations, from day to day, within and without the city; have collected information from persons worthy of credit and experienced in building, about the most important works that had been carried out before my arrival; have descended into and examined cisterns, clean and dirty; and after working like a labourer during the day, have read Josephus instead of going to sleep, and tested his statements for myself. I did not use any other authors except Livy and Cæsar, whose writings I studied in order to understand thoroughly the Roman art of war and the siege operations of Titus against the city; and after I had done all this, I made plans and sections upon the spot. This being well known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, I fearlessly present the results of my labours to all who take an interest in the reconstruction of the city of the Herods. I may indeed sometimes be mistaken in my arguments, or wrong in my conclusions; if so, I shall be glad to be corrected; thankful if even by this means I have created an interest in the subject, and given rise to new ideas and a better knowledge of the archæology of Jerusalem.
Having now considered the general features of the city, its hills and its valleys, and seen that it was guarded by a triple wall on the exposed side and a single wall on those which overhung the valleys[108], we will proceed to examine this triple line of defence.
The first wall began on the north at the Tower Hippicus, and passing by the Xystus joined on to the Palace of the Council, and ended at the west gate of the Temple. It was strengthened with much care and expense by David, Solomon, and their successors. In examining its course on the present ground, I started from the castle of David, going eastward in a line parallel to 'David's street' as far as the Mekhemeh (the Turkish law courts), and thence to the west wall of the Haram-es-Sherîf.
In order to identify the towers of Hippicus, Phasaëlus, and Mariamne, I frequently and carefully examined the fortress[109]. In it there are still three towers, one on the west, just south of the Jaffa gate, whose architecture, as far as it is visible, appears mediæval; another to the east of this, built of stones with large rustic work of the Herodian pattern; and a third to the south of these two, resembling the first. In all three I ascertained that the Jewish masonry is founded on the rock, and that, for a height of five feet above the ground, they are cased with large stones, roughly rusticated; but in the middle tower the Jewish masonry continues about 39 feet from the bottom of the ditch—only the stones, however, are of the Herodian period, the architecture is of a later date, belonging to the time when art was declining in the country[110]; for we see that these interesting remains are used without the slightest care; being arranged without any regard to their size, and most of them shewing the marks of the clamps, by which they were formerly bolted together inside the wall; so that they have evidently been placed in reverse order[111]. The three towers are solid inside to a height of 11 feet, and the lower part of the ditch (14 feet deep) that surrounds them on the north, east, and south, is cut in the rock; the west tower is nearly 25 cubits square, the centre 40, the south 20. I adopt, then, Williams' opinion, that the tower Hippicus stood on the foundation of the first, Phasaëlus on the second, and Mariamne on the third. This identification seems to agree with Josephus' description[112]; so that these are the positions of the three ancient towers, which Titus ordered to be spared, "in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of a city it was, and how well fortified, which the Roman valour had subdued[113]."
It may be urged, as an objection to this, that the cisterns, mentioned by the historian, are not to be found in these towers; but it is surely very unlikely that these would come down to us through so many changes. One tower has been enlarged to accommodate a greater number of troops, and nothing is more probable than that the cisterns would be destroyed in some of the extensive alterations which the buildings have undergone; for example, in making the story 20 cubits high, which now exists in it; besides, the cisterns, which are in other parts of the fortress, seem to shew that those within the towers have been removed. We shall presently see that the position assigned to Hippicus agrees very well with the historian's statements on other points, especially on the second position, occupied by Titus during the siege[114].
The number of houses and the character of their several owners make it impossible to excavate along the street of David, from the tower Hippicus to the west wall of the Temple; so that I was obliged to be contented with what I could find above ground. In many places I noticed large stones, generally rusticated, built into the lower parts of the present houses; for example, in the Greek convent of S. John, in the south-east corner of the Pool of Hezekiah, and in many houses on the south of the above-named street. These stones I suppose to be remains of the old wall, because I cannot think that any one would have taken the trouble to bring them from a distance. The most remarkable thing is a semicircular Jewish arch, forming part of an ancient gateway, now almost entirely buried. This I will describe when I come to the second wall.
The Xystus, as appears from several passages in Josephus, was a public place surrounded by buildings, on the lower slopes of Sion, opposite the west wall of the Temple. We are told that the priests built a wall on the west of the Temple, to prevent king Agrippa II. from watching the sacred rites from the top of his palace[115] near the Xystus; also that, after the capture of the lower city and the Temple, the Jews, entrenched on Sion, asked to speak with Titus, and that he placed himself on the west side of the Temple, for "there were gates on that side above the Xystus, and a bridge that connected the upper city with the Temple[116]." The Xystus is also mentioned in conjunction with the bridge in other passages; but it is unnecessary to quote them, as the present state of the ground assists us in determining its position, the slope of Sion being much less here than at any other part of the east side. In the careful investigations that I have made on the west side of the Tyropœon, I found evidence that the surface had been levelled in the direction of the street of David; this however did not extend southwards beyond the point opposite to the south-west corner of the Haram-es-Sherîf, where the ground is very much broken with steep faces of rock; therefore, as I cannot suppose that a public place would be on an uneven site, I imagine that the Xystus began at the street of David and ended before it came opposite to the south-west corner of the Haram.
The Palace of the Council was probably situated in the position of the present Mekhemeh. The number of stones of Jewish workmanship of the Herodian period in the foundation of the present building, and its position with reference to the Xystus and the Temple, are strong arguments in favour of this identification[117]. This is all that I have been able to gather about the northern part of the first line of walls; excavations being impossible, from the nature of the place, and still more of the inhabitants.
On the west, the first wall started from Hippicus and "extended through a place called Bethso to the gate of the Essenes, and after that it went southward, having its bending above the fountain of Siloam, where it also bends again to the east at Solomon's pool, and reaches as far as a certain place which they called Ophlas (Ophel), where it was joined to the eastern cloister of the Temple[118]." I have already stated how I was able to retrace this part of the wall on the south of Sion and at Ophel, and have no more to add, except that I found, during my investigations on Sion, great vaulted cisterns hewn out in the rock, remains of conduits, also cut in the solid rock, and ruined caverns, which had obviously once been reservoirs; but all these occurred inside the circuit of the wall, that I have laid down on the Plan, and never outside; shewing that one part had been formerly covered by houses, the other not. The position of Bethso is unknown: some think that the word means "house of filth:" one Rabbi supposes it to have been a place where waters met; however, I have not been able to find out anything certain about it.
The site of the gate of the Essenes is also unknown to us: I place it at the south-east angle of the City of David, because this position seems to suit best the Greek text of Josephus—"the wall extended downwards to the gate of the Essenes[119];" moreover, from this point I see that the wall could bend to the south, while, from a higher position, a very irregular course must be given it, in order to obtain this angle.