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THE
CITY OF JERUSALEM

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

HEROD’S TEMPLE.

From the model by Miss M. A. Duthoit.

Frontispiece]

THE
CITY OF JERUSALEM

BY COL. C. R. CONDER
LL.D., M.R.A.S., R.E.

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1909

PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

PREFACE

The object of this volume is to present in a convenient form the results of research and exploration concerning the history and buildings of the city of Jerusalem—results which have accumulated during the last half-century, but which are scattered in many expensive works not easily accessible for the general reader. The story of forty centuries is carried down to the present year, and reliance is chiefly placed on monumental information.

Cheltenham,
January 5th, 1909.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE
CITY OF JERUSALEM

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

I first set eyes on Jerusalem one summer morning in 1872. The view—a mile away—of the long grey wall, the cypress trees of the Armenian garden, and the single minaret at the west gate, was not then obstructed by the row of Jewish cottages since built. The population was only about a third of what it now is. The railway station was not thought of, and only a few villas outside the gate existed, while the suburbs to north and south had not grown up, and Olivet was not covered with modern buildings. I passed two winters (1873–5) in the city, the second in a house in the Jews’ quarter, and later on (1881–2) a third winter at the hotel; and during these visits my time was mainly occupied in wandering among the less-known corners of the town. It was a period very favourable for exploration. The survey by Sir Charles Wilson, the researches of de Vogüé, and the wonderful excavations of Sir Charles Warren, were then recent. The German Emperor, William I., had just ordered the clearing out of the eastern half of the great square of St. John’s Hospital, having been given by the Sultan the site of Charlemagne’s hospice beside the Church of St. Mary Latin. In 1874 Mr. Henry Maudeslay was exploring the ancient scarps at the south-west corner of the Hebrew city; and, by the Sultan’s order, the Dome of the Rock—deconsecrated for a time—was being repaired, while other excavations were in progress outside the city on the north.

DISCOVERIES

I was thus able to walk in my socks all over the surface of the sacred Ṣakhrah “rock,” and to ascend the scaffolding to the dome above, in order to examine the ancient mosaics of our seventh century, as well as those on the outside, where the old arcaded battlement of the ninth century was just laid bare. I penetrated, by the old rock-cut aqueduct at the north-west corner of the Ḥaram, to the Herodian wall, and discovered the buttresses of the Temple rampart still standing, and just like those at Hebron. In the Jews’ quarter I found the old hospice of the Teutonic Order, and the chapel of the Holy Ghost. In 1881 I crawled through the Siloam tunnel with two comrades, in danger of our lives, to find the point where the two parties of Hezekiah’s workmen heard each other calling, and joined their work by a cross cut east and west. These were but a few additions to the work of my predecessors, and since 1882 many other valuable discoveries have been made by Mr. Bliss, Mr. Stewart Macalister, and other explorers, which will be described in due course. We no longer depend on the writings of Josephus and Tacitus, or on the confused accounts of mediæval pilgrims. Our ideas are founded on existing remains. We have Hezekiah’s own inscription at Siloam; the text (found by M. Clermont-Ganneau) which forbade Gentiles to enter the court of Herod’s Temple; the red paint instructions which his master-masons scrawled on the foundations of the mighty ramparts; the votive text to Serapis set up later by Roman soldiers; the Greek inscriptions of Byzantine monks in tombs on the south side of the Hinnom Valley, and, yet earlier, those on the ossuaries, which pious Jews and Jewish Christians used in gathering the bones of their fathers for burial in the old tombs east and north of the Holy City. We have Armenian and Georgian mosaic texts, and Gothic tombstones of Crusaders. Finally, we have the great Kufic, Karmathian, and Arabic texts of the Khalîfahs and Sulṭâns of Islâm, who founded or repaired the beautiful buildings in the Ḥaram.

But all this information is still scattered in expensive memoirs, or separate reports of exploring societies; and it is remarkable that, in spite of the great accumulation of true information during the last half-century, no general account of the history of Jerusalem—as a city—exists, though large volumes of controversial literature continue to appear. It is hoped that the present volume will give a clear idea of what is now actually known, and of the natural deductions from the facts.

Recent visitors have felt themselves perplexed by conflicting statements as to the Bible sites—“Two Zions, two Temple areas, two Bethanys, two Gethsemanes, two or more Calvarys, three Holy Sepulchres, several Bethesdas.”[1] The statement is perhaps an exaggeration, and the discrepancies as a whole are by no means recent, being due to ancient misunderstandings or conjectures. Tradition is overlaid by tradition in the long period of at least 3,400 years since Jerusalem first became a royal city of the Amorite. Jewish traditions were followed by those of Christians and Moslems, who were alike ill informed as to ancient history. The Crusaders brought in new ideas, and often rejected those of the Eastern Churches. The Franciscans, after 1300 A. D., were deprived of some churches, and the Pope sanctioned the transference of old sites to other places. It is true that some literary critics have recently tried to prove that the “city of David” was not a royal city on the mountain top, but a mere hamlet on the tail of the Temple ridge. They have unfortunately—as unconscious heirs of the prejudices of Voltaire—been misled (as in so many other cases) by fixing on a single allusion, while ignoring other accounts, and dismissing the statements of Josephus as merely “traditional”; but they have not given due consideration to the results of exploration, and they have shown but slight acquaintance with the scientific study of ancient architecture.[2] As a rule, however, it is not the modern theorist but the ancient pilgrim who is responsible for the confusion; and the agreement reached already, on the more important questions of topography, has been the outcome of actual research and of monumental studies. No one seems now to doubt that the Temple stood on the top of the eastern ridge. The positions of Olivet and Siloam have never been questioned. Herod’s palace is placed by all in the north-west corner of the upper city, near the so-called “Tower of David,” and Antonia on the rock of the present barracks at the north-west corner of the Temple courts. There was a time when the differences of opinion were much greater. One theorist even went so far as to assert that Hebron was the true site of ancient Jerusalem. But the topography has hardly been changed since Nehemiah’s age. The two great citadels are still held as Turkish strongholds, the Temple is still a sacred enclosure, the upper and lower markets are still where they always were, and even the dung-hills outside the wall are close to the “Dung Gate” of Hebrew times. We may sweep aside the misconceptions due to vague literary statements, and found ourselves not on paper, but on rock and stone, on contemporary inscriptions and architectural remains.

EXCAVATIONS

Ancient cities, as we now know—whether at Troy, Lachish, and Gezer, or at Rome and in London—were constantly rebuilt on the ruins of towns previously laid waste or burned. They present successive strata, with buildings that are themselves not all of one date, and which were sometimes carried down to rock, sometimes merely founded on the old walls and roofs. The street pavements and the lintels of city gates were renewed even within the period of one city, and more frequently than the walls and other buildings. The earth was disturbed, so that old objects were brought up to the surface, and recent objects fell into the foundation trenches, presenting many puzzles for the explorer; but, broadly speaking, the strata are as a rule clearly traceable, giving an historic sequence for the successive cities. In parts of Jerusalem the valleys within the walls have gradually been filled with earth and ruined masonry to a depth of 40 or 50 feet, and it is only where the bare rock is on the surface that we can feel we are standing on the very ground trodden by the feet of our Lord. There are at least six successive cities to be studied at Jerusalem, lying one above another where the depth of the debris is greatest. Within quite recent times the level of some streets has been raised when they were repaved. In the twelfth century “Christian Street,” as it is now called, rose gradually northward, being about 15 feet higher up hill at the point where it passed the west door of the Cathedral of the Holy Sepulchre than at the corner where it joined David Street, and where was the Chapel of St. John Baptist belonging to the Knights of St. John. But to-day Christian Street runs level, and the floor of the chapel is 25 feet below the street, being on the same level as that of the floor of the cathedral. Yet even this chapel floor is 10 feet above the original level of the rock, as it descends into the great Tyropœon Valley. When I first visited Jerusalem, the buildings of the Hospital were covered with earth for some depth above the vaulted roofs of the twelfth-century buildings. Soon after, this earth was removed on donkeys, which passed in a long procession daily out at the west gate, where they made a mound on which Jewish shops now stand. Thus the central valley was filled in, to a depth of 20 feet, before the Crusaders began to build, and has been again filled in another 20 feet or more since the thirteenth century; while on the outside of the Temple, as we stand on the pavement at the Jews’ Wailing-place and gaze on the mighty rampart towering above, we must remember that we only see less than half its present height, and that it goes down beneath us nearly 40 feet, to the older pavement of Herod’s age, which was itself 20 feet above the foundation rocks. The causeway to the north of this is 90 feet above the rock, but in the sixth century the street was at least 40 feet lower, and in the time of Herod some 30 feet lower still, yet already 20 feet here also above rock. Such measurements, accurately ascertained by Sir Charles Warren, whose mine on the north-east side of the Temple was sunk through the shingle to a depth of 125 feet, will serve to show the gradual growth of the rubbish and the effacement of the ancient natural outline in the valleys which ran within the city.

TWO SCENES

Many scenes in modern Jerusalem rise before me in recalling the times when I lived within the walls, and passed so many days in the Temple enclosure, or in that grim church, defiled with blood, which some among us are glad to think of as not marking the new sepulchre without the city where the Prince of Peace was laid. But two scenes especially come back to mind. The first is that of the sleeping town before the gates were opened to admit the peasant women and their donkey-loads of cakes and vegetables. In the purple gloom the domes are beginning to shine, wet with the heavy dew, as the light spreads behind Olivet “as far as Hebron”—to quote the Mishnah. The silence is broken suddenly by the musical cry of the Muedhdhin on the minaret of a mosque—a long, rolling, and tremulous note, echoing all over Jerusalem, as he “testifies there is no God but God,” and calls to the faithful that “prayer is better than sleep.” The simple dignity of Islâm contrasts with the superstition, the hurried services, the tawdry magnificence of degraded Eastern churches, and we understand how it was that the reformed faith of Muḥammad conquered Asia. The second scene is that of the summer noon, which presents to us an epitome of the long history of the Holy City. The great Herodian tower of the upper city glares with tawny stone against the blue sky. The rough cobbles of the slippery market-place are crowded with chattering peasants. A few pious Moslems, unconscious of the world, are praying with their faces towards Mekkah on the steps of the Protestant bishop’s palace, where the town dogs also lie in summer, but go down to the covered bazaar when the winter rains and snow begin. The Armenian patriarch is being escorted, from St. James on Sion to the Holy Sepulchre, by a modest procession. A Moslem bier passes by, and men crowd round it to lend their shoulders for a few steps as a pious act. The little Pharisee, with his lovelocks and dirty gaberdine—or resplendent in his fur cap on the sabbath, just as Rembrandt drew his fathers—is jostled in the narrow street of David, yet holds his fingers on the pulses of the city life. Above the cries of the water-seller and the chinking of the brass sherbet-cups, the screams of women and the jangling of the metal plates that serve for bells in churches, rises one recurrent note from the blind beggar who wanders through the streets, forever calling aloud to the “everlasting God.” We might almost expect to see a Templar ride by, with his white gown and blood-red cross over the mail coat, or the page of some Frankish noble in stripes of yellow and crimson. But instead we witness the long procession of half-naked Dervish fanatics, with banners, on their way to the Ḥaram, and then to the “tomb of Moses” west of Jericho. They bear spears and swords, and are preceded by jesters with fox-tails or by a convict who has been tarred and covered with cotton wool—ancient survivals of pagan Saturnalia. The Jew, the Greek, the Copt, the Georgian, the Armenian, the Arab, and the Turk mingle with the modern European and with the Franciscan monk from Italy in the narrow lane; and black-veiled ladies with white cloaks, seated on crimson saddles high up on the white Damascene asses, are led to the shops, or to the lower fruit-market which glows with colour, its green and gold contrasting with the violet or rich brown robes of the merchants. The whole history of Jerusalem is represented by its crowd to-day.

RELICS

In endeavouring to follow that history we must no doubt give due attention to tradition, for tradition records the sincere beliefs of mankind. In cases where the Jew, the Christian, and the Moslem all honour the same site, it generally appears that we have the actual spot described, or casually noticed, in the Bible. But there are not many such sites in Palestine, except the tombs of the Hebrew patriarchs at Hebron, the grave of Rachel near Bethlehem, Jacob’s Well east of Shechem, and—in Jerusalem itself—the sites of Siloam and Olivet, of the Temple itself, and of Herod’s palace and tower. As to others, there is not a single existing site in the Holy City that is mentioned in connection with Christian history before the year 326 A. D., when Constantine’s mother adored the two footprints of Christ on Olivet. We may not charge the priests of the Catholic Church with “pious fraud,” for they were no doubt as sincere as those who of late have created a new site for the Sepulchre by enthusiasm without knowledge. There is something very pathetic in the story of men who came on foot from Gaul and Britain in early times, to fortify their faith by seeing for themselves the very places seen by their Lord, to be buried near Him, or to kiss the footprints and finger prints which they were shown on the rocks of Olivet, or in the Aksa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, where they are now preserved and visited by Moslems only. The adoration of relics is not peculiar to Christianity. It is an outcome of that intense longing for certainty and finality which is natural to all mankind. The Moslem and the Buddhist had from the first their relics as well as the Christian—nay, we go back to the days of Herodotus, when the footprints of Herakles was shown in Scythia, or of Pausanias who saw “Leda’s egg” in a temple. But however sincere the beliefs of the past may have been, we cannot but confess, when studying in detail the traditional topography of Jerusalem, that it has grown and changed just as the city itself has done, because of the succession of various ruling races, and because to Jew, Christian, and Moslem alike there has always been a Holy City here which they coveted, and for which they shed their blood.

