Situation | History: Sources | Earliest periods | the town of the Jebusites | capital of the United Kingdom & the kingdom of Judah | from the return from Exile to the end of the Maccabean period | Herodian period to Destruction by Titus | Roman, Byzantine, Islamic Jerusalem | modern Jerusalem
Jerusalem is the principal city of Palestine, situated in 31° 46' 45" N. latitude and 35° 13' 25' E. longitude. It owes its importance to the command that its situation gives it of the central mountain ridge, forming the natural north-south highway.
1. The old city is built on two ridges which run south from an eastward spur of the central ridge. The southern ends of these spurs form steep promontories. On the east, the Valley of Kidron, or Jehoshaphat, has at its south end a slope of almost one in two, and the eastern spur, of which the southern end is known as Ophel, is flanked on its western side by the Tyropoeon Valley, of which the slope was originally almost equally steep; both these valleys originate well to the north of the city, and enclose a narrow spur which was the site of what was probably the oldest settlement and of the extension occupied by the Temple. The western spur is broader, and is bounded on the west by the Valley of Hinnom, with a slope of about one in four, originating some 600 metres south of the other two valleys, at a point where a lateral valley running down into the Tyropoeon nearly isolates the southern end of the western spur. The eastern spur is also cut into by a lateral valley running down into the Kidron, at a point slightly north of the last mentioned valley. Both spurs, therefore, have great natural advantages as defensive sites.
2. The chief drawback to the site is that it is not well provided with water. The only natural source is the spring Gihon, or the Virgin's Fountain, on the west slopes of Ophel, from which the waters naturally flow down the Kidron Valley. At all ages down to to-day, the city has largely depended upon cisterns storing the winter rains, but conduits of many ages have been engineered to bring in water from springs in the mountains to the west. An aqueduct traditionally ascribed to Solomon brought water from reservoirs beyond Bethlehem ; others are of Roman date, and in the days of the Mandate the springs at Ras el-'Ain were tapped.
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1. Sources. - For the history of the site before the 14th cent. BC, we are entirely dependent upon archaeology. In the early 14th cent. the city enters the written record in the Amarna letters, and soon afterwards appears in the Biblical record. But it is not until c 1000 BC, after its capture by David, that the Bible gives many details about Jerusalem. From then on, as the capital, first of the United Monarchy, and then of Judah, its history is of supreme importance, but for the translation of this history in territorial terms, the aid of archaeology is most necessary. The Biblical account after the 6th cent. return from the Babylonian exile is again most full, but once more cannot be fully interpreted without archaeological evidence. For the succeeding period, the written account becomes increasingly sparse, and it is only when the periods dealt with by Josephus are reached, culminating in the destruction of the city by Titus in AD 70, that we have a full account, with the aid of which the topography can be studied. For the next six hundred years, and again at the time of the Crusades, there are at intervals literary sources to provide a key to the topographical and structural history of the site.
But for all these periods, the literary account requires the confirmation of archaeology in the identification of the lines of the city walls, and indeed of the actual area occupied by the city. For this reason, the site has attracted the attention of archaeologists from the very beginnings of the attempts to reconstruct history by the examination of the surviving material remains. The results have been tanializingly inconclusive. The earlier excavations, particularly those carried out for the Palestine Exploration Fund by Captain (later Sir Charles) Warren between 1864 and 1867, and by Messrs. Bliss and Dickie between 1894 and 1897, were models for their period. But though in both cases the records are so ample and exact that much can be deduced from them, the excavators of the period had not at their service the detailed knowledge of pottery chronology on which all archaeology must be based, which only became reliable in the decades between 1920 and 1940, nor of the stratigraphical technique which must be associated with it. It was only when excavations at various points on the city walls began to be carried out by the staff of the Department of Antiquities of the Mandate, notably by Mr. C. N. Johns at the Citadel and Mr. R. W. Hamilton against the existing north wall, that any exact criteria were established for dating masonry styles by stratigraphical association with pottery and coins. In 1961 the British School of Archaeology and the Ecole Biblique began a new series of excavations, which produced important results.
