It would be easy from these descriptions to trace an ideal map of Jerusalem with its ancient hills and valleys; but such a map would not correspond by a long way with Jerusalem as it is now. The city, as enclosed by its walls to-day, approximates to the form of a parallelogram whose eastern and western sides run north and south, but whose western side as a whole stands more southerly than its eastern side as a whole. From outside the Damascus Gate, near the middle of the north wall, a very marked valley traverses the city, deepening as it runs southward, and terminating by a junction with the Kedron valley outside the south wall, near the Pool of Siloam. The half of the city to the west of this valley is the higher of the two, and is itself highest at its north-western part; the half of the city to the east consists of the Haram esh-Sherêf—a raised platform about 1,500 feet from north to south and 900 feet from east to west, and of about an equal space of streets and houses. The Haram is the southern portion and is separately enclosed with walls, though its entire east wall and two-thirds of the south are coincident, so far, with the walls of the city. The one valley from Damascus Gate gives us two hills within the city; but according to Josephus there were four, and even if we suppose that Bezetha, the 'new town,' last added to the city, was afterwards excluded from it by a narrowing of the compass of the walls, we must still find a second valley to give us a third hill. In the part of the city to the north of the Haram area a valley runs down from Herod's Gate in the north wall towards St. Stephen's Gate in the east wall; but the narrow ridge on the north-east side of this valley is connected with the high ground outside the city, and can hardly be of itself the third hill we are in search of. There must have been a valley then which has become obliterated—in fact, Josephus tells us that the Maccabees did fill up a valley, to connect the city with the temple, in the second century b.c. But inasmuch as the valley is not now apparent, it has to be supplied from conjecture, and in consequence we have had a mass of topographical controversy unequalled for its extent, its confusion, and its bitterness. The valley from the Damascus Gate is usually identified with Josephus's Tyropœon valley or valley of the cheesemakers; but some writers bring a valley across from the Jaffa Gate, which is near the middle of the west wall, into this north-and-south valley, and call it the Tyropœon from Jaffa Gate to Siloam. The valley from Damascus Gate, again, is often made to send off a branch to the east across the Haram platform, cutting it sometimes near its northern wall and sometimes farther south than the dome of the rock or Mosque of Omar, which stands on a smaller platform near the centre of the larger. It is disputed, also, which is the valley of Hinnom, which the valley of Kedron, whether Hinnom was not on the east of the city, and whether Gihon did not come down through the middle of the city.
The fate of the valleys determines the fate of the hills, and we are perplexed to know which was Mount Zion, which Moriah, and which Akra, nothing seeming to be certain except that the modern Zion (the western hill) is not the ancient Zion, that the Temple (and therefore Moriah) was somewhere within the Haram enclosure, and that the hill to the east of the present Kedron valley is the Mount of Olives. The position of the hills and valleys determines the course of the streams; for the brook Kedron presumably followed the valley of that name, the Pools of Gihon were in the valley of Gihon (if there was a valley of Gihon); and when Hezekiah 'brought the upper watercourse of Gihon straight down to the west side of the city of David,' the direction of the new channel depends on the position assigned to 'the city of David, which is Zion.'[15] On the position and contour of the hills, again, depends the direction of the ancient walls; for these would in general follow the brow of the hill, except on the north side, where the ground made no descent, while Zion appears to have been separately enclosed, so as to need a siege by itself. Until we know the direction of the walls, we know not where to look for the gates and towers, nor for the sepulchres of the kings, which were most of them within the city of David;[16] nor for the Holy Sepulchre, which was outside the gates. A grand point also is the exact site of the temple, which carries with it that of Antonia, which Josephus says was at the junction of the north and west cloisters, and may also help us to find Solomon's palace, and to determine the position of the king's gardens. It must be evident that, while these points remain unsettled, the history of Jerusalem, from David's age to that of Titus, must lack for us the definiteness and vividness which are so essential to its complete understanding. Of theories we have had enough—they are guesses not without a certain value, but guesses almost in the dark—facts are wanted, to test and correct the theories; and these facts the Palestine Exploration Committee promised to supply.