Some few of the principal sites have remained always the same; others have been often shifted; and the number of sites has been increased continually from century to century. Most of the pilgrims, whether Christian or Moslem, were illiterate; and those who were better educated, and whose accounts were copied and re-copied more or less accurately, were often strangely ignorant of the Bible and of the history of Palestine. To the ordinary pilgrim the relics and the pictures were “books of the ignorant,” and strange superstitions—such as that of the crypt where “Solomon tortured demons”[3]—are mingled with the statements of the Gospels. The first record of a pilgrim visit is that of a traveller from Bordeaux in 333 A. D. He makes the curious mistakes of supposing the Transfiguration to have occurred on Olivet and David’s victory over Goliath near Jezreel. St. Silvia of Aquitaine, half a century later, accepts as genuine the forged correspondence between Christ and King Abgarus; and after the fifth century the legends of the Apocryphal Gospels—especially those concerning the Virgin Mary—form the foundation of traditional topography in many cases. In the Middle Ages the pilgrims are also influenced by the comments on the Gospels of Tertullian, Origen, and other Christian fathers, though the works of those fathers who wrote before 325 A. D. show no acquaintance with any Jerusalem sites. For these reasons it is evident that the traditions must be received with caution; and, as the pilgrim texts are only valuable in showing contemporary facts and beliefs, their accounts may be here summed up as far as regards traditional sites.

THE TRADITIONS

When Helena, the mother of Constantine, visited Palestine in 326 A. D., she was shown nothing at Jerusalem except the two footprints of Christ on Olivet.[4] The story of her discovery of the true Cross is not noticed till about a century later,[5] though as early as 348 A. D. St. Cyril of Jerusalem[6] speaks of fragments of the Cross as being distributed “piecemeal throughout the world.” The site of the Ascension is thus the first of all to be mentioned. A church was built by Constantine before 333 A. D. on the summit of Olivet, and the two footprints of the Saviour impressed in the rock continued to be shown down to the Middle Ages, though in 1342 A. D. only one was pointed out, just as at present.[7] Two other footprints of Christ were shown after the fifth century: one in the Church of St. Mary (now in the Aḳṣa Mosque), which is still shown by Moslems[8]; the other on the Ṣakhrah rock, which is now called “the noble footstep” of Muḥammad[9]; while the marks now called finger-prints of the Angel Gabriel, on this rock, were supposed to have been those of our Lord, as were others in the Cave of the Agony.[10] Yet later, in the sixteenth century, footmarks of Christ were also shown on the south-east side of the little bridge over the Kidron Valley.[11]

A fragment of the true Cross was adored by St. Paula and by St. Silvia, near Calvary, sixty years after the time of Helena’s visit; and St. Silvia was also shown the “title” once affixed to the same. About 530 A. D. the discovery of three crosses is mentioned as due to Helena. The fragment was taken by Chosroes II. to Persia, but recovered in 628 A. D., and removed to Constantinople with other relics in 634 A. D. As seen in St. Sophia by Arculphus, half a century later, there appear to have been three pieces, each less than 3 feet in length. In 1192 A. D. another fragment was believed to be in the keeping of the Syrian bishop of Lydda, besides that one which Saladin captured in 1187.[12] St. Silvia gives an extraordinary account of the precautions taken when pilgrims were allowed to kiss the original relic, due to the fact that a wretch had once bitten off a piece, which he tried to carry away in his mouth, probably meaning to sell it in Europe.[13]

“Solomon’s seal” and the “horn of David” were apparently the only other relics shown in the fourth century at the Anastasis Church,[14] but in the sixth we find described the onyx cup of the Last Supper, the lance and sponge used at the Crucifixion, and the crown of thorns. These also were removed by Heraclius to Constantinople with the Cross, and the crown of thorns was afterwards sent to St. Louis of France, who built for it the Sainte Chapelle. Yet in 867 A. D. Bernard the Wise was shown a crown of thorns hanging up in the Church of St. Sion,[15] while a silver chalice takes the place of the onyx cup in 680 A. D., and appears to have been also regarded as the original relic. The stone which the angel rolled away from the sepulchre is noticed even by Cyril and St. Paula, and is spoken of about 680 A. D. as broken in two. In the eighth century it had disappeared, and a square pointed stone was shown instead; yet a hundred years later the substitute was accepted as being the original.[16]

THE HOLY FIRE

Many marvels were reported to occur in the Church of the Resurrection. Theodorus (or Theodosius, as he is also called), in 530 A. D., was told that the holy lance, which had been made into a cross, “shone at night like the sun by day.” St. Silvia says that at the early morning service no lights were brought into the church, but that they were supplied from an ever-burning lamp within the Cave of the Sepulchre. This seems to be the germ of the later “holy fire,” which appeared at Easter, as first clearly described by Bernard the Wise,[17] who tells us that, on the eve of Easter Day, the “Kyrie eleison” was sung until the angel came to light the lamps. In the twelfth century the fire appeared sometimes in the Hospital of St. John or in the Temple enclosure, sometimes in the cathedral, and was said to pass by an underground passage between the two latter. In 1192 Saladin is said to have attended the ceremony, but the Saracens “asserted that it was a fraudulent contrivance.”[18]

The position of the traditional sites of Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, in the middle of the north quarter of Jerusalem, seems to have given rise to suspicions very early. Eusebius[19] speaks of the “new Jerusalem rising opposite the old,” and appears to think that the latter included little more than the traditional Sion and the Temple hill. Later writers[20] are careful to urge that Hadrian was the first to enclose the sacred sites within the city wall, though there is no foundation in contemporary accounts for this assertion. Even the pilgrims were not always satisfied to accept all the traditions. John of Würzburg, about 1160 A. D., knew that the Ṣakhrah rock could not be that of Jacob at Bethel, though Theodorich a dozen years later seems to have accepted what was then a recent tradition, confounding the “House of God”—or Temple—with the city Bethel. Some of the early writers were aware that different statements in the New Testament were “hard to reconcile,” and sites which were called “Galilee”—on Olivet and on Sion—arose from apologetic explanations of the different accounts in the Gospels as to what happened after the Resurrection.[21]

PILLARS OF SCOURGING

Next to the relics in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the sites on Mount Sion were venerated from an early age. A church (now the Mosque of Nebi Dâûd) already existed in the fourth century, and was said to mark the sites of the Last Supper and of the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. By 440 A. D. it had come to be regarded as the oldest church in the world, founded by Christ or by the Apostles. It was regarded by Jews and Christians in the twelfth century as being close to David’s tomb. The Franciscans held it from 1313 till the time of Pope Sixtus IV.[22] (1471–84 A. D.), who sanctioned the transference of the traditions therewith connected to the so-called “House of Caiaphas”—now the small Armenian convent outside the south wall—when the Moslems seized the old church as being the sepulchre of “the prophet David.” About 1547 the Franciscans seem to have recovered this Church of the Cœnaculum, or Last Supper, but had again lost it by 1561. We do not know the reasons given for approving the translation of sites, but such transferences were common even in the end of the thirteenth century, as the Moslems gradually extended their boundaries in Palestine, acquiring many of the older traditional sites which pilgrims were then unable to visit. The “House of Caiaphas” was shown as early as the fourth century as being the place where Peter denied his Lord. It once belonged to the Georgians, whom the Franciscans succeeded, and it afterwards became the burial-place of the Armenian patriarchs. Many traditions clustered round it in the Middle Ages, and the scene of the Virgin’s death in the house of St. John was shown close by on the south. In the church porch was a pillar, noticed by the Bordeaux Pilgrim as that to which Christ was bound for scourging; but in the Middle Ages the site where this pillar stood is often changed, and no less than three positions are now indicated. The original Sion pillar was said, in the sixth century, to have been bidden by Christ to transfer itself from the House of Caiaphas to the Church of St. Sion,[23] and the impress of the Saviour’s face was then to be seen upon it. In the sixteenth century it was supposed to be the pillar on which the cock stood and crowed when Peter denied Christ. Another flagellation pillar was taken to Rome; a third was in the Latin chapel north of the Holy Sepulchre in 1586, and is still shown by Latins; a fourth, close to Calvary, has been shown by the Greeks since 1341; and the Franciscans, since the sixteenth century, have shown the hole where the pillar of scourging once stood in the chapel just north of the Ḥaram.

There were also two prisons in which Christ was placed, according to later accounts; one of them was at the “House of Annas,” near the south wall and within the city. This is now the Syrian convent of the “Olive Tree,” to which tree our Lord was bound. Here also, in the twelfth century, was the prison in which St. Peter was confined by Herod; and the city gate to the south was then supposed to be the “Iron Gate” which opened of itself.[24] The other prison was a chapel, north-east of the Holy Sepulchre, which is not noticed earlier than 1102 A. D., but must be included in the number of chapels found existing by the Crusaders.[25] Finally, another site connected with St. Peter was shown in the twelfth century on the east slope of Sion—namely, the cave where he wept, covered by the chapel of “Gallicantus,” or “Cock-crowing,” which some confused with “Galilee.”

BETHESDA

The sites in and round the Temple enclosure, and that of St. Stephen’s death, with some on Olivet, were equally liable to change in course of time. Thus the Pool of Bethesda has been traditionally pointed out in three separate places. From 333 A. D. down to 440 A. D. the “Sheep Pool,” or Bethesda, is placed at the “Twin Pools,” which still exist in the Antonia fosse,[26] and which may have been cut out of the rock in the time of Herod or later. They are vaulted over with masonry, probably of the sixth century A. D., and gradually disappeared from sight as the level of the street was raised above them; thus already in the sixth century the “Sheep Pool” is placed at some distance from the “House of Pilate,” which immediately adjoined the “Twin Pools.”[27] In the twelfth century Bethesda is always described as being at the “Piscina Interior,” or “inner pool,” a large rock tank west of the Church of St. Anne, which was rediscovered in 1888; but even in the thirteenth century the Templars were showing another site, namely, that which appears on the old map of Jerusalem (about 1308 A. D.), and which is the same now pointed out—the Birket Isrâîl, or “Pool of Israel.”[28] There was considerable difference of opinion also as to where the Prætorium, or “House of Pilate,” should be placed. In the sixth century it was at the Antonia site, where Justinian built a chapel of St. Sophia—now the “Chapel of the Mocking”—inside the Turkish barracks. In the seventh and early in the twelfth centuries it was supposed to be on Mount Sion, but in the thirteenth it was replaced at the north-west corner of the Ḥaram.[29]

The adoration of the Virgin began to be increasingly important after the great schism of 431 A. D., when Nestorius was condemned at Ephesus for refusing to her the title “Mother of God.” In the middle of the sixth century Justinian built his great Basilica of St. Mary on the south side of the Temple enclosure, and the Tomb of the Virgin is not mentioned by pilgrims before this time, nor are any of the other churches of St. Mary which existed within the city. The legend of the “Virgin’s Well,” where she washed the clothes of the infant Jesus, is much later. The underground church supposed in 530 A. D. to be the site of Mary’s tomb was beneath a basilica which Queen Melisinda replaced by the present church in 1161 A. D. She was buried soon after half-way down the steps to the crypt, yet in 1385 her tomb is described as that of “Queen Mary,” while to-day it is known as that of St. Joseph.[30] On Olivet the little cave-chapel of St. Lazarus in Bethany was built over in the fourth century,[31] but the sites of the Pater Noster and Credo chapels, and the Cave of Pelagia, are not noticed before the sixth century. The old “Cave of the Agony” may have been shown as “Gethsemane” in the time of Jerome,[32] but the Latin site on the south side of the road to Bethany was not enclosed by the Franciscans till 1847 A. D. Another site which is often changed is that of the place where Judas hanged himself, which is usually connected with an arch or bridge—no doubt on account of an apocryphal legend which I have been unable to trace.[33] In the sixth century Antony of Piacenza was shown the fig tree of Judas apparently north of the East Gate of Jerusalem; but if Adamnan rightly understood the account of Arculphus, his Gaulish guest in Iona, the bridge was to the south-west of the city, and Judas hanged himself on the west side of the middle arch, where a great fig tree then grew. This bridge is not otherwise mentioned, and in the fourteenth century an elder tree was shown, near Absalom’s tomb, and the little bridge over the Kidron on the east side of which Judas hung, according to Zuallardo.[34]

From the fourth to the sixth century the ancient temple wall at the south-east angle of the enclosure stood up like a “pinnacle” above the ruins, and this was pointed out as the pinnacle on which Christ was placed by the Devil. Close by was the small vaulted chamber where Solomon “wrote Wisdom,” and where (in the “House of Simeon”) was the cradle of Christ. In the middle of the twelfth century a wooden cradle was shown, whereas this is now replaced by a Roman vaulted niche laid flat, which was once intended to hold a statue.[35]

In a Church of St. John on Olivet[36] our Lord was believed, in the ninth century, to have met the woman charged with adultery, and the “writing on the ground” was here shown. Early in the twelfth century this site was transferred to the cave under the Ṣakhrah, where it was still believed to exist in the fourteenth, though the “writing” of Christ was then shown on a stone in the Pater Noster Chapel.