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2. The earliest periods. - It is now generally agreed that the nucleus of the first settlement was on Ophel, the southern extremity of the eastern ridge. This is the site most strongly defended by nature. Even to-day, its eastern slopes are so steep as to render the site almost inaccessible, and the Tyropoeon valley to the west was originally also as steep. It is the only part of the site, moreover, adjacent to a good natural spring, Gihon. The earliest objects found come from rock-cut tombs on the eastern slopes. They consist of the pottery of the period best described as Proto-Urban, for it is the period in which were laid the foundations of the growth of the towns of the Early Bronze Age, brought into Palestine by newcomers round about 3300 BC. It is very probable that the site developed into a town, as so many places did, in the ensuing Early Bronze Age, covering much of the 2nd millennium. Excavators of the site have in fact claimed to identify evidence of this period, but the published details are not conclusive. In 1961 the first traces were found of the town wall of the Middle Bronze Age.
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3. The town of the Jebusites. - Jerusalem first appears in written history in the Amarna letters of the first third of the 14th cent. BC, when its ruler Abdi-Khiba was one of the princelings in correspondence with Egypt. Various fragments of rough walling have been ascribed to the town of the period. The 1961 excavations, however, disproved the identification of a tumbled mass of masonry on the crest of Ophel as a bastion of the Jebusite defences. Further work is required to discover what existing remains there are of this period, for stylistic grounds are inadequate when such rough masonry is involved ; similar masonry may appear over a period of some two thousand years.
It is as a town of the Jebusites, a Canaanite clan, that Jerusalem first appears in the Biblical record. In the theoretical and obviously anticipatory division of Palestine among the Israelite tribes, it was assigned to Benjamin (Jos.18.28), and in Jg.1.8 it is claimed that it was captured by Judah immediately after the death of Joshua. There is, however, no doubt that this is an interpolation. All archaeological evidence goes to show that the Israelite ascendancy was only very gradually achieved, as an infiltration rather than a mass immigration and over-running. The Biblical record is in fact explicit that Jerusalem was not captured, and that it remained a Jebusite stronghold (Jg.1.21, 19.11). Its capture was the culminating point of David's campaign, which on the shortest chronology must be more than two hundred years later, and the importance of its position is emphasized by the fact that it was only by its capture that the north and the south could be united; the division that this Canaanite enclave had enforced on the growing Israelite nation was to have its permanent effect when the two halves once more fell apart after the death of Solomon.
The strength of the site is vividly illustrated by the account of David's attack. The Jebusites within the walls jeered at the Israelites assembled against it (2S.5.6). David promised that whoever 'getteth up the gutter' (2S.5.8) should become the captain of his armies, and apparently Joab succeeded in accomplishing this feat. 'The gutter' has been with great probability identified by Pere L.-H. Vincent as the water-shaft which gave access to the spring Gihon from within the city. The whole complex of shafts and tunnels connected with this spring, the one source of water in Jerusalem, was revealed by the Parker excavations in 1911, and Pere Vincent demonstrated that a shaft, part vertical and part oblique, was at least pre-Israelite, and as such could provide a means of penetrating the city and taking the defenders of the wall in the rear.
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4. Jerusalem as capital under the United Monarchy and of the kingdom of Judah. - Having captured Jerusalem, David proceeded to fortify it. It is nowadays presumed that the site which he fortified was that of the preceding Jebusite stronghold on the eastern ridge. Archaeological evidence of this began to emerge in the 1961 excavations. The key point in his defences was Millo, from which he built round about and inward (2S.5.9). Millo was probably a tower, perhaps, from the probable Hebrew meaning of a filling, one built on a solid infilling of stone, but for its situation many suggestions have been made, and no archaeological evidence has been recovered. One of the difficulties is that there is no certain evidence of the position of the northern boundary of the original settlement. A ditch and fragments of a wall some 100 metres S. of the present city wall have been suggested as part of the line of the Jebusite defences, but they do not carry conviction.
Jerusalem was established as David's capital, and his plan was to make it a religious centre by providing a permanent home for the Ark of the Covenant (2S.6). The actual construction of the Temple was, however, only carried out by his successor Solomon. The site of the Temple, with the adjoining royal palace, was on the northern portion of the eastern ridge, bounded on the north by the lateral valley mentioned in 1, 2. It is probable that the site lay outside the original city wall, for the Biblical account describes it as the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite (2S.24.16). The Biblical account shows that Solomon built the Temple and his palace with much magnificence. Excavations at Samaria, Megiddo, and Hazor have shown something of the sophisticated masonry and lavish decoration that the Israelites employed when for a short period they used the services of craftsmen from adjacent Phoenician lands. But though a few fragments beneath the subsequent Herodian Temple have been claimed as Solomonic work, there are no certain remains. On Ophel itself, there is nothing in this style surviving.