Captain Warren saw that two courses were open to him, in his endeavours to recover a first thread of the old topography—(1) to obtain the contours of the ground as they existed in olden times; (2) to dig about the supposed site of some remarkable building, in hopes of finding its remains. Both these methods were adopted; and although excavation is not allowed in the sacred places, and the work has been crippled elsewhere for want of funds, enough has been ascertained to settle several disputed points, and to alter the conditions of controversy for time to come. First, as regards the hills and valleys, the Tyropœon valley, which it was conjectured might contain thirty or forty feet of débris, is found, by excavation, to be filled up in some places to nearly one hundred feet; and instead of presenting an even slope, its western side is nearly level, the final descent being very steep, and the lowest course of the valley being inside the Haram, about sixty feet east of the south-west angle. The Kedron valley is found to contain sixty or eighty feet of loose stone chippings and other débris, forming a sloping bank, with an inclination of about thirty degrees, and having its base resting against the western slope of Olivet. One effect of this accumulation has been to alter the bed of the stream, so far as there is now any stream at all, pushing it forty feet to the east, and raising it thirty-eight feet from its old level. At what must have been the ancient bed of the brook the remains of a masonry wall were touched; between that line and the east of the Haram several other walls were encountered, and at last progress up the hill was stopped—at a point fifty feet east of the Haram—by a massive masonry wall, into which Warren drove a hole five feet, and then had to give up the business. A contribution from M. Clermont Ganneau, of the French Consulate at Jerusalem, affords Mr. Warren an argument in favour of the identity of Kedron and Hinnom. There have always been several reasons for considering the Virgin's Fount, in the Kedron, to be the same with En Rogel, where Adonijah was saluted as king, though many place it at the Well of Joab, lower down. Near to En Rogel was the stone of Zoheleth (1 Kings i. 9), and near to the Virgin's Fount M. Ganneau discovers a rock called Ez Zehwele; so that the statements of Joshua xv. and xviii., which make the border between Judah and Benjamin to pass Zoheleth to En Rogel, and thence up the valley of Hinnom, seem to identify Hinnom with what is now called Kedron. As the Kedron has three names to-day in different parts of its course, there would thus far be no objection to a fourth, but the statements in Joshua seem to us to point to some valley more westward than that now called Kedron. The principal reason for tracing the Tyropœon from the Jaffa Gate arises from Josephus's description of the valley as an open space or depression within the city, 'at which the corresponding rows of houses on both hills end.' This was held to be more applicable to a valley running from the Jaffa Gate than to that from the Damascus Gate when the slope is so gradual that the rows of houses now run across it without interruption, besides which it probably had formerly a wall on either side of it. Mr. Lewin[17] speaks positively as to the Tyropœon commencing at the Jaffa Gate, and says it can be traced thence to the Haram by the rise of ground which is still very perceptible on the right hand, as you walk down the street from the gate to the Haram. He makes this valley the boundary of the high town on the north, and puts his first wall on the southern brow of it. It is difficult to see on this hypothesis how the hill of the high town could be 'in length more direct' than the eastern hill, as Josephus says it was; or how the corresponding rows of houses could meet any more readily than near Damascus Gate. However, Mr. Warren, after excavation, tells us that 'a very decided valley runs down from the Jaffa Gate to the Tyropœon, near Wilson's arch;' and he found under the causeway leading westward from Wilson's arch, vaults and chambers, and a secret passage, at a depth which serves to confirm his view. There is no disputing facts, though it seems to us still questionable whether this valley is any part of the Tyropœon of Josephus. The valley running south-east from Herod's Gate, in the north-east part of the north wall, proves to be longer and deeper than any theorist had imagined, running into the Kedron at a point between the north-east angle of the Haram and the Golden Gate, and being filled in with more than 100 feet of débris. The Pool of Bethesda, which is 360 feet in length, is imbedded in this valley, and stretches across it, having its ends formed by the rocky sides of the valley, and its sides built up of masonry; and since it is found lined with concrete, it must have been a reservoir, and not the fosse of Antonia, which Robinson supposed it to be.[18]