SAINT STEPHEN

Among the earlier sites, that of the stoning of Stephen has also been variously placed at different times. The worship of saints developed in the fifth century, and the tomb of St. Stephen was supposed to have been found, in 415 A. D., at Caphar Gamala, a village which retains its old name still, about 20 Roman miles south-west of Jerusalem. The empress Eudocia, returning after her first visit to the Holy City, brought back to Constantinople the chains of St. Peter, and the right arm of St. Stephen, with the portrait of the Virgin said to have been painted by St. Luke. She retired later to Jerusalem, where she lived sixteen years and died about 460 A. D. She is said to have built a church of St. Stephen at the site of his martyrdom by stoning, outside the North or “Galilee” Gate; but in 530 A. D. a stone was shown on Sion with which he was said to have been slain, and by the twelfth century he was believed to have been there buried. The Crusaders found the church of Eudocia (where she was buried) in ruins, and the North Gate was still called St. Stephen’s down to about 1200 A. D., though about 1160 A. D. the site of the martyrdom is shifted to the west side of the town. It first appears in its present position, outside the East Gate, in the old map of about 1308 A. D. A Greek text has recently been found at this site, bearing the words “This is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall (enter in). Holy Stephen pray for (us).” But this slab may have been transferred from the ancient site outside the North Gate.[37]

LATIN SITES

Many new Latin sites were created by the Crusaders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The chapels then built have been carefully planned and described by Dr. Tobler, Comte M. de Vogüé, and Herr Schick, architect to the German Emperor and the Sultan, who for so many years was an untiring student of Jerusalem. In a few cases the churches mentioned—such of those as St. Agnes and St. Giles—are not yet identified. On Sion, St. Mark, St. Thomas, St. George, and St. James the Less, with the Chapel of the Three Maries, still exist. In the centre of the town, St. Mary Latin, St. Mary Magna, and—north of the Holy Sepulchre—St. Chariton, are now known. On the north-east were St. Anne, St. Mary Magdalene, and—at the Ecce Homo Arch—the church of the “Rest” of Mary. The “Stables of Solomon” are never noticed before the twelfth century, when the “Oak of Rogel” was pointed out where a sacred tree still stands at Siloam, being supposed to be the place where Isaiah was sawn asunder. The “Gate Dolorous” was then the name of that leading from Antonia, and the “School of the Virgin” was the title given to the “Dome of the Roll,” at the south-west corner of the platform of the Dome of the Rock. The “House of Uriah” was then supposed to have been near David’s palace and tower, and the old tank near the Jaffa Gate still bears the name of “Bathsheba’s Bath”; but in the sixteenth century this house was shown at the south-west corner of the Hebrew city, and the bath was transferred to the Birket es Sulṭân. The altar of the Temple is said to have been converted into a sundial by the Saracens,[38] and a block of masonry, south of the Dome of the Rock, was still pointed out in 1874 as the place where a sundial had stood. Finally, the fig tree cursed by Christ was shown at the bend of the road near Bethany; and the place where He “descended from the ass” near Bethphage—a site said even by Bernard the Wise to be marked by a marble slab in 867 A. D.—was to be found in a small chapel, where a block of stone has been recovered, with mediæval Latin texts, and frescoes representing the raising of Lazarus, the fetching of the ass, and a third subject.[39]

After the massacre of the Christians in 1244 A. D., the Franciscans were allowed by the Sulṭân of Egypt to return to Jerusalem, and they alone—for about five centuries—represented Latin Christianity in Palestine. The Latin churches were in ruins, and were either appropriated by Greeks and Armenians, or in other cases were turned into mosques. The Franciscan monastery of St. Saviour was in the north-west corner of the city, where the Latin Patriarchate now is. The friars were the guides of pilgrims after the fall of Acre in 1291 A. D., but they were only able to show sites outside the city, or in the streets, with exception of those in the Holy Sepulchre Cathedral, which, by treaty, was reserved to Christians. This seems to have been the reason why the sites in the Via Dolorosa—which are unnoticed before 1300 A. D.—came to be established. The capital of a pillar has been found, on which the legend of St. Veronica and the “holy handkerchief” is represented,[40] which may be as old as the twelfth century. The Chapel of the “Spasm” of the Virgin, with its mosaic floor, has also been recovered at the point where the Via Dolorosa turns south,[41] and this station is mentioned in the fourteenth century[42]; but only eight stations are noticed in the sixteenth century out of fourteen now shown by the Latins.[43] The “Stone of Unction,” west of Calvary, is first noticed by Ludolph of Suchem, about 1330 A. D., as a Latin site, and “Herod’s House”—still extant, near the “red minaret” in the north-east of the town—is mentioned by Sir John Maundeville in 1342 A. D. Two footprints of Christ continued to be here shown down to the present century, and this place was still known in 1846, but has now ceased to be reckoned among the sacred sites.[44] The place where Christ wept for Jerusalem on Olivet, and the ancient tomb in the Hinnom Valley (probably that of Ananus), which was converted into a chapel with a frescoed roof and called the “Retreat of the Apostles,”[45] seem to be first noticed by Zuallardo in 1586 A. D., as are also the “House of Dives” and the “House of the Pharisee,” in the Via Dolorosa.

LATER SITES

Detailed study of the traditional sites, fixed by the Oriental and Roman Churches, thus serves to show that none of them go back to the earlier years of the fourth century saving those of the Ascension, St. Sion, Calvary, and the Holy Sepulchre. The statements of the pilgrims prove to us that the remainder, as a whole, were vague and shifting identifications, on which no reliance can be placed. We learn from the Gospel (Luke xxiv. 50) that our Lord led His disciples out “as far as to Bethany,” and He is not said to have ascended from the summit of Olivet. The site of Calvary was considered to require defence even in the fourth century, because it was within the city. There is a gap of three hundred years, which is not bridged by any ancient allusion even, separating the first notice of these older sites from the time of the Crucifixion. Pious opinions, sanctioned by Popes and Patriarchs, became fixed traditions as time went on, and the number of the sites constantly increased, while Greeks and Latins showed rival “vestigia” in rival shrines. Relics were perhaps often meant only to be regarded as representations of objects connected with the Passion; but, in the dark age of Gothic ignorance, the belief in miracles wrought by bones of the saints infected Christianity with all the superstitions which the illiterate converts brought in from paganism. The first Christians were intent on the future rather than on the past, and the Gospels themselves say nothing definite as to the position of Calvary or of the new tomb in the garden. The pilgrims devoutly believed that they had kissed the true Cross and the actual footprints of Christ, and knew little of the earlier history of the sites where they gave alms and received indulgences. But it is necessary, in endeavouring to ascertain the truth, to distinguish between their beliefs and their accounts of existing buildings, and we must found our study of the history of Jerusalem on existing monuments and inscriptions, and as far as possible on contemporary statements—on science, not on legend—even if such examination of facts leads us to discard as improbable sites which have so long been sacred to Christians; while we must also admit that certainty and finality are still impossible, in cases where the actual evidence is meagre. The account here given of the traditions will serve to show that they have not been disregarded as an element in the study of various questions of historical importance.

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER I

[1] H. Rix, “Tent and Testament,” 1907, p. v.

[2] The views of Thrupp were revived in 1880 by Dr. Robertson Smith, who has been followed by Dr. Sayce and Dr. G. A. Smith. The untenable character of this theory has, once more, been ably shown by the Rev. Selah Merrill quite recently.

[3] Bordeaux Pilgrim, 333 A. D., “Crypta ubi Salomon dæmones torquebat.”

[4] Eusebius, “Life of Constantine,” iii. 42.

[5] Rufinus (died 410 A. D.), i. 7; Theodoret (c. 440 A. D.), i. 17; Sozomen (c. 450 A. D.), ii. 1, quoted by Robinson, “Bib. Res.” i. p. 374.

[6] Cyril, “Catech. Lect.” iv. 10, x. 19, xiii. 4, 9. These lectures were given in the Basilica of the Anastasis to the neophytes preparing for baptism at Easter, 347–8 A. D.

[7] Maundeville, 1342 A. D., “And yet there appears the imprint of His left foot in the stone.”

[8] Antony of Piacenza (c. 570 A. D.); now Ḳadam’Aisa, or “footprint of Jesus.”

[9] Ḳadam esh Sherif. John of Würzburg (c. 1160 A. D.), “Pede domini calcatus et insignatus.”

[10] John of Würzburg.

[11] Zuallardo, “Dev. Viag.” (1586), p. 152.

[12] “Paula et Eustochium”; Silvia, “Perigrinatio”; Theodorus; Adamnanus (c. 680 A. D.); Geoffrey de Vinsauf, v. 53, cf. i. 5.

[13] St. Silvia, “Dicitur quidam fixisse morsum ut furasset sancto ligno.”

[14] St. Silvia (385 A. D.), Theodorus (c. 530 A. D.).

[15] Theodorus (c. 530 A. D.), Antoninus (c. 570 A. D.), Arculphus (c. 680 A. D.), Bernard (c. 867 A. D.).

[16] Pilgrimage of St. Paula (384 A. D.); St. Willibald (c. 750 A. D.), “In similitudine prioris lapidis”; Bernard (867 A. D.), “Lapidem ... quem angelus revolvit.”

[17] Bernard (867 A. D.), “Veniente angelo in lampadibus accenditur.”

[18] Theodoricus (c. 1172 A. D.); Geof. de Vinsauf, v. 16.

[19] Eusebius, “Life of Constantine,” iii. 33.

[20] Sæwulf (c. 1102 A. D.), John of Würzburg (c. 1160 A. D.), and others.

[21] Matt. xxviii. 16; Luke xxiv. 52; John xxi. 1; Acts i. 11, 12.

[22] Eucherius (c. 440 A. D.), Theodorus (530 A. D.), Theodoricus (c. 1172 A. D.), Pierre Belon (1553 A. D.), Zuallardo (1586 A. D.). The last named mentions this remarkable transference of sites (p. 129).

[23] Pilgr. of Paula; Bordeaux Pilgrim; St. Silvia; Zuallardo, “Dev. Viag.”; Theodorus (c. 530 A. D.), “Columna quæ fuit in domo Caiaphæ, ad quam Dominus Christus flagellatus est, modo in sanctam Sion jussu Domini ipsa columna secuta est.”

[24] Acts xii. 3, 10.

[25] Sæwulf (c. 1102 A. D.); John of Würzburg (c. 1160), “Carcer Domini ... in sinistra apsida ecclesiæ.”

[26] Bordeaux Pilgrim, “Piscinæ gemellares ... quæ appelluntur Bethsaida”; Eucherius, “Bethesda gemino ... lacu.”

[27] Theodorus, 530 A. D.

[28] The Templar rival site is noticed in an anonymous thirteenth-century tract. The map of 1308 shows the Piscina (interior) west of St. Anne, but the Piscina Probatica south of that church. The pilgrims usually call the pool Bethsaida, as in the Vat. MS. (Sinaitic Bethzatha), and note its “five cloisters” (John v. 2). Bethesda probably means “house of the stream,” but Beth-ṣiddei would be “the house of sides,” or “cloisters.”

[29] Theodorus, Armenian account, Antoninus Martyr, Abbot Daniel (c. 1106 A. D.), John of Würzburg.

[30] R. Röhricht, “Die Jerusalemfahrt des Peter Sparnau,” 1385.

[31] Onomasticon, s.v. Bethania.

[32] Ibid., s.v. Gethsemane; St. Silvia (385 A. D.).

[33] Acts i. 20. It may be suspected that the idea of the bridge originated in a confusion between the Greek epaulis, “abode,” and ep-aulou, “over a pipe” (or “aqueduct”—aulōn), the bridge of Adamnanus being that of the low-level aqueduct south-west of the city, as Robinson supposed.

[34] Ant. Martyr (c. 570 A. D.); Adamnanus (c. 680 A. D.), “Pons lapideus occurrit eminus per vallem ad austrum recto tramite directus arcubus sussaltus”; Sir John Maundeville (1342 A. D.); Zuallardo (1586 A. D.), “Dev. Viag.,” p. 152. The “Arch of Judas” was inside the city about 1187 A. D.