The summit of Ophel is exiguous in the extreme. A line of walls, exhibiting a number of building periods, has been traced along the southern crest, and parts of this have been ascribed to the period of David and Solomon. The 1961 excavations, however, showed that the so-called Davidic tower is in fact Maccabaean, and that great sub-structures to level up the ground, dating from the period of the Monarchy, extend far down the slope in front of it. The position of the town wall has not yet with certainty been identified, but it is at least 160 feet E. of the position hitherto suggested. The date at which occupation spread to the western ridge is uncertain. The literary evidence (2K.14.13) that Jehoash of Israel destroyed a length of 400 cubits (about 200 metres) suggests a north wall extending across the Tyropoeon Valley, for the defences of the narrow ridge of Ophel would not be of this length. Pottery of the 7th cent. BC has been found at the Citadel, probably the NW. corner of the expanded city, and at Bishop Gobert's School near the SE. angle of the western ridge.
The line traditionally ascribed to the north wall of the expanded city runs from the Citadel at the head of the Valley of Hinnom along a line just south of the present David Street, to meet the wall of the Temple enclosure about three-fifths of the way along its presumed contemporary length; the Temple would thus have formed a marked salient in the line of the city boundary. Along this line, suggestive fragments of wall have been found, though without dating evidence. The identification of this northern wall is however probable; that of the southern wall of the extended Israelite city is much less satisfactory. A wall crosses the Tyropoeon Valley between the points of the two spurs, but, as will be seen, the surviving remains belong to a much later period. Evidence of very considerable weight came from the excavations carried out in 1927 (APEF v.) that at a point 450 metres north of this wall there was no occupation in the bed of the Tyropoeon until the Maccabaean period. Moreover, in the 1961 excavations a number of soundings were made along the eastern slopes of the western ridge, in which no traces were found of occupation earlier than the 1st cent. AD. Worth considering as the line of the southern wall (though it is only a hypothesis beside those proposed by many other writers) is a massive scarp with external fosse, and a wall in a style which is probably pre-Maccabaean, which runs down the western side of the western spur and turns north-eastward to follow the contours of the eastern side of the spur, onto which the Maccabaean wall crossing the valley was added. It need not necessarily render the line unworthy of consideration that further to the north-east its probable continuation was followed by a very much later, probably post-Crusader, wall, for the physical configuration of the site results time and time again in the return by later builders to the lines of their predecessors. The town-plan of Jerusalem in the time of the Divided Monarchy may thus have had a two-pronged outline to the south, following the contours of the two ridges.
That the history of the town when the United Monarchy fell apart after the death of Solomon in 935 BC, and it became the capital of Judah, was eventful is shown only too clearly by the Biblical record. It fell to Shishak of Egypt c 925 BC in the reign of Rehoboam, to a coalition of Philistines and Arabs in the reign of Jehoram (c 850 BC), to Jehoash of Israel (796-781 BC), and was attacked by the kings of Syria and Israel in the reign of Ahaz of Judah (734-720 BC). The rebuildings and strengthenings of the walls of Jerusalem during these times were therefore innumerable, but archaeologically unidentifiable amongst the complex of rough walls revealed on the sides of Ophel. A still greater threat developed in the reign of Hezekiah (720-685 BC). The struggles between Judah, Israel, Syria, the Philistines, Edom, and Moab were struggles between petty powers of not unequal calibre. To all of them the revival of the great Mesopotamian empire under the Assyrians threatened annihilation. In 730 BC Megiddo and Hazor fell, and in 720 BC Samaria was destroyed by Sargon II., and the kingdom of Israel obliterated. Hezekiah realized that the next wave of advance was liable to engulf Judah. It is to his preparations to withstand the Assyrians that one of the few fragments of material evidence can be ascribed. In the Biblical account, Hezekiah stopped the waters ('that were without the city' (2Ch.32.3-4), so as to deprive the enemy of access to them. This was done by the remarkable engineering feat of blocking external access to Gihon, on the east slope of Ophel, and carrying the water in a tunnel right through the spur to the pool of Siloam, within the walls of Ophel towards the south-western extremity. The course of this famous Siloam tunnel is curiously winding, and it has been suggested that its line was designed to avoid some tombs, unfortunately robbed, which it is suggested were the Tombs of the Kings of Israel, and its level required some adjustment after it was pierced, but it was nevertheless a triumphant achievement, well celebrated by the inscription recording the meeting of the gangs working from each end. The epigraphy of the inscription and the surviving archaeological evidence would fit a dating of c 700 BC, and the Biblical historical evidence confirms the probability of ascribing the operation to Hezekiah. Hezekiah also repaired the walls and added 'another wall without' (2Ch.32.5), perhaps to enclose the mishneh or 'redoublement' of the town which had grown up. This may be the much debated ' second wall' (see 6). In the event, Jerusalem was saved by a mysterious calamity that befell the Assyrian army (2K.19.35).