The valley which Simon Maccabeus filled up[19] is made by Mr. Lewin to coincide with the northern half of what is usually called the Tyropœon—the part from Damascus Gate, down to near Wilson's arch. Other writers identify it with a supposed branch of the Tyropœon, curving to the east across the Haram. Josephus tells us that when Pompey beseiged Jerusalem he took up his position on the north of the temple, in the only part where an assault was practicable; and that even there the temple was defended by high towers, and a trench, and by a deep ravine. The position which various writers give to this ravine depends upon their idea as to the site of the temple. Mr. Fergusson[20] thinks that the valley of the Asamoneans was a 'tranverse cut, separating the hill Bezetha from the Akra or citadel, on the temple hill.' Mr. Thrupp[21] allows a valley on the north side of the temple, and reminds us that traces of a valley debouching into the valley of Kedron, near the middle of the eastern wall of the Haram, and which seemed to have been artificially filled up, were detected by the late Dr. Shultz. Shultz identifies these traces as those of the valley filled up by the Asamoneans; but Thrupp holds him to be mistaken in doing so. Mr. Sandie[22] puts forth the recognition of such a valley as the special characteristic of his view of ancient Jerusalem; but he places it south of the dome of the rock. He moreover identifies it with 'the ravine called Kedron' (τὴν Κεδρῶνα καλουμένην φάραγγα), which Josephus tells us was overlooked by the north-east wall of the temple,[23] and by which he does not mean the valley of Kedron, since he always calls the latter 'Kedron' simply. Mr. Lewin, again, makes this ravine to be 'the slip of ground between the temple and the city wall, reaching from Bethesda on the north to Ophla on the south,' i.e., the eastern side of the present Haram platform, which is, or was, the west bank of the present Kedron valley. It is difficult to see how this could have been a ravine at all; but Mr. Lewin translates 'so-called Kedron ravine,' and seems to think the expression implies that Josephus did not consider the term 'ravine' quite legitimate. Even if this were so, the illegitimacy of the designation might result from the circumstance that what was once a ravine had since been filled up by the Maccabeans and by Pompey.[24] But we must come to facts.
First of all, Captain Warren tells us that there was no ravine south of the dome of the rock, for 'the crest of the rocky spur runs from the north-west angle of the Dome-of-Rock platform in a south-east direction to the triple gate in the south wall; and at these two points, and in the line between them, the rock is at the surface.' Secondly, in December, 1868, when the displacement of a stone by the rains enabled Captain Warren to descend beneath the surface of the Haram, he found a souterrain running east and west, in the line of the northern edge of the Mosque platform, the southern side of it being scarped rock, on which the wall supporting the northern edge of the Mosque platform is built, but the rock itself appearing to 'shelve down rapidly to the north.' In the following month Captain Warren ventured to suggest on plan (lithographed plan 32) the possible course of a valley coming from the Gate of the Inspector in the Tyropœon, and running past the north-western corner of the Dome-of-Rock, out eastward through the Birket Israil (Pool of Bethesda). The souterrain may, as Captain Warren observes, be claimed by one party as the ditch on the northern wall of the temple, and by another as the northern ditch of Antonia; and the valley—which owes its depth in one part of its course to what is doubtingly called a 'natural or artificial ditch'—will of course be claimed as that of the Asamoneans.