[35] Bordeaux Pilgrim, Eucherius (c. 440 A. D.), Theodorus (c. 530 A. D.), Sæwulf (c. 1102 A. D.), John of Würzburg (c. 1160 A. D.).

[36] John viii. 3, 6. Bernardus (867 A. D.), Sæwulf, John of Würzburg, Maundeville.

[37] “Mem. West Pal. Survey,” iii. p. 24; Reland, Pal. p. 688; Theodorus (530 A. D.); Sæwulf (1102 A. D.); Abbot Daniel (c. 1106 A. D.); John of Würzburg (c. 1160 A. D.); Phocas (c. 1185 A. D.); “Citez de Jhérusalem” (after 1187 A. D.); Marino Sanudo (c. 1320 A. D.); Regesta Reg. Hierosol. No. 329 (1157 A. D.). C. K. Spyridonidis, in Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly (April 1907, p. 137), gives the inscription.

[38] John of Würzburg, “Quod a Sarracenis postea mutatum est in horologium.” He follows Fetellus (c. 1151–7 A. D.).

[39] “Mem. Survey West Pal.,” Jerusalem vol., 1883, pp. 331–40.

[40] Canon Dalton and M. Clermont-Ganneau, Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly, 1900, pp. 166 seq.

[41] Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly, 1902, p. 122.

[42] Marino Sanudo (c. 1320 A. D.).

[43] Zuallardo, “Dev. Viag.” (1586 A. D.), gives a drawing of the whole course of the Via Dolorosa.

[44] Schick, Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly, April 1896, p. 122, July 1896; T. Tobler, “Topogr.,” i. p. 445.

[45] “Mem. Survey West Pal.,” Jerusalem vol., 1883, p. 419; Josephus, “Wars,” V. xii. 2.

CHAPTER II
BEFORE DAVID

The mysterious figure of Melchizedek King of Salem haunted the memory of Hebrew writers in later times.[46] The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, “Now consider how great this man was unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.” Salem appears to have been Jerusalem, according to the Psalm[47] in which we read, “In Salem is His dwelling, and His abode in Zion”; and the “King’s Dale” is placed by Josephus near the city, where perhaps it is again noticed later.[48] The Samaritans, who grouped so many sacred sites round Gerizim, seem to have believed that Salem was the Shalem afterwards visited by Jacob, east of Shechem—the Salim of the Fourth Gospel, now the village of Sâlim, which is mentioned in the Paschal Chronicle; while in the fourth century, according to Jerome, “The palace of Melchisedec was there shown, its magnificence witnessed by the size of ruins of ancient workmanship.”[49] We may, however, accept the Hebrew belief that Salem (“safety”) is the same as Uru-salimu (“the city of safety”), which we now know to have been the Amorite name for their royal city.

Melchizedek appears and disappears suddenly, without any explanation as to his race or lineage. Josephus believed him to have been a Canaanite, and fixes his date as founder of Jerusalem about 2058 B. C. The chronology of the Hebrew text of Genesis would, however, make it about a century earlier, in the “days of Amraphel king of Shinar,” whom Sir Henry Rawlinson identified with ’Ammurabi, the famous sixth King of Babylon, who has been shown to have acceded in 2139 B. C.,[50] and who was thus the contemporary of Abraham. It would seem that this priest-king of Jerusalem was the suzerain of the petty kings of the cities in the Jordan Valley; but Abraham’s tithes are said to have been offered to Jehovah as the “most high God,” and not to Melchizedek as his over-lord. Jerusalem thus appears, even in the earliest notice, to have been a sacred city,[51] and we are no longer surprised—in reading the account in Genesis—at the civilisation of Abraham’s age, since we know that Canaan then shared, in some measure at least, the culture of the two ancient empires of Babylon and of Egypt, which disputed its possession.

The original population of the city is said to have been both Amorite and Hittite,[52] nor is there any reason to doubt that an outlying tribe of the latter race, coming south from Syria, may have then occupied the mountains of Salem and Hebron, though early in the sixteenth century B. C. they were driven out of Palestine by Thothmes III. It is now very generally agreed that the Amorites were a Semitic race, and the existing tablets written in and after the fifteenth century by Amorites are in a Semitic language like that of the Babylonians. Hittite letters, on the other hand, show quite as clearly that this race of pigtailed warriors was Mongoloid, and closely akin to the Akkadians of Babylonia, whose speech was very similar to pure Turkish.[53]

EARLY NAMES

The antiquity of Jerusalem seems to be indicated by the fact that certain names connected with the city cannot be explained as ordinary Hebrew words. Jebus, Zion, Hinnom, and Topheth are terms not traced to any Hebrew roots, and they have always puzzled scholars as much as the name Jerusalem itself did until it was shown to be of Amorite origin. Even the meaning of Moriah—the name of the Temple hill—is doubtfully explained as “vision of Jehovah,” for the Greek translators understood it to mean “the high.”[54] It is, however, connected[55] both with Abraham’s vision of Jehovah, and also perhaps with that of David when the “Angel of the Presence” sheathed his sword on the Temple hill. Jebus (Yebûs) is perhaps Hittite for “strong abode,” equivalent to the Amorite Uru-Salimu, or “safe city.”[56] Zion has been supposed to mean a “fortress,” but the derivation is forced; as a Hittite word it would rather seem to signify a “palace” or “temple.”[57] For Hinnom and Topheth no Hebrew explanations have been found possible, yet both may perhaps be rendered as of Canaanite origin: the former would signify “prince” (En-num), and the latter “flat” or “low” (tuptu), applying to the lowest part of the valley junction on the south-east side of the city.[58] The “King’s Vale” may have been the “deep valley of Molech,” or it may have been equivalent to the older Hinnom (or Ben-Hinnom), “the valley of the prince” or of the “prince’s son.” It is remarkable that its modern name (Wâdy Rabâbeh) appears to mean the “valley of lordship.”

Whatever be thought as to the meaning of these ancient and obscure words, we know that a Hittite still lived in Jerusalem in David’s time, and his name Uriah has no probable meaning in Hebrew. In Hittite it was no doubt Ur-ia, “the worshipper of Ya,” while the Jebusite King Araunah—whose name is so variously spelt—was probably known as Ur-ena, “the worshipper of Baal.”[59] Thus the geographical and personal names alike seem to indicate the early presence of both Amorites and Hittites in Jerusalem.

Between the time of Abraham and that of Joshua’s conquest we hear nothing about the city for six hundred years. After this we have remarkable evidence of its existence as a royal city in the extant tablets of the Tell Amarna collection, written to the Pharaoh by the Amorite king of Uru-salimu. Amenophis III. of Egypt was the contemporary of Rimmon-nirari of Assyria, who reigned about 1500 B. C., and Amenophis IV. was the contemporary of Burnaburias of Babylon, who acceded about 1440 B. C.[60] Palestine, having been conquered by Thothmes III. about 1580 B. C., was peacefully ruled by Egypt when Amenophis III. acceded to the throne. The population appears at this time to have been entirely Semitic, no letters in any but the Babylonian language occurring among those of its rulers, while the names of all the cities mentioned, even in the sixteenth century B. C., are also Semitic. The Philistines, like the rest of the Canaanites, used the Babylonian language and script, and they worshipped the Babylonian sea-god Dagon, whom ’Ammurabi had adored. Their names are also Semitic, not only in the Bible but in the Tell Amarna tablets, and in the later inscriptions of Sennacherib.[61] If any Hittites still remained in the south, they were no longer a ruling tribe, though in North Syria and Cappadocia they were then powerful and independent. The Philistines were loyal to Egypt, but they do not appear to have had any power in the mountains till four centuries later, and the loyalty of the Amorite kings of Jerusalem and Gezer was much suspected by the Pharaohs.

THE AMORITES

About the middle of the reign of Amenophis III. a rebellion broke out in Syria.[62] Hittites and Amorites invaded Phœnicia, attacked Damascus, and spread in Bashan, shortly before the time when Israel appeared in Moab according to the Bible chronology. Amenophis was, however, allied with the Kassite ruler of Babylon, and with the Armenian and Cappadocian monarchs of the same Mongoloid race. He sent soldiers to Gebal, and the Cappadocians subdued the Amorites. Some twenty years later, Amenophis IV. (son of Amenophis III.) having begun his unfortunate reign, another more formidable revolt occurred. The friendly Armenian king Dusratta had died, and Aziru the Amorite had deserted his obedience, allying himself with the Hittite suzerain of Cappadocia. The Amorites conquered Phœnicia, and Egypt was powerless to aid its Syrian subjects. The hatred of the memory of Amenophis IV., shown in later times, was perhaps due to his loss of the empire rather than to his worship of Asiatic gods, who had been adored in Egypt in the time of his father also; for,[63] like his father, he is addressed by the Asiatic kings as a worshipper of the Egyptian god Amen, and texts from the Egyptian ritual occur on his coffin.

THE ABIRI

The six letters written to Egypt by the King of Jerusalem do not mention the name of the Pharaoh addressed, but, judging from those of other personages concerned, they seem to belong to an early period in this story of rebellion, though Canaan remained in a disturbed condition even as late as 1440 A. D., when Burnaburias of Babylon and Assur-uballid of Assyria—writing to Amenophis IV.—speak of interrupted communications and the robbery of caravans. The name of Jerusalem (Uru-sa-limu or U-ru-sa-limu) has been read with certainty by Dr. Winckler, but the name of the Amorite king is variously rendered. It seems, however, to have probably belonged to the same class with that of Melchizedek, and of Adonizedek, the king killed by Joshua.[64] Jerusalem was being attacked by a people called ’Abiri or Ḥabiri, who destroyed all the Canaanite rulers at Ai, Ajalon, Lachish, and other places; and, since the period is that of the Hebrew Conquest under Joshua, according to the Bible, it is natural to identify these ’Abiri with the Hebrews, as proposed by Dr. Zimmern in Germany. It is true that scholars who follow the views of Lepsius[65] and of Brugsch, formed before any notice of Israel had been discovered in Egyptian monumental texts, have denied this identification. Lepsius argued that the city of Rameses, built by the Hebrews, could not have been so named before the time of Rameses II.; but as it is noticed even as early as the time of Jacob,[66] he was obliged to regard this allusion as an anachronism, which might equally apply to the passage on which he relied. Clearly, however, the allusion can only serve to date the age in which the story of Joseph, as we now have it, was written down together with the narrative of the Exodus. The conclusions of Lepsius—who preferred the libels of Tacitus, and those with which Josephus charges Manetho, to the chronological statements of the Bible—are quite destructive to Old Testament dates. Rameses, however, was the later name of Zoan, the city where the Hebrews dwelt in Egypt, while the site of Pithom—the other “store city” which they built for the Pharaoh—is still doubtful, though supposed by Dr. Naville to be the same as that of Succoth. Lepsius called Rameses II. the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and Mineptah, his son, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, though he ruled two centuries later than the time of Joshua. As, however, we now have a text by Mineptah, in which he notices Israel as being already in Palestine in the fifth year of his reign, it is impossible that the Exodus and the forty years in the desert could have coincided with this period of incipient Egyptian decay. We are left free to accept the new monumental evidence, which illustrates in so remarkable a manner the historic statements of the Book of Joshua.

Jerusalem was not taken by Joshua, though its Amorite king Adonizedek was slain at Makkedah, with Japhia, king of Lachish, and three others.[67] It is remarkable that the Amarna correspondence gives us the name Japhia (yap’aa) as that of the contemporary king of Gezer, for Gezer came to the aid of Lachish, according to the Bible account. Joshua is not named in these tablets, which refer only to a certain Elimelech (a Hebrew name[68]) as one of the invaders, but the letters speak of incidents identical with those narrated in the story of the Hebrew Conquest. The more important passages bearing on the history of Jerusalem may be thus rendered:

JERUSALEM LETTERS

“To the King my Lord thus says ’Abd-ṣadaḳ thy servant, at the feet of my Lord the King seven times and seven times I bow. What have I done to the King my Lord? They urge on thee that an enemy, a sinner, should be seized, that ’Abd-ṣadaḳ has rebelled before the King his Lord. Lo! as for me, no man is my father and none is my friend supporting me. They rebel in this place, great King, striving with me for my father’s house. Why should I sin against the King of Kings? Behold the complaint, O King my Lord. I say to the governor of the King my Lord, ‘Why are ye afraid of the Hebrews?’ and they are afraid to go out, so they send to the presence of the King my Lord.[69] Lo! I say there is ruin of the lands of the King my Lord, as they have sent to the King my Lord; and let the King my Lord know.... The lands of the suzerain[70] have revolted, all that Elimelech has wasted, all the King’s land; and let the King beware as to his land, which I say pleading, and let the King my Lord behold the tears, and the warfare that is mighty against me; and I receive nothing from the King my Lord, and no order ordered in the presence of the King ... as to whether he will order men for a garrison. And let the King my Lord learn, and regard the tears; and now arise, O King my Lord. Now they have expelled the [Egyptian] governor. I say there is ruin of the lands of the King. Will you not hear me?... They have destroyed all the rulers: there is not a ruler [left] for the suzerain.[70] Let the King give countenance to the people: let him order soldiers[71] of the King my Lord. There is not one in the lands of the King. The Hebrew has wasted all the King’s lands, since the King’s soldiers[71] were sent away this year: they were sent away from the lands of the suzerain.[70] Since there was not a soldier [left], there was ruin to the lands of the King my Lord. O Scribe of the King my Lord, this is ’Abd-ṣadaḳ’s plea for soldiers. The lands of the King my Lord are ruined.”

