In the year 43 A.D., Agrippa built a third wall, to enclose the suburban dwellings which had sprung up on the north. This third wall began at the tower Hippicus, went northward, and had a tower called Psephinus at its north-west angle, then passed eastward “over against” the monuments of Helena, queen of Adiabene (the so-called “Tombs of the Kings,” half a mile out, on the great north road), then passed by the caverns of the kings, bent southward at the tower of the north-eastern corner, and finally joined the old wall at the valley “called the Valley of Kedron” (Josephus, Wars, v. 4, 2). “The city could no way have been taken if that wall had been finished in the manner it was begun.” But Agrippa “left off building it when he had only laid the foundation, out of the fear he was in of Claudius Cæsar.” The wall was 10 cubits wide, and was afterwards raised as high as 20 cubits, above which it had battlements and turrets. In the course of the third wall, according to Josephus, there were ninety towers, as compared with sixty in the first; and the whole compass of the city was 33 furlongs. He also says that the ninety towers were 200 cubits apart; but this would make the third wall alone more than 5 miles in length, and so we judge that some mistake has crept into the text. Therefore we shall venture to take the present north wall of the city as representing Agrippa’s wall, notwithstanding that the entire circumference would then be less than 33 furlongs. There seems to be no sufficient evidence for going beyond the present wall. It is a wall which begins at the tower Hippicus, by the Jaffa Gate. The position of the great corner tower Psephinus seems to be indicated by the ruined castle called Kalat Jalud (Giant’s Castle), just within the present north-west angle. The Damascus Gate is “over against” the so-called Tombs of the Kings, for a spectator standing at the Tombs would look down directly upon that gate. The “royal caverns” we may identify with the Cotton Cavern, the quarry whence the kings of Judah obtained the stone for the great buildings of the city. The entrance to them is in the face of the scarped rock, about 300 feet east of the Damascus Gate, and the city wall runs right across the entrance. At the north-east corner of the present wall we find the tower which Josephus assigns to that point—“the most colossal ruins after those at the north-west corner.” A trench cut in the rock at the foot of the eastern wall is deflected here, passes round the corner, and goes west; it does not go any further north as we might expect it to do if the wall ever extended further north. And then the wall from the north-east corner is brought southward and joins the Haram wall, the junction not being at the north-east angle of the Haram, but much nearer to the Golden Gate, at the deep valley which Pompey began to fill up. We have to bear in mind that this third wall had been built before the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, in A.D. 70.
Titus began by investing the city on the north and the west. The place he selected for his attempt on the outer wall was just west of the Pool of Hezekiah, because there the wall of the High Town was not covered by the second wall, and he thought to capture the third wall and then at once assault the first.
When Titus had taken the outer wall he encamped in the north-west part of the city between the second and third walls; and at the same time extended his line from the “Camp of the Assyrians” to the Kedron Valley. His attempt to storm the High Town at the uncovered portion of the wall failed because of the strength of Herod’s towers. He then made an attempt on the Temple platform from the north, but failed because the valley there was deep and the Temple was strongly fortified. He had hoped, when he took the Wall of Agrippa, to be able to assault Antonia from the north, without taking the second wall; but it now appeared to him that that castle might best be assaulted on the west. These considerations induced him to attack the second wall. After some effort, a breach was made, and the Romans entered the middle city. They were once driven out by the Jews, and kept out for a time; but by-and-bye they gained entrance again, and then, made wise by experience, they demolished the second wall, or the northern part of it, and so were able to keep their ground.
Antonia was now assaulted on its western side; but the business was difficult, and the struggle was long. The mounds which the Romans cast up were undermined by the Jews and destroyed. The mines, however, weakened the outer wall of the castle, and that fell also. The Romans were filled with hope; but the Jews had foreseen the event, and had run up another wall behind. The courage of the Romans was damped by the sight of this second wall. But a few days after, they scaled it by a night surprise, and at the same time forced their way into Antonia through the mine under the wall. The Jews, in a panic, rushed away into the Temple, where they were able to defend themselves as in a fortress. But fighting now took place daily, until at length the northern cloisters of the Temple were burnt down, the inner Temple was assaulted, and eventually the whole fabric was reduced to ashes.
The Jews were now crowded in the Upper City, and confined to that. Titus held a parley with them across the bridge above the Xystus—that is, at Wilson’s Arch—offering them terms. But they declined his conditions, and so the siege had to go on. The Ophel quarter was now plundered and burnt; and then a grand effort was made against the Upper City. Mounds were thrown up, and the assault was delivered simultaneously from several points—on the west, by Herod’s palace, on the north-west part of the town a little east of the tower Phasaelus, and on the north-east at the Xystus, which extended from Wilson’s Arch southward. The strong city at last fell, and its walls and buildings were razed to the ground.
We know that it rose again from its ashes, and has had an eventful history since; but it is not our purpose to follow its fortunes farther.
In seeking to understand the descriptions given by Josephus, writers have been much puzzled by his mention of a ravine “called the Kedron ravine.” It could not well be the Kedron Valley itself, or it would hardly be spoken of in this way; besides which, we are told that the eastern portion of Agrippa’s wall joined the old wall at the ravine called Kedron. This would be too indefinite a note of place if the wall and the ravine ran parallel with one another. Moreover, the north-east angle of the Temple cloisters was built over the said ravine, and the depth was frightful (Wars, vi. 3, 2). The depth was frightful at the angle, rather than at the eastern side. There could be no right understanding of the references, until Sir Charles Warren’s labours showed that a deep valley crosses the Haram north of the Golden Gate, and contains within it the Birket Israil. It was only a “so-called ravine” to Josephus, because the western portion had been filled up by Pompey, and the eastern mouth was cut across by the Wall of Agrippa. Warren’s discovery of this ravine, and demonstration of its depth, is a glorious instance of the value of excavation work in questions of Jerusalem topography.
[Authorities and Sources:—The Works of Josephus. “Siege of Jerusalem.” Thomas Lewin. “Jerusalem, a Sketch.” Thomas Lewin.]