It is thus, in our opinion, rendered probable that the ground to the west of that valley which runs from Damascus Gate constituted the old town, the φρούριον of David's time, the upper market-place of the days of Josephus; that the dome of the rock and the space to the south of it represent the old Temple-hill; that to the north of this was the valley of the Asamoneans; that between the latter and the valley from Herod's Gate was the city of David, or Zion,[25] and that north-east of the last-named valley was Bezetha. The name Zion got transferred to the Temple-hill, or was made to include it, before or during the times of the Maccabees, probably after the filling-up of the intervening valley, and in the early centuries of the Christian era was transferred to the western hill, which, after the Akra was cut down, was the highest hill of the city.[26] Certainly there is still room for some controversy on these points, and Captain Warren contributes something to the discussion, in a long paper on the 'Comparative Holiness of Mounts Zion and Moriah,' in which he argues that Zion was considered holy when the ark was there, in David's time; that after the ark (and the holiness) were transferred to Moriah, the name Zion got transferred also, and that Josephus refrains from using the term Zion because he is aware of this confusion.
If the Tyropœon valley extended from Damascus Gate southward, and the city of David was on the eastern side of it, north of the temple, then the water which Hezekiah diverted from its course, and brought down to the west side of the city of David (2 Chron. xxxii. 30), and yet into the city of Jerusalem (2 Kings xx. 20) was probably brought in at Damascus Gate, and ran towards the Kedron, either on the west side of the temple, or by the Maccabean valley, on the northern side. In the southern half of the Tyropœon valley, outside the west wall of the Haram, Captain Warren has found, at a depth of seventy or eighty feet, a rock-cut aqueduct, twelve feet deep and six feet wide, with round rock-cut pools at intervals, and shafts which indicate that pure water was drawn from it. As Hezekiah brought the stream down from 'the upper watercourse of Gihon,' this discovery has a direct bearing on the question of the position of 'the upper pool,' and of 'Gihon, in the valley,'where Solomon was anointed king; but as the upper part of the Tyropœon has not been excavated, it remains uncertain whether the water came in by Damascus Gate or Jaffa Gate, and consequently what position of Zion is favoured by the finding of this aqueduct.
The search for the old walls of the city has only been partially carried out. Here, again, we have Josephus's explicit description, and the usual differences among the commentators.
'The city of Jerusalem was fortified with three walls, on such parts as were not encompassed with unpassable valleys; for in such places it had but one wall.... The old wall began on the north at the tower called Hippicus, and extended as far as the Xistus, a place so called, and then, joining to the Council-house, ended at the west cloister of the temple. But if we go the other way westward, it began at the same place, 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 Siloam, where it also bends again towards the east at Solomon's pool, and reaches as far as a certain place which they called Ophlas, were it was joined to the eastern cloister of the temple. The second wall took its beginning from that gate which they call Gennath, which belonged to the first wall; it only encompassed the northern quarter of the city, and reached as far as the tower Antonia. The beginning of the third wall was at the tower Hippicus, whence it readied as far as the north quarter of the city, and the tower Psephinus, and then was so far extended till it came over against the monuments of Helena (which Helena was Queen of Adiabene, the daughter of Izates); it then extended farther to a great length, and passed by the sepulchral caverns of the kings, and bent again at the tower of the corner, at the monument which is called the monument of the Fuller, and joined to the old wall at the ravine called Kedron.'[27]
As many writers make the northern part of the first wall to have run from the Jaffa Gate eastward, Captain Warren spent some time in excavating in the Muristan, a large open space in the city, the old burial-place of the Knights Hospitallers; but he found 'nothing but confusion in the shape of old walls running at one another in all directions.' At Wilson's arch, however, near the Haram wall, and nearly due east from the Jaffa Gate, he discovered an old city gateway at a great depth. If we could find traces of the tower Hippicus we should come upon the first and third walls together, and similarly the gate Gennath would put us on the line of the first and second walls. The theories of some writers compel them to put Hippicus at the Jaffa Gate, where they think they see its representative in the present Castle of David. But we agree with Mr. Fergusson, that the remains called Kasr Jalud at the north-west corner of the city suit better with Josephus's description. To this point Captain Warren has not yet been able to give much attention; but the so-called Gennath Gate was examined both by Wilson and by Warren, and pronounced by the former to be of comparatively modern construction, by the latter to be ancient, 'especially as its style is Roman.' The gate rests in made earth.