Astute diplomacy enabled the kingdom of Judah to survive for another century, aided by the fact that Assyria was menaced at home, and eventually fell to Babylon. The expansionist policies of Assyria were however inherited by Babylonia, and Judah's efforts to play off Egypt against Babylonia were of little avail. Jerusalem first fell to Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC. For a short time she was allowed to remain in existence, but intrigues with Egypt brought down Nebuchadnezzar's wrath on her again in 586 BC. This time Jerusalem was utterly destroyed and all the people except the 'poor of the land' (2K.25.12) were taken away into captivity.
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5. From the Return from Exile to the end of the Maccabaean period. - The destruction of Jerusalem was undoubtedly severe; though one need not suppose that it was razed to the gound. The walls were broken down, though probably breached in numerous places rather than completely levelled, and the Temple, the palace, the houses and specifically, all the houses of the great men were burnt (2K.25.6-7). Roofs and doors would thus be destroyed, but probably much of the stone-built walls remained standing. Still more disastrous would be the removal of all the inhabitants.
Jerusalem remained substantially in this state for fifty years. It is probable, however, that a faithful remnant carried on services of prayer and lamentation amidst the ruins of the Temple, for on the evidence of the Apocryphal Book of Baruch, the exiles in Babylon sent them vessels from the Temple that had been carried away as loot, and the wherewithal to perform sacrifices (Bar.1.6-14). Similarly, no doubt, some reoccupation of the ruins took place.
But the revival of Jerusalem did not come till 537 BC. The liberal policy towards subject peoples inaugurated by Cyrus when Babylonia fell to Persia in 538 BC enabled a group of the exiles to return with the specific purpose of rebuilding the Temple, which was accomplished by 516 BC. Simultaneously, no doubt, they rebuilt their own houses. The great difference of this new Jerusalem from the old is that the Temple was the only focal point; no longer was it rivalled by an adjacent royal palace. It was now a holy city with the High Priest as the first citizen. The struggles between the priesthood and emergent temporal rulers forms the theme of much of the history for the next five hundred years.
The original royal edict allowed the re-establishment of the religious centre, but Jerusalem remained an unwalled city, a dangerous condition with jealous enemies no further away than Samaria and Ammon. There were, however, still Jews at the Persian court, and one of them, Nehemiah, persuaded King Artaxerxes to appoint him governor for the period, probably of 445-433 BC, with the express purpose of rebuilding the walls.
The rebuilding was undertaken with much energy, various groups being allocated a set section, and accomplished in the remarkably short time of fifty-two days (Neh.6.15). The course is described in much detail by Nehemiah (Neh.3, 12), but unfortunately there are too few fixed points in those parts of the circuit which are in doubt to establish what line was followed. This short period and the description of each gang that 'repaired' (Neh 3) its section, suggests that much of the work consisted of repairing breaches and gates, not of building a new wall. Much of Nehemiah's wall thus probably followed the course of the wall destroyed 150 years earlier. But the 1961 excavations on Ophel showed that this was not the case there. The destroyed buildings on the steep slope had been reduced to a tumble of stones by the winter rains. No attempt was made to restore them, and the town here shrank to the narrow summit of the ridge. The actual wall built by Nehemiah has not yet been identified, but it was probably approximately on the line of the Maccabaean wall. No evidence as to how this line ran to the south has so far been found, but it certainly did not cross the valley to the tip of the western ridge, as has hitherto been believed.