This appeal was repeated more than once, but seems to have met with no reply, except perhaps a demand for hostages to be sent to Egypt (as in the case of the king of Gezer also), though this may refer to a previous period. Meanwhile, the petty kings allied to Jerusalem gathered forces in aid of the city.[72] The Hebrews, it may be noted, are not mentioned in any of the Amarna letters except those from Jerusalem.

“[Behold] what Milkilu [of Gezer] and Suardatu [of Keilah] have done for me as to the land of the King my Lord. They have hired soldiers of Gezer, soldiers of Gimzo: they have taken Rabbah. The King’s land has rebelled to the Hebrews; and now as regards the city Jerusalem, the city called Beth Baalah[73] has revolted [sending?] to the city of Keilah. Let the King listen to ’Abd-ṣadaḳ thy servant, and order soldiers, and recover the King’s land for the King: as there were no soldiers the King’s land has revolted to the Hebrews, who have confounded me and Suardatu and Milkilu.”

In this connection it should be noted that Baalah, or (as also called) Kirjath-jearim, was one of the Hivite cities which did not join the Amorite league, but submitted with Gibeon to Joshua. The passage[74] which seems to refer to hostages is as follows:

“Behold the King my Lord has established his law from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun. It is false what they have falsely said against me. Behold, as for me, am not I a ruler, a man of the house of the King my Lord? Behold I myself am a servant of the King, and I have sent tribute to the King. As for me, no one helps me, no one is my friend, rising for the King. I have remained in this Chiefs city.[75]... I have given eight slaves to Suta, the King’s governor, in charge against me: twenty-one women ... twenty men our prisoners, to remain in the hands of Suta, obeying the King my Lord. There is ruin to all the lands of the King that they have taken fighting me. From the lands of Seir to the city Hareth Carmel they gathered to the rulers, and fought me. Now they despise the Commander, and the King my Lord does not regard tears as they fight against me. Lo! I remain a ship amid the waves. Make ready, great King; you will march to the land of Nahrima and the land of Chezib—and lo! these are fortresses of the King—you will march on the Hebrew. There is not a ruler [left] for the King my Lord, all are destroyed. Lo! they have cut off Turbazu in the city Beth-zilu, with Zimrida, lo! of the city of Lachish—slaves wore him out, they did him to death. The region of Rimmon bewails slaughter ... in the city Zilu there is destruction.”

HEBREW RAIDS

A later letter,[76] referring to four previous messages, gives further details of the war:

“Lo! the land of Gezer, the land of Ashkelon, and the land of Lachish have given them corn, wine, and all else that they have taken away.” “Behold this land of the city Jerusalem—no man aids me, no tribe supports me, nor has risen to support me. Lo! it is done to me as was done to Milkilu, and to the sons of Labaya, who have given the King’s land to the Hebrews. Behold the King my Lord will be just to me, for the men are sorcerers [or malicious]. Let him ask the governors. Lo! strong and many and committing sin, very proud, they demanded property and [threatened] death.... You will purge the lands in the hands of the city of Ashkelon. Let the King ask about them—much corn, much oil, much ... to the command of Pauru the King’s Governor, as far as Jerusalem.” “The men taking messages for the King they bound—four messages sent out by men of the fortress. They marched to block the roads. Like a bird in a snare [I remain]: they [spy?] the city Ajalon. Let me tell the King my Lord, I do not speak rashly sending about the road for the King my Lord, for it is not easy. Lo! the King has established his law in the city Jerusalem for ever, and will not rashly speak of the desertion of the lands of Jerusalem. To the scribe of the King my Lord thus says thy servant Abd-ṣadaḳ. I bow at thy feet, I am thy servant. Render the news well to the King my Lord. O scribe of the King, I am afflicted, great is my affliction, and you do a deed not faithful, against the land of Cush. Hear us. Is there not slaughter, and you ... him, that men of the land of Cush are ... in my city? Let it ... the King to ... salute the King my Lord seven times and seven times for me.”

Another letter, on a different kind of clay, possibly refers to a final retreat from Jerusalem,[77] but it is a fragment only.

“And now the city Jerusalem. Since he went away this land is faithful to the King. Lo! Gaza has remained to the King. Behold, the city Hareth Carmel is Tagi’s, and the people in the city ’Aiath[78] have bowed down. He went far away from the fortress; and have we done this? Lo! Labaya gave gifts to the Hebrews, as Milkilu sent for tribute and the young men said, ‘Is not this fortress annexed by us?’ The men of Keilah gave all they asked; and have we left the city of Jerusalem? The garrisons you ordered are blockaded by the ravages of this fellow whom I fear. Addasi has remained in his fortress at Gaza, [sending] the women ... to Egypt.... To be given to the King.”

The parallelism between the details of this monumental account and those of the Bible narrative in the Book of Joshua, which—in its present form—appears to have been composed in the time of David or of Solomon, is very remarkable, and it is certain that Jerusalem was a royal city and a strong fortress, which at the time when the letters were written had not fallen to the ’Abiri or Hebrews, though there were signs already that its further defence was becoming impossible.

JEBUS

From the Book of Judges we learn that after the death of Joshua the children of Judah smote Jerusalem, and set it on fire. The border between Judah and Benjamin ran on the south side of the city, along the Valley of Hinnom, and to the head of the Valley of Rephaim. The town thus lay in the lot of Benjamin, but the conquest was not complete; for the “children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem, but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day”—that is, till the time of David at least. Josephus thought that the lower city only—perhaps not yet protected by a wall—was taken, and that the upper city was the Jebusite stronghold; nor is this an improbable explanation, since the lower city seems—as will appear later—to have already existed in David’s time. In the time of Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, Jebus was regarded as “the city of a stranger that is not of the children of Israel,” and it even possessed a Canaanite king in David’s time.[79]

We may endeavour therefore to form some idea of the position and extent of Jebusite Jerusalem. It was a royal city, a sacred place, and a fortress of great strength, the taking of which was one of David’s greatest exploits. The site indeed seems to have been chosen for its strength, which has again and again been proved by many long and desperate sieges. The city has always been taken from the north, and the upper city on the south-west hill has always been the last quarter to fall. This flat hill, rising 2,500 feet above the level of the sea, measures about 600 yards east and west by 800 yards north and south, thus containing an area of about 100 acres. Since the fourth century A. D. the name Zion has been applied to this hill, which is surrounded on all sides by deep valleys having steep slopes or precipices—that called Hinnom forming a natural fosse which sinks some 400 feet below the hill plateau, and defends the hill on the west and south, while the Tyropœon Valley—about 500 feet wide—sinks on the north to about 150 feet below the plateau, and turns south, defending it on the east. The hill of Zion is only joined to the watershed by a narrow neck, or isthmus, of high ground at the north-west corner of the upper city, and it required to be defended by a fortress wall at this point, which has always been the place attacked by besiegers. The lower city lay to the north, in the broad Tyropœon, and was defended by a smaller summit, now occupied by the Cathedral of the Holy Sepulchre, which rises 2,497 feet above sea-level, and bulges out eastwards from the plateau of the Judean watershed which runs north, west of Jerusalem. Thus, as Josephus says, the city as a whole lay “over against the temple in the manner of a theatre”[80]; for the horseshoe shape was caused by the head of the Tyropœon on the north side of the upper city, the original form of which has been somewhat obliterated by the accumulation of from 40 to 90 feet of rubbish under David Street, which leads east to the Temple ridge. Yet even now there is a sharp descent eastwards along this street, and steep side streets lead up southwards thence to Zion.[81]

OPHEL

Such, then, was the natural fortress which made the capture of Jerusalem so difficult, and which appears to have been occupied from the earliest times. The temple ridge on the east was 60 feet lower than Zion even at its highest point; and, as this ridge became narrower and tailed off towards the south, it sank—on the Ophel spur—to about 200 feet below the level of the upper city. The Ophel spur was unfit for a fortress, and the part south of the temple contained an area of only about 15 acres. It is impossible, therefore, to regard it as having at any time been by itself a “city,” for the more important cities of Palestine were much larger than such a small hamlet would have been. Tyre covered 100 acres, Cæsarea and Samaria about 300 acres each, while even Gezer—a town of less importance—included 40 acres within the walls. Ophel is not mentioned in history till three hundred years after David’s time. Nor are the remains of caves or cellars on this narrow tongue of land apparently of any remote antiquity, though some writers have supposed them to be of Jebusite origin, and have even called them “neolithic”—a term which has no meaning in Palestine, because (as in Egypt and in Babylonia) instruments of stone and of flint are found at all levels in the excavations, and are contemporary with others of bronze and of iron. The remains found in connection with these caves are of Roman origin, and one of the largest of them was a dyeing establishment, in which Byzantine objects were discovered. There are similar caves or cellars on the hill of the upper city, and these may be equally late.[82]

The rock strata at Jerusalem fall with an inclination of about ten degrees south-east from the watershed, so that the rain-water is carried naturally in this direction towards the junction (below Siloam) of the Kidron, the Tyropœon and the Hinnom valleys. The town indeed has the appearance of sliding downhill towards the south-east, the Ophel spur being the lowest of those covered by the city at its time of greatest magnitude, when Jerusalem—including the 30 acres of the Temple enclosure—covered about 300 acres in all, being half as large again as the present city within the Turkish walls. The lowest rock stratum, which appears in the low cliffs on the east side of the Kidron, is a hard dolomitic limestone, impervious and forming the bed for streams which sink through the more porous upper limestone. It appears again on the watershed to the north-west, and is known as the Santa Croce marble, being mottled with red, which—on the hillock of the traditional Calvary—was regarded as being due to the blood of Christ. This formation is of the Greensand period geologically, and the stone is known as mezzeh, or “superior,” in Arabic. Above it lie beds of fine but rather soft building stone, belonging to the Lower Chalk age, and called in Arabic meleki, or “royal” stone.[83] In this white limestone the Temple cisterns are cut. Another stratum of hard limestone, or mezzeh, lies over the meleki, and above this on Olivet is the white Upper Chalk, full of ammonites, hippurites, and other characteristic shells, with beds of the Eocene age, including a capping of nummulitic limestone. These porous strata are known as k’akûli, or “conglomerate,” and nâri, or “fire stone.”

This description may be sufficient to account for the natural water-supply, which was always most abundant on the south-east, where the dolomite bed is nearest to the surface in the valleys. The principal spring is in the Kidron, below the steep eastern slope of the Ophel spur south of the Temple. It rises under the floor of a cave, where there must be an underground reservoir in the rock, resembling many in the Lebanon and in other limestone regions. Towards the end of winter, when the heavy rains have fallen, this reservoir overflows frequently through a fissure which acts as a natural syphon, sucking out all the water as soon as the reservoir is full. The sudden gush—like that of the Sabbatic River in Syria—occurs every few hours in early spring, but at the interval of several days in autumn. The stream originally flowed down the rocky bed of the Kidron, which is now filled in to a depth of 30 feet. But from early times it would seem that attempts were made to carry the water to the foot of the east slope of the upper city hill, in order to bring it nearer to the fortress. By the time of Hezekiah at least—as will be detailed later—a rock tunnel carried the waters of the spring to Siloam, or “westwards to the city of David.”[84] This statement—in consequence of the English mistranslation—has become the foundation of a literary theory according to which the city of David was a mere hamlet of 15 acres on Ophel, whereas in reality it appears to show that the stronghold of Jebus lay towards the west. It is not impossible that a yet earlier rock-cut channel existed, with the same object of conveying the waters of this intermittent spring towards the western citadel; and, as the point has some importance in connection with the history of the city, the reasons may be given more fully.

GIHON

Excavations were made in front of the cave in which the Kidron spring bursts forth, in the year 1902, and it was then discovered that a rock tunnel leads away towards the south outside the entrance to the cave.[85] The level of its floor is only 5 feet above the water-level at Siloam, and this aqueduct unfortunately has not been explored along its whole length, nor has it furnished any indications of the age in which it was made. It has been thought to be part of an old rock channel traced for 600 feet northwards from the old pool below the Siloam reservoir. This, however, is doubtful, as the channel in question rises rapidly, and the levels in consequence would oblige us to suppose that pipes must have been used, as water does not run uphill in an open channel.[86] This Siloam channel was still connected, in 1874, with a series of surface channels on the slopes of Ophel, which have been quarried away since, but which once carried the surface rain-water to the old pool.