The next century was for Jerusalem a peaceful period under Persian rule; the governor appointed by the Persians was often a Jew, and real power was in the hands of the High Priest. The effect on the town of the struggles of the successor states of Alexander the Great's Empire is not certainly known, though Ptolemy Soter captured the town in 320 BC, and the High Priest Simon the Just refortified both town and Temple about 300 BC. (Sir.1.1-4). But a major effect on the life of the Jews was the spread of Hellenization amongst them, bitterly opposed by the orthodox. This reached a climax in 168 BC, and Antiochus iv. Epiphanes took the opportunity to intervene and to sack Jerusalem with a great massacre. He then established a fortress 'Acra of the Syrians' which for thirty years dominated the town and the Temple; the site is usually considered to be that subsequently occupied by Antonia to the north of the Temple.
It is at this stage that the Hasmonaean family of the Maccabees emerge as the champions of Jewish nationalism. The story of their rise, with the intrigues. between their party and the Hellenizing one, and of the playing off of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms one against another is not a pretty one, but brought success. In 142 BC Simon was granted autonomy, and at last succeeded in capturing the Acra. His successor John Hyrcanus survived an attack in 135 BC by Antiochus Sidetes, in which the walls were breached, being subsequently repaired, and thereafter had a long and successful reign until 107 BC. The Hasmonaean dynasty had come to power as high priests, but the ideal of a theocratic state was dying, and John's sons Aristobulus (107-105 BC) and Alexander Jannaeus (105-79 BC) assumed the title of king. The final tragedy of the Hasmonaean dynasty came with the struggles of the latter's sons for power, which brought the Romans on the scene. In 63 BC Pompey besieged and captured the city. He respected the Temple, but according to Strabo (xvi) he entirely demolished the city walls.
During these two and a half centuries of struggles between the Hellenistic kingdoms, and then of the emergent nationalistic Jewish power, Jerusalem was the scene of many bitter battles. It is unlikely that archaeology will ever be able to trace minutely the history of building, destruction, and rebuilding of the city walls that the historical record suggests, for it is seldom that dating evidence is exact enough to distinguish between a succession of events within a few decades.
This is the period, however, within which we have for the first time reliable evidence for dating some part of the fortifications. In excavations extending between 1934 and 1948, Mr. C. N. Johns carried out an extensive examination of the present Citadel (QDAP xiv). The Citadel lies approximately in the centre of the west side of the present walled city, at the point at which the original wall turned east to join the western ridge to the eastern (4). He found here a line of wall curling round towards the east-west line, with on it three towers. In the structures three distinct building styles could be recognized, in chronological succession a style of roughly squared blocks, a style of stones with rough bosses and margins either comb-picked or chisel-dressed and thirdly a style with beautifully-squared stones with much slighter bosses and comb-picked margins. This third style is undoubtedly Herodian, and was found in the tower recognized as being Phasael, which Josephus says that Herod built as one of three at the north-west angle of the town. The other two styles were dated strati-graphically by the associated deposits. The second belongs to the period of Alexander Jannaeus, at the climax of the Hasmonaean rule. The first style could be dated less closely, but was certainly not earlier than the early Hellenistic or early Hasmonaean period.
These three styles can, as Johns showed, be recognized, from existing remains and from the admirable record, in the earlier of the two walls traced by Bliss and Dickie across the Tyropoeon Valley at the S. end of the western ridge. It was, however, probably not prolonged across to join the eastern ridge, as has hitherto been suggested, for the 1961 excavations found no trace of occupation of this period in the area concerned. Confirmation that the base of the Tyropoeon Valley was still not enclosed in the Maccabaean period is provided by the excavation ofJ. W. Crowfoot and G. M. Fitzgerald in 1927 (APEFv), in which a massively-built gateway, almost certainly part of a town wall, was found on the western side of Ophel at a distance of some 350 metres north of the point of the ridge, which was certainly in use down to the Maccabaean period. On the eastern side of the eastern ridge, the 1961 excavations confirmed work on the defences in the early Maccabaean period, for the town previously ascribed to the period of David can now be dated to c 150 BC.
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6. From the Herodian period to the destruction by Titus. - The Romans exercised considerable clemency after their victory. The Hasmonaean dynasty was allowed to retain sacerdotal power, and in 47 BC Caesar permitted the reconstruction of the city walls. This state of affairs was brought to an end by the characteristic internecine struggles of the members of the Hasmonaean dynasty, and eventually the Idumaean Herod, who had married into the Hasmonaean family, established himself in power and in 37 BC captured Jerusalem with Roman aid.
The Herodian period rivals the Solomonic in the external glories it conferred on Jerusalem. As in the Solomonic period, the artistic style was foreign. Herod was firmly Romanophil, and his buildings were in the Graeco-Roman tradition. Typical buildings, bitterly disliked by orthodox Jews, were a theatre and amphitheatre; the site of these is unknown. As far as is known he did not add to the circuit of the city, but he strengthened its fortifications by a great fortress, to which he gave the name Antonia, at the north-west angle of the Temple enclosure, and which he made his first abode, and by three great towers, Phasael, Hippicus, and Mariamne, at the north-west corner, beneath the present Citadel, in which the base of Phasael survives to a considerable height. On the archaeological evidence described in the last section, he also repaired and strengthened the southern circuit. By about 25 BC he had built himself a magnificent palace in the north-west corner of the city. But he was throughout distrusted and disliked by the Jews as a foreigner and as an introducer of atheistic Hellenistic innovations. It was in part as an attempt to combat this antipathy that he undertook his most grandiose construction, the complete rebuilding of the Temple. The description of this, involving massive new terrace walls, survives in Josephus' account, and portions of his foundation walls are still visible beneath the Haram esh-Sherif.
Herod died in 4 BC. Complaints against the iniquities of his successor Archelaus brought in Roman intervention, and from AD 6 Judaea was annexed to the Roman province of Syria. The earlier years of direct Roman rule were peaceful, but when Pontius Pilate was appointed procurator in AD 26, he caused much offence to orthodox Jews. Under the Emperor Claudius comes the last period of relative Jewish autonomy. Herod Agrippa i., a grandson of Herod, was made king of Judaea, and his reign represents almost a golden age for Jerusalem. The expansion of the city was so great that he built a new wall to enclose the new northern quarter, the 'Third Wall' to be discussed below. The 1961 excavations showed that he also built a wall right across the Tyropoeon Valley to join the eastern and western ridges. After his death in AD 44, Judaea was ruled by Roman procurators.
This is the beginning of one of the darkest periods in Jewish history. The cruelties and excesses of the Roman procurators, unfortunately ill-selected, stimulated the fervent nationalism and messianic expectations of the Jews. This nationalistic fervour was fatally marred by bitter factional struggles amongst the Jews themselves; up to the very eve of the Roman retaliation for the revolt they were slaughtering one another.
The final attack by the Romans on Jerusalem came to AD 70, led by Titus after his father Vespasian had become Emperor. The events of the terrible siege and ensuing destruction are vividly described by Josephus. One by one the defences of the city fell, and finally the Temple was devastated.
It is with the description of the city by Josephus that the archaeological evidence is mainly concerned. Titus' attack was from the north, and Josephus describes three successive lines of wall, in addition to the defences of the Temple, which he had to storm. The Third Wall was built by Herod Agrippa. The First Wall, the old wall, which Josephus believed to have been built by David and Solomon, is probably that running east from the Citadel, just south of David Street, built, as has been shown in 4, in the 8th or 7th cent. BC. It is the line of the Second Wall which is of supreme importance to students of the Bible, for this is the wall which would have been the city wall at the time of the Crucifixion. The site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, identified as such some three hundred years later by Queen Helena, and of the adjacent rock of Calvary, lies on a knoll of rock on the north side of the lateral valley that cuts into the western ridge (1, 2). Any wall including a northern quarter of the city, and linking with the north-west corner of the Temple area, would have had to make a curious re-entrant angle to exclude this site. Portions of walling, on a scale which would agree with that of a town wall, have however been found following this line. Military experts have declared the line to be impossible strategically, and suggested a line curving considerably further to the north and enclosing the site of the Church (e.g. PEQ 1944), but no convincing archaeological proof of their theories has been adduced; on the opposing side, military reasons have been produced (PEQ 1946) to show that the artillery of the period mounted on the strong points undoubtedly built by Herod at Antonia and the three towers beneath the present Citadel could dominate the north-south and east-west stretches of the angular wall, and the high ground from which any attack on the blind ground of the re-entrant angle must be mounted, but would be largely useless if that high ground were within the city. But it must be admitted that there is absolutely no archaeological proof.