The excavations at the spring showed that a large tank or pool probably once existed before the cave. The overflow from the cave was also carried away by the aqueduct, and perhaps brought round to tanks still existing below Siloam south-west of the pool. If this work was really ancient, representing the “brook that flowed through the midst of the earth”[87] even before Hezekiah’s tunnel was made, it is an argument in favour of the view that the upper city of Jerusalem was the original Jebusite stronghold.

EN-ROGEL

The earliest reference to any feature of Jerusalem topography is the notice of the spring called En-rogel, on the boundary between Judah and Benjamin east of the Valley of Hinnom. The meaning of the name has been differently conjectured,[88] but if the true rendering be “spring of the water channel,” it would seem that an aqueduct must have existed at En-rogel when the Book of Joshua was written; and the topographical evidence in that book indicates a date earlier than the time of Isaiah and Hezekiah, thus favouring the conclusion that the aqueduct in front of the cave is ancient.

En-rogel has, it is true, been placed in quite another position. Brocardus, in the thirteenth century, supposed it to be the well at the junction of the Kidron and Hinnom valleys which Christians called “Nehemiah’s Fountain,” in connection with the apocryphal legend of a fire fountain which was in Persia and not at Jerusalem at all.[89] The Moslems called it the “Well of Job,” from a legend of the fountain which sprang up when Job stamped on the ground[90]—perhaps confounding Job with Joab, since En-rogel was near the “Stone Zoheleth” where Joab proclaimed Adonijah king. But a well is not a spring, and Zoheleth is supposed by M. Clermont-Ganneau to be the rock still called Zahweileh (“the slippery”), close to the village of Silwân, and opposite the cave spring already described, which is the only spring on this side of Jerusalem. Neither Josephus nor any ancient pilgrim speaks of the well in question before 1184 A. D., when it was cleared out. There is no doubt that this well is ancient, but how old it is not easy to say. It is now 125 feet deep, and at 113 feet below the surface the old well-shaft rises from a rock-cut cave below. After the rains, in March, when the Kidron is full of water beneath the surface, a stream here rises to the surface, and flows down the valley for some distance. West of the well is a remarkable aqueduct, with another rock reservoir fed by two channels. This aqueduct is 90 feet below the rock surface, and runs south for 600 yards. It was discovered by Sir Charles Warren in 1869, and he suggests that this may be the “brook that flowed through the midst of the earth” which has been noticed above. These works were evidently intended for the storage of the winter rain waters; but, on the other hand, the description of the tunnel, with its flights of steps leading to the water, recalls the aqueduct of Cæsarea,[91] which is certainly not older than the time of Herod, and may be considerably later. Whatever be the age of these remarkable waterworks, they have no connection with a “spring,” such as we must suppose En-rogel to have been.

WATER SUPPLY

The fortress of the upper city was not, however, dependent entirely on the natural supply of water in the Kidron Valley, or—afterwards—at Siloam. Even in the time of Nehemiah another spring existed on the west side of Jerusalem, in the upper part of the Valley of Hinnom.[92] It was called the “Spring of the Monster,” or, according to the Greek translators (who regarded the word as Aramaic), the “Spring of the Figs.” It appears to have been unknown to Josephus, though he speaks of the “Serpent’s Pool”—apparently the present Mâmilla reservoir, which was called the “Upper Pool” in the time of Hezekiah. The “Spring of the Monster” seems to have been buried under the rubbish which has partly filled the Hinnom Valley, but in the Jebusite age it no doubt formed a supply on the west side of the upper city. It is also possible that the rock-cut tank within the city, immediately north of Zion (now called the “Patriarch’s Bath,” or “Hezekiah’s Pool”), was already ancient in Hezekiah’s time, when it was known as the “Lower Pool,”[93] and that it also supplied the original Jebus. There is, in addition to these supplies, another probably of great antiquity west of the Temple, outside the north-east corner of the upper city. This is now known as the Ḥammâm esh Shefa,[94] or “healing bath,” and it is connected with an ancient rock aqueduct which has been partly cut across by the Herodian wall of the Temple enclosure. This channel is now 60 feet under ground and 20 feet under a pavement which is older than the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A. D.; it is apparently even older than the time of Pompey’s siege in 63 B. C., since a voussoir of the bridge then existing has fallen into the aqueduct. The shaft to the “healing bath” itself is now 86 feet deep, and—at the bottom—a vaulted passage of the Roman or Byzantine age leads to the original cave, which has a conduit opening out on the south side. The shaft is comparatively modern throughout, and the cave must have been on the surface in the Jebusite age. It receives the drainage of the valley (now filled in by some 40 to 80 feet of rubbish), which has its head outside the Damascus Gate north of the city. This supply was carried down the Tyropœon valley, on the east side of the upper city, apparently to Siloam.

The water-supply has been thus described in detail, because it is often assumed that the Jebusite city must have depended entirely on the En-rogel spring in the Kidron ravine, which was clearly not the case; but, even if it were so, it would not follow that the Jebusite town must have stood on Ophel, for cities in Palestine were built on the highest and strongest sites available, even if these were not very near the springs. Thus at Samaria the springs are a mile away from the nearest point of the city wall on the east, and other instances might be cited where cities, like Tyre and Cæsarea, depended on water brought by an aqueduct from a distance of some miles. Jerusalem, before the time of Pilate, depended entirely for water on the rainfall of a comparatively small area east of the Judæan watershed; but, as we have seen, the storage of this natural supply in caves and tanks gave a sufficient amount of water on each side of the upper city, and the various rock channels served to bring this supply close under, and within, the city walls. There is therefore no difficulty in supposing that Josephus is right in describing the upper city of his own times as having been the “mountain top of Zion” captured by David.

ZION

The name Zion was older than David’s time. Since the fourth century A. D. it has always been applied to the hill of the upper city, and it may have been so placed in the earliest ages. But in the Bible it is not restricted to this position, but appears as a poetical name for Jerusalem at large. Josephus never uses this name, but speaks of “Jerusalem” instead. Zion is mentioned 154 times in the Old Testament, but only four passages[95]—all referring to early times—are in the historical narratives, the large majority of the other notices being in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Psalms. Zion was a city with gates, and a “holy hill.” It is constantly used as a name equivalent to Jerusalem. It had walls and towers and “dwelling-places”; it is “the city of Jehovah, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel,” a high mountain, and a “city of solemnities.” It has been thought that, in the Greek age, the name applies specially to the Temple hill, but the passages cited do not really necessitate this conclusion. Ancient names are commonly preserved in the poetry of a nation, and Zion was a very ancient word, which—as we have seen—may possibly have meant a “chief’s abode,” or a “god’s abode,” even when the Hittites and Amorites still held Jerusalem, and when it was the sacred city of Melchizedek, long before the Temple of Jehovah was built on the ridge outside, at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. Hence it is in the poetry of the prophets and psalmists of Israel that the name Zion occurs; and, though there is nothing really wrong in the Christian application of the word to the south-western hill, yet the term is only vaguely equivalent to the city generally. But there is one quarter to which it should not be solely applied—namely, the small spur which is called Ophel in the Bible.

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER II

[46] Ps. cx. 4; Heb. v. 6, 10, vii. 1–4.

[47] Ps. lxxvi. 2.

[48] Gen. xiv. 17, 18; 2 Sam. xviii. 18; Josephus, “Ant.,” I. x. 2; “Ant.,” VII. x. 3.

[49] Gen. xxxiii. 18 (A.V. marg.), called Sâlim el Kebîra (“Great Salem”) in Samaritan Chronicle (Neubauer, Journal Asiatique, Dec. 1869, p. 433). See “Mem. West Pal.,” ii. p. 230; Tal. Jer., Abodah Zara, v. 4; John iii. 23; Onomasticon, s.v. Jerusalem and Salem; Chron. Paschale, quoted by Reland, “Pal. Illustr.,” ii. p. 977. Jerome (“Ep. ad Evang.”), “Salem oppidum est juxta Scythopolim quod usque hodie appellatur Salem et ostenditur ibi palatium Melchisedec,” etc.

[50] Gen. xiv. 1; Josephus, “Wars,” VI. x. 1. See my article in “Murray’s Bible Dictionary,” 1908, “Chronology.” The date is now ascertained from the Babylonian Chronicle’s through-reckoning, and from a text of Nabu-nahid, while the same result was reached by Dr. Felix Peiser (Zeitschrift für Assyr. vi. pp. 264–71) in 1891 from the statements of Berosus.

[51] Ariel (Isa. xxix. 1, 2, 7) may stand for Babylonian eri-ilu, “city of God,” as a name of Jerusalem.

[52] Ezek. xvi. 3, 45.

[53] See my volume “The Hittites and Their Language,” 1898. Dr. Sayce (“The Hittites,” 1888) also (p. 14) calls them “Mongoloid.”

[54] Gen. xxii. 2 (LXX. hupsēlē); in 2 Chr. iii. 2 it is not translated in the Greek. In Babylonian mur-iahu would mean “seat of Yahu.”

[55] Gen. xxii. 14 (see R.V.); possibly to be rendered “in the mount Jehovah appears.” The LXX.: “In the mount the Lord was seen” (see 2 Sam. xxiv. 16).

[56] Akkadian ab (or ub), “abode,” us, “strong”; Turkish eb and üs. Isaiah refers to the meaning of the Semitic name as “a quiet habitation” (xxxiii. 20).

[57] In Akkadian Ṣi-an is “palace” (in the Behistān dialect), and Zi-una, “chief’s building” or “God’s place.” Gesenius compares the Arabic ṣahweh, “fortress,” and ṣahyûn.

[58] See Isa. xxx. 33, “deep and large.”

[59] Araunah (2 Sam. xxiv. 16, 20); Heb. Aranieh in ver. 18; Ornan (1 Chr. xxi. 15–28); no doubt originally written with the signs UR-AN-EN, which would read either Ur-ena or Ur-nun; in LXX. always Orna.

[60] These synchronisms show that the approximate dates given by Brugsch for Amenophis III. and IV. are correct. The recent discoveries of Dr. H. Winckler in Cappadocia also prove that Rameses II. was ruling about 1330 B. C., as Brugsch supposed. The later dates given by some Egyptologists are based on a fallacious astronomical calculation, and do not agree with the known Assyrian and Babylonian dates.

[61] Taylor cylinder text. See also my “Tell Amarna Tablets,” 2nd edit. 1898, pp. 117–20, 193.

[62] “Tell Amarna Tablets,” pp. 8, 14, 187, 193, 200, 202, 210; Deutschen Orient Gesellschaft, No. 35, 1908, discoveries of Dr. H. Winckler, pp. 33–6.

[63] “Amarna Tablets,” pp. 170, 188.

[64] The signs used are those for “man,” “good,” and “do,” variously rendered Arad-Khi-ba and ’Abd-Ṭobba, but perhaps better ’Abd-ṣadaḳ, “servant of the just.” Cf. Melchi-ṣedeḳ (“my king is just”), Adoni-ṣedeḳ, “my lord is just.” See “Tell Amarna Tablets,” pp. 139–51.

[65] Lepsius, “Letters from Egypt,” 1844, English trans. 1853, pp. 484 seq.

[66] Gen. xlvii. 11; Exod. i. 11.

[67] Josh. x. 3. See “Tell Amarna Tablets,” p. 137, and Josh. x. 33.

[68] Ruth i. 2.

[69] Amarna Tablets, No. 102, Berlin Collection: “tarayamu ... amili ’Abiri.”

[70] Sarru b’elu.

[71] Pitati, an Egyptian word, either from pet, “bow,” or pet, “foot”—bowmen, or otherwise infantry, and not a chariot force such as is often mentioned in the plains, in the Amarna letters.

[72] No. 106, Berlin Collection.

[73] Baalah = Kirjath-jearim (Josh. xv. 10), near which was Rabbah (ver. 60). See Josh ix. 17.

[74] No. 104, Berlin Collection.

[75] ina Bit-amilla-ma.

[76] No. 103, Berlin Collection, line 54 on back of the tablet.

[77] No. 199, Berlin Collection.

[78] ’Ati, see Isa. x. 28, = Ai.

[79] Josh. xv. 8, xviii. 16; Judg. i. 8, 21, xix. 11, 12, xx. 28; 2 Sam. xxiv. 23 (“Araunah a king”); Josephus, “Ant.,” V. ii. 2, 5, 8.

[80] Josephus, “Ant.,” XV. xi. 5.

[81] The dome of the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre Cathedral is fixed in N. lat. 31° 46´ 45´´, E. long. 35° 13´ 25´´.

[82] Bliss, “Excavations at Jerusalem,” 1898, pp. 231–3; Warren, “Recovery of Jerusalem,” 1871, pp. 306–8; G. A. Smith, “Jerusalem,” 1907, vol. i. p. 284.

[83] This is the usual explanation, but I have some doubts whether the word is not really malaḳeh, meaning “smooth stone.”

[84] In 1878 I consulted the late Prof. A. B. Davidson as to this translation of the sentence in 2 Chron. xxxii. 30, and I retain still his letter of December 30, 1878, pronouncing that this is “the natural translation of the words.”

[85] Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly, Jan. 1902, p. 32.

[86] The channel starts at the level 2,087 feet above the sea. Bottom of Pool of Siloam, 2,081 feet. The channel north of the old pool at Siloam is about 2,120 feet.

[87] 2 Chron. xxxii. 4.

[88] “Fountain of the fuller,” or “of the spy,” with reference to David’s spies. See Josh. xviii. 16, 2 Sam. xvii. 17. I suggested many years ago a comparison with the Arabic rujeileh, “water-channel.” Dr. G. A. Smith (“Jerusalem,” 1908, i. p. 109) takes the same view, and compares the Syriac rogûlo, a “water-channel.”

[89] 2 Macc. i. 18–36; Brocardus, 1283 A. D.; Zuallardo, “Dev. Viag.,” p. 142; Robinson, “Bib. Res.,” i. p. 332, note 5; Warren, “Recov. of Jer.,” pp. 256–64; Wilson, “Ord. Survey Notes,” p. 84; “Mem. Survey West Pal.,” Jerusalem vol., pp. 371–5.

[90] Ḳorân xxxviii. 40, 41; see 1 Kings i. 9.

[91] See my account, “Mem. Survey West Pal.,” ii. pp. 18–23.

[92] Neh. ii. 13; Josephus, “Wars,” V. iii. 2, xii. 2.

[93] Isa. xxii. 9. See 2 Kings xviii. 17; Isa. xxxvi. 2.

[94] Sir C. Wilson, “Ord. Survey Notes,” p. 85, and Pl. xxii. Explored October 29, 1864.

[95] 2 Sam. v. 7; 1 Kings viii. 1; 1 Chron. xi. 5; 2 Chron. v. 2. The word “Zion” occurs also in poetic passages in 2 Kings xix. 21, 31. Outside the historic books it is found thirty-eight times in Psalms, forty-seven times in Isaiah, thirty-nine times in Jeremiah, and in twenty-four other poetic passages. See especially Ps. ii. 6, ix. 11, 14, xlviii. 12, lxxvi. 2, lxxxvii. 1, 5; Isa. iv. 5, x. 24, 32, xii. 6, xxx. 19, xxxiii. 14, 20, lx. 14; Jer. xxvi. 18, xxxi. 12; Lam. v. 11, 18; 1 Macc. iv. 37, v. 54, vi. 48, 62, vii. 33, x. 11. In 1 Macc. the word Zion means the Holy City, but is not specially restricted to the Temple hill. It is mentioned six times only in this book, as cited.

CHAPTER III
THE HEBREW KINGS

From the citadel of Zion the Jebusites looked down on David’s men arrayed beyond the dividing valley. Like many other defenders of a doomed city, they mocked their foes, and they set the lame and the blind on the wall, “saying, Thou wilt not enter here unless thou removest the blind and the lame: meaning, David cannot enter here. Nevertheless David took the hilltop of Zion: it is the city of David. And David said that day, Every slayer of the Jebusite will also reach by the ravine both the lame and the blind. They hate David’s self, wherefore they say, Blind and lame he will not come into the place. So David dwelt on the hilltop, and called it the city of David. And David built round about from the Millo and inwards.”[96]

DAVID’S CITY

The city of David is here identified with the hilltop of Zion; but as Jerusalem grew larger, the term seems to have been expanded to include all the Jerusalem of David’s time, and in later days it was applied to the lower city. This term is used forty times in the Old Testament, and in four passages it is equivalent to Zion.[97] Josephus never uses it except in relating David’s capture of the citadel. He always, in other passages, substitutes the name “Jerusalem.” He says that David—like all later captors—first took the lower city, but that the citadel held out till Joab crossed “one of the underlying ravines” (which would probably be the Tyropœon), and “ascended” to the citadel itself. He continues that David afterwards made buildings in the lower city. He identifies the citadel with the upper city of his own time, and places the lower city to the north. He is only following the Bible account as he understood it, but there is no reason to doubt that he is right. He was not merely writing his own fancies, for “the Millo” had already been long identified, by the Greek translators of the Bible, with the Akra or “citadel” which defended the lower city.[98] We can, of course, only conjecture what “the Millo” was, since its position and character are not explained in the Bible. It was a “filling” of some kind, whether a valley filled in with earth or a filling place—perhaps the old Jebusite pool cut in rock immediately outside the north wall of the citadel. Jewish writers always connect it with the lower city, and Solomon “built up the Millo, and shut up the breach of the city of David his father,” or, according to the Greek translators, “founded the Akra closing the fence of the city of David,” or otherwise “made the Akra to fence in the fence of the city.” Considering that the “city of the great king” (or overlord) is described as being on the “flanks of the north,”[99] there seems to be no improbability in the view taken by Jewish writers of early date. There was in Jerusalem, somewhat later, a place called the Maktesh,[100] or “hollow,” apparently a quarter of the city; this was probably the lower city in the wide Tyropœon Valley north of the citadel, and it is possible that the Millo was on that narrow isthmus of land to defend which the “broad wall,” or “wall of the broad place,” was built.[101] The fact that the lower city was first fortified by David seems to show that it was only an open town, beyond the citadel, in Jebusite times.[102]

In the city of David’s time were his palace, and the place where the Ark was kept in a tent. Here also David and many of his successors were buried. The civilisation of Babylonia, as then extending to Phœnicia, was the model for the new Hebrew kingdom, as it had been for the Canaanite even in Abraham’s time. The “house” of David was built by Phœnician artisans, and seems to have been in the lower city, below the Temple ridge and Ophel, but the great palace of Solomon was outside the city of David. The Ark, apparently, was established at the original palace, until the Temple was built.[103] The royal tombs were perhaps just inside the north wall of Jerusalem, as will be explained in speaking of the later Hebrew kings.

ABSALOM’S HAND

The story of David’s life is told in one of the most vivid and picturesque books of the Old Testament, and contains scattered allusions to places at Jerusalem. The scribe—perhaps the prophet Nathan[104]—does not spare his hero in his account of Bathsheba; but, in spite of his crime of passion, the generosity of David’s character accorded with that ideal which we find most admired among free Semitic races, from the days of Job to those of Muḥammad or of Saladin; and “whatsoever the king did pleased all the people.”[105] His sin met its nemesis when Ahitophel—Bathsheba’s grandfather[106]—rose to be a court favourite, and then deserted to the rebellious Absalom. His schemes soon failed; but David, looking back to the day when Uriah was betrayed to death, must have recognised his punishment, and humbly submitted to the rod. To save the city, he marched out[107] with his faithful guards—the old band that followed him to Gath in earlier days—and on crossing the Kidron he sent back the Ark into the town. By the Anathoth road he ascended Olivet, praying on its northern summit, and so took the way to the wilderness and to Gilead. His faithful spies were hidden in the cave of En-rogel; and after the defeat and death of Absalom we are told that this rebel son had erected a “hand,” or monument, in the “King’s Dale,” which still remained when the chronicle was written, being—as already mentioned—perhaps somewhere to the south in the Valley of Hinnom, though mediæval pilgrims thought that they had found it at the Greco-Jewish tomb east of the Kidron, where—ever since the fifteenth century A. D. at least—the Jews have raised heaps of stones, each pilgrim casting his pebble at the supposed monument of the wicked son.

David’s adventurous life drew towards its end. An old man at the age of seventy years, the king was nursed by the fair Abishag of Shunem. His fourth son, Adonijah—the two eldest having met violent deaths, and the third being perhaps also dead—was supported by his cousin Joab and by Abiathar the priest. On the rock Zoheleth,[108] beside En-rogel—a precipice visible from the upper city—he slew sacrifices, and proclaimed himself king. The old lion was roused by the news to renew his oath to Bathsheba. Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the commander who had superseded Joab, were sent with the swordsmen and light troops—two regiments of guards distinguished like those of Assyrian and Egyptian armies—to escort Solomon, on the king’s mule, “down to Gihon.” There he was anointed by Zadok the priest, with oil brought from the tent in which the Ark still abode; and apparently the choice of the place was due to the position of Zoheleth, which was nearly opposite to it on the east side of the Kidron ravine, Gihon being thus in sight of Adonijah’s adherents. The piping of pipes, the shouts of the people, and the sound of the trumpet were heard by Joab and Adonijah as they feasted, and they fled to take sanctuary at the altar.[109]

GIHON

It is here assumed that Gihon was another name of the spring En-rogel, though this is, of course, not absolutely certain. The word means “spouting forth,” and the title is not applicable to a tank, while it recalls the sudden gush of the Kidron spring as already described. Gihon lay in a ravine (naḥal), a term which is applied in many passages to the Kidron Valley, as contrasted with the gai or gorge of Hinnom. It is also described as a “source” (moṣa), which word is used of the Kidron spring in Hezekiah’s inscription at Siloam. The wall of Ophel, moreover, is said to have run “westwards to Gihon in the naḥal,” so that it is clear that this “source” was not on the west side of Jerusalem.[110] In the fourteenth century, it is true, the old map of the city shows the “Upper Pool of Gihon” (at the Birket Mâmilla), and the “Lower Pool of Gihon” (at the Birket es Sulṭân), but such pools are never mentioned in the Bible, or by Josephus, though the misunderstanding survives even now. The lower of these pools was made by the Germans about 1172 A. D., and it is not mentioned by any writer before that age. Gihon was not a pool or tank, and the term seems most clearly to apply to a source which spouted out at intervals in the Kidron ravine, and which was otherwise named En-rogel because of a water channel down which the stream was led.

The building of the Temple was Solomon’s first great work. It stood on the ridge east of the city, where the threshing-floor of Araunah was consecrated by David’s altar. There is no doubt that it was placed on the “top of the mountain,”[111] and that the site of the holy house itself remained unchanged in later times, when it was rebuilt by Zerubbabel, and again enlarged by the priests in the time of Herod the Great. The area of the enclosure was then increased, especially on the west, by the banking up of earth supported in places on vaults within the great Herodian walls; but the natural site was very restricted. The strata are tilted up towards the north-west, so that the ridge presents an almost precipitous slope on the west side, sinking nearly 200 feet from the level of the Ṣakhrah, or “rock,” to the valley in which the west Ḥaram wall was built. The eastern slope is less steep, but the ridge—which was naturally highest on the north-west—is narrow throughout, except in the neighbourhood of the Dome of the Rock, which now covers the Ṣakhrah. In this part there is a small plateau measuring about 200 yards across, and sinking on the east and south about 20 feet below the crest of the Ṣakhrah itself. As to this rock site, which forms the natural position for a building surrounded by courts which were at lower levels, there is no doubt at all. The visitor can see the rock for himself on the surface to east, south, and north-west of the platform on which the Dome of the Rock stands, and the levels of this bare rock have been accurately ascertained. The Ṣakhrah rises on its west side about 4 feet above the level of the pavement, and slopes gently eastwards. On the north-west part of the platform the rock is flat, and is found just under the pavement. It is just under the floor east of the Ṣakhrah, within the walls of the Dome of the Rock. Its level north of the building has been ascertained in the well mouths of the two rock tunnels now used as tanks, and also in that of a similar excavation to the south-east of the Dome. Rock scarps are visible on the north and north-east sides of the platform, while on the south-east and south-west sides there are vaults in which no rock is found at all. These facts I verified by descending into the tanks and examining the small vaulted chambers under the platform. If the platform itself could be removed, there is little doubt that we should find beneath it two rocky terraces at two levels, that to the east being some 10 feet lower than that to the west.

SOLOMON’S TEMPLE

The Ṣakhrah itself is the controlling feature, because it rises at its crest 8 feet above the average level of the surrounding rock terrace. If the Holy House was built over the Ṣakhrah, then the levels of the descending courts naturally agree with those of the rock site. But if the Temple itself is placed to the south or to the west of the Ṣakhrah, it is no longer on the top of the mountain; and any student who draws a section, in accordance with the ascertained levels of the rock, will find that he has, in these cases, to suppose foundations of masonry of at least 30 feet necessary to support the heavy walls of the building. On the west the rock is found in a cistern mouth, only 100 feet from the Ṣakhrah, but already more than 20 feet lower; and it descends steeply to the foot of the west Ḥaram wall, where it is found to be nearly 200 feet lower than the Ṣakhrah crest, which—on these suppositions—would be the level of the outer court, since it cannot have been left protruding above that level. Thus, although to the student who merely considers the plan of the building it seems allowable to propose any position he prefers, near the Ṣakhrah, as the exact site of the Holy House, we are in reality very strictly confined to the conclusion that this sacred “rock” was the foundation on which it rose. For the later Temple was more than 100 feet long, and it is unnatural to suppose that it would have been built on the west slope, or on the lower part of the small plateau, to the south, and raised up by foundations of such height as would be needed, when there was just room for the Temple and its inner court on the higher part of the small plateau. Josephus appears to be quite right in saying, not only that the Temple was on the “top of the mountain,” but yet more definitely that “at first the highest flat part barely sufficed for the Holy House and the altar: for the ground about it was very uneven and precipitous.” He says that Solomon “built a wall on its eastern side,” but that “on other parts the Holy House stood naked.” The west enclosure wall was apparently not erected till much later; and although when Pompey besieged Jerusalem there was already a bridge from the upper city to the Temple ridge, the west side of the hill was even then “abrupt,”[112] and not filled up with earth, within the rampart, to bring it to a level with the Temple courts. “New banks”—according to Josephus—were added in later times, and thus “the hill became a larger plateau.”