The position of the Third Wall is almost equally vehemently debated. For long it was accepted that this was on the line of the present north wall of the city. In support of this theory, it was shown in the excavations carried out by Mr. R. W. Hamilton (QDAP x) in 1937-1938 that there had been a Herodian-style tower on the site of the Damascus Gate, and other possible traces further east; these might belong either to the Second or Third Wall. On the other hand, remains of an exceedingly massive wall, including stones in a generally Herodian style, were traced in 1925-1927 by Professor E. L. Sukenik and Dr. L. A. Mayer at a distance of about 400 metres to the north of the present walls. The wall is imposing, and would agree with an expansion in the time of Herod Agrippa, but no archaeological evidence was provided to prove the dating.
A regrettable summary must be that archaeological evidence cannot yet prove the line of any of the north walls of Jerusalem.
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7. Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic Jerusalem. - Jerusalem was devasted by Titus, and a garrison of Legion X Fretensis established on the western hill, to protect which the Herodian towers and a portion of the western wall were left standing. A fragment of a building of the legionary fortress was discovered in the excavations of 1934-1948 (QDAP xiv). There is reasonable evidence to suggest that the Jews soon filtered back into portions of the ruined city, and probably carried on trade with the Roman soldiers (Jerusalem de l'Ancien Testament, pp. 756-758). The complete obliteration of Jewish Jerusalem only came some forty years later. Irreconcilable Jewish nationalism brought about a series of disturbances, culminating in the Second Revolt, which was crushed by Hadrian in AD 135. Jewish Jerusalem was then abolished, and Aelia Capitolina took its place, a forbidden ground for Jews. It is usually considered that the lines of Aelia are approximately those of the present city walls. Hamilton (QDAP x) showed that it was very probable that the original building of the Damascus Gate belongs to this period, and the columned street running south from it, shown on the Madeba Map, may have originated at this period; beneath it was a great sewer of Roman date which remains in use to-day. A rebuilding of the walls belonged to c AD 300.
In the Byzantine period, with the official acceptance of Christianity, a great period of prosperity began, with religious buildings such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre springing up. The excavations of 1927 showed that the town was then once more expanding along Ophel. It is probable however that this area was not walled again until the time of the Empress Eudocia in the 6th cent. The church built by the Empress over the Pool of Siloam was explored by Bliss in 1897.
In the 7th cent., Jerusalem fell to the infidel. After an occupation by the Persians from AD 614-628, it fell to the invading Moslems in AD 637. Hamilton has shown (QDAP x) that the lower course of the present north wall for the most part belongs to an early Islamic build, and it is very probable, from the description of style, that the later wall found by Bliss and Dickie at the furthest south extent of the city between the tips of the two ridges belongs to this period. The supreme example of the early Arab work is the great sanctuary of the Dome of the Rock, on the site of the Jewish Temple.
The ephemeral Crusader occupation left many relics in Jerusalem, mainly in the churches, such as that of the Holy Sepulchre, but also at the Citadel, where the tower Phasael, the 'Tower of David', was transformed into both citadel and royal residence. Of the period when Jerusalem fell once more to the Moslems, there are few relics, but fragments of a wall found by Bliss and Dickie on the east slope of the western ridge suggest that parts of the southern ridges were included at this time. The present walls, bounding the Old City of Jerusalem, and excluding the southern spurs, were constructed by Suleiman the Magnificent after the Turkish conquest in AD 1517.
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8. Modern Jerusalem - The city bounded by the wall built by Suleiman the Magnificent remained the essential Jerusalem down to the time of the British Mandate. Though a Moslem city, dominated by the great sanctuary of the Dome of the Rock, a remarkable tolerance enabled aliens to live there, and the Old City had its Christian, Armenian, and Jewish quarters. With the establishment of the British Mandate in 1919, Jerusalem became the headquarters of the Mandatory Power. A considerable expansion took place, and a New City grew up outside the walls, mainly to the west and northwest. When the division of Palestine between Arabs and Jews took place after the end of the Mandate in 1948, Jerusalem became the frontier point at the end of a Jewish salient into the hill-country. The western and half the northern walls of the Old City form to-day the boundary between the two. The New City is now entirely Jewish, and has expanded enormously. A new Arab city is rapidly growing up to the north of the old walls. [Article: Dictionary of the Bible, J.Hastings, 2nd Ed., T&T.Clark, 1963 - K. M. K.]
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