Such practical considerations and historic statements fully agree with Jewish tradition. No Jerusalem Jew doubts that the Temple stood over the Ṣakhrah “rock,” which they identify with that “Stone [or, Rock] of Foundation” which, even in Herod’s time, was visible in the Holy of Holies. The Mishnah was composed in our second century, and records the statements of rabbis who had witnessed the great destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A. D., and who had seen the ruins of the Temple as the Romans left them. In the Mishnah we read[113] the description of the awful Day of Atonement, when—once a year—the high-priest, in fear and trembling, entered the Holy of Holies, where there was no longer any Ark. “When the Ark was removed, a stone was there, since the days of the first prophets” (that is, of David), “and it was called the ‘foundation’: it was three fingers above the ground, and on it he put the censer.”

THE PIERCED STONE

The Ṣakhrah is a very remarkable rock cut in steps on the west, as though to form the base of a wall, and having a cave beneath on the east, with a shaft through its roof to the surface. It is also said to have another excavation below the floor of the cave,[114] and this cave was very probably a granary originally connected with the threshing-floor, and resembling an ancient example near Nazareth.[115] To identify the rock with the Altar of the Temple is to upset the whole section of the building, and the altar was of stones, and not of rock. In the fourth century we find the Jews wailing at this “Pierced Stone,” as the site of their Holy House.[116] The Moslems have adopted their tradition, and speak of the Ṣakhrah as the foundation of the world, a rock of Paradise suspended over the abyss where souls dwell till the judgment. The Christians of the Middle Ages equally regarded the Dome of the Rock as the “Temple of the Lord.” The site is one of the very few as to which there is a general agreement and an unchanging tradition.

Of the Temple courts we have no full description in the Old Testament. The Holy House itself is said to have been double the size of the Tabernacle, not counting the three tiers of small chambers built against the walls. In the details of its architecture it recalls the art of Babylonia or of Phœnicia, rather than of Egypt, and its masons and artificers came from Tyre. The combination of large, well-hewn masonry with cedar roofs, and adornment of bronze and of gold, carved figures on the wall, and sacred Ark within, reminds us not only of the temples in Babylon which Nebuchadnezzar describes in his inscriptions, but of that famous account, in the Akkadian language, which Prince Gudea of Zirgul in Chaldea has left us, on his cylinders and statues, describing the temple which—perhaps as early as 2800 B. C.—he adorned with precious metals and with cedar wood from Lebanon. We think of the Cherubim as many-winged angels, such as Italian artists have painted; but the word Kirubu is written in Assyria over a representation of one of those winged bulls which, as “guardians,” stood in temples, or are represented flanking the mystic tree of life, just as Solomon’s cherubs flanked the palm trees. They were not painted, like the figures in the dark interior of Egyptian shrines, but carved on the walls in low relief, and overlaid with gold. They were seen by none save priests, and even to them they were only dimly visible in the darkness of a shrine unlighted from without, by the glimmer of the seven-branched golden lamp. Yet Solomon—like many later kings even down to the seventh century B. C.—disregarded the command written on the ancient “token tablets” still stored in the Ark, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”; for besides these carvings and the huge olive-wood cherubs which overshadowed the older golden guardians of the Ark itself, he also placed his bronze laver on the necks of bronze bulls, and adorned the steps of his ivory throne with lions, after the fashion of Babylonian and Phœnician kings. In his old age the princesses from Sidon and Moab, and the daughters of the Hittites, Ammonites, and Edomites, whom he wedded, “turned away his heart after other gods.” But even in his youth he followed the ways of the Canaanites, while seeking to honour Jehovah by a splendid shrine. The making of images, in his day as in all times, was the sure sign of superstition creeping in, to guard against which the commandment of Moses was written.

THE TEMPLE GATES

The description of the Temple need not be further detailed,[117] as it is clearly understandable in the Bible narrative. The buildings included an “inner court,”[118] and probably, therefore, an outer one as well, but we are not told what space these covered, though it has been conjectured that the former was double the size of that of the Tabernacle, which would mean roughly about 300 feet east and west by 150 feet north and south.[119] In late accounts we read of a Court of the Priests and of a great court, and there are passing allusions to gates, on each side of the enclosure at different levels, and to a “higher court” by the “new gate.” It would seem that there was a west gate called that of “Departure” or “Casting Out,” in various passages, a north gate called “the High Gate of Benjamin,” a “Foundation Gate,” perhaps in the lower court, and—in the outer wall, which was that of the city itself—a gate where the “guard” or garrison of the Temple mustered, by the “Court of the Guard” (or “Prison,” as rendered in the English). The gate of “Runners” (light troops), on the way to the palace south of the Temple, was perhaps not the same. The king held his court of justice at the High Gate, which was “towards the north”; but another “King’s Gate” seems to have been on the east side of the outer court. All these were swept away when the Temple was enlarged and its courts rebuilt by Herod; but the general impression is that the Temple courts were at first confined to the immediate neighbourhood of the plateau surrounding the holy house, and that outside them there was only the city wall on the east; while on the west the natural slope of the hill remained visible, and no wall divided the Sanctuary from the city. On the south also the ridge sloped down to Ophel, where the great court of the palace extended towards the Horse Gate and the Court of the Guard.[120]

After the Temple the new palace of Solomon was built. It was not in the city of David, for “the daughter of Pharaoh” remained there “until he had made an end of building his own house,” and then “came up out of the city of David unto her house which he had built for her.”[121] Thus Josephus is apparently right in saying that the queen’s house “adjoined” that of the king, being in fact the ḥarîm of the palace. This palace resembled those of Assyrian or of Egyptian kings, as well as that of later times at Persepolis. It included a main building measuring 100 cubits by 50 cubits, with cedar pillars and a cedar roof. There were also separate halls, each 50 by 30 cubits, and two residences, for the king and queen, as well as a hall of justice, or throne-room, in which was the ivory throne. Round and within these buildings there were open courts, besides the “Great Court,” which apparently included the stables for the king’s horses, which came in by the “Horse Gate” in the city wall, at which gate Queen Athaliah, fleeing back from the Temple to her palace, was slain: this gate was to the south of the Temple courts, as described by Nehemiah. In the latter book also we find that the “King’s High House” lay on Ophel, near the “Water Gate,” which was above the Gihon spring, and which had a rock shaft leading down to the water. In Nehemiah’s time this palace was called “the house of David,” meaning, apparently, that of David’s family, just as certain royal tombs are called—in the same account—“sepulchres of David,” because certain kings of Judah were there buried; for David would himself evidently not need more than one sepulchre.

THE PALACE

The description is not sufficiently detailed to allow of any plan of these buildings being drawn,[122] but—including the courts—it is clear from the dimensions that the palace covered the greater part of the little Ophel spur, which became the royal quarter, where also—in later times at least—the high-priest had his house, and where the Nethinim lived. Moreover, the “king’s garden” was in the Tyropœon Valley, near Siloam, and in or near it were the “king’s wine-presses,” which are noticed as marking the south limit of the later city. The city of David was no doubt densely crowded, and there was no room in it for a new palace. This was, moreover, placed close to the Temple for convenience in attending the daily services. In later times Ezekiel denounces the proximity of the dwelling of idolatrous kings to the Temple of Jehovah, and the building of a wall of separation, as well as the burial of the kings inside the city.[123]

The latest buildings of Solomon were shrines in honour of foreign gods, including Ashtoreth, Milcom, Chemosh, and Molech.[124] The three former were on “the hill facing Jerusalem”; the last named was no doubt at Topheth, in the valley which was devoted to the worship of this savage deity. They are again noticed in the time of Josiah, nearly four centuries later, and (except Molech) stood on “the Mount of Corruption” (or, more correctly, of “anointing”), which was apparently the Mount of Olives. A much-defaced Phœnician text, found by M. Clermont-Ganneau at the village of Silwân, contains the words “Beth-Baal,” and has been supposed to be possibly connected with one of these shrines.

The prosperity of Jerusalem declined on the death of Solomon, when the kingdom was divided; and five years later the city was sacked by Shishak—the first king of the twenty-second Egyptian dynasty—about 960 B. C. Topographical details are, however, very scanty, though Jehoash of Israel (about 820 B. C.), attacking Amaziah of Judah, is said to have broken down the wall from the Gate of Ephraim (which would be on the north) to the Corner Gate (which was pretty clearly at the north-west corner of the upper city), a distance of 400 cubits. He thus made his assault, as usual, on the weakest point in the fortifications.[125] He again carried off the treasures of the Temple and of the palace. The next king of Judah, Azariah (otherwise Uzziah), strengthened this point by building towers at the Gate of the Corner and at the Gate of the Gai—a term used exclusively of the Hinnom Valley. Both these gates—as will appear later—were near the isthmus which exists inside the present Jaffa Gate; and the towers were the predecessors of Herod’s “royal towers,” which defended the upper city at this neck of high ground. Uzziah is also said to have placed engines—no doubt like those of the Assyrian bas-reliefs—on the walls.[126]

THE OLD POOL

Jotham (about 745 B. C.) is the first Hebrew king who is said to have built a wall on Ophel,[127] though he may merely have made it stronger, as it possibly formed part of Solomon’s wall round Jerusalem, including the Temple and the palace. He was no doubt alarmed at the progress which was then being made by the Assyrians in the conquest of Syria. His successor, Ahaz, was attacked by Pekah of Israel and Rezin of Damascus some ten years later, though they failed to take the city.[128] We have some details of interest as to the water-supply of Jerusalem at this time, before the great works of Hezekiah were carried out[129]; for, in connection with this attack, Isaiah notices the “conduit of the upper pool,” and the “waters of Shiloah that go secretly”; he speaks also rather later of the “collection of the waters of the lower pool,” and of the “place where the waters of the old pool flowed together between the two walls.” Whether we are to understand that the Siloam tunnel was begun as early as the time of Ahaz, or that the older conduit—already described—was then made, there is apparently no connection between the secret water-supply of Shiloah and the other pools noticed by Isaiah. It is certain that the Upper Pool must have been on the west side of the city, since it was there that the Assyrians appeared in 703 B. C., and the site of the Assyrian camp was still pointed out as late as 70 A. D. in this direction.[130] The conduit from this pool to the “lower pool” was no doubt that which also existed in the time of Herod, and which still carries water to the so-called “Pool of the Bath” or “of Hezekiah.” The last named may very well be regarded as the “Old Pool,” being “between the two walls”—that is to say, inside the wall of the lower city and outside that of the upper city. This important reservoir, which was “old” even in the time of Isaiah, thus seems to have been possibly of the Jebusite age. The work of Ahaz consisted in forming an upper reservoir (now called Birket Mâmilla) to supply the old pool by a conduit leading into the city.

The fall of Damascus to Tiglath-pileser, in 732 B. C., caused general consternation in Palestine. Ahaz had already asked aid of the Assyrian against Israel and the Syrians, and he now hasted to offer tribute to the conqueror, whose troops were overrunning Gilead and Galilee, and raided even to Philistia. On the occasion of his visit to Damascus, Ahaz is said to have seen an altar on which he sacrificed, and a copy of which he introduced into the Temple at Jerusalem, displacing Solomon’s bronze altar which he reserved “to inquire by.”[131] There appears to have been a “covered place” in the Temple adorned with gold or silver, as was also the “king’s entry,” and these were now stripped to pay Tiglath-pileser.[132] Ten years later Samaria was captured by Sargon, and it was then perhaps—or in 711 B. C., when Sargon captured Ashdod—that the Assyrian outposts appeared at Nob near Mizpeh, where the most distant glimpse of Jerusalem is caught from the north.[133]

SILOAM

Ahaz had been succeeded by Hezekiah six years before the fall—in 722 B. C.—of Samaria. Preparations for a siege, such as might now be expected, continued to be made at Jerusalem. The older account merely tells us that Hezekiah “made a pool and a conduit, and brought water into the city”; the later independent statement says that besides adding a new outer wall, and repairing “the Millo in the city of David,” he stopped all the fountains and “the brook that flowed through the midst of the ground,” and moreover “dammed the source of the waters of the Upper Gihon, and made it straight below, westwards to [or, for] the city of David.”[134] Whether this was a completion and improvement of the Siloam tunnel begun by Ahaz, or a new tunnel to supersede the older one which may perhaps have already led from the Kidron spring, is not clear; but the characters in which the Siloam inscription—recording the making of the tunnel—are written seem to be nearest to those found on Phœnician weights, in Assyria, which are rather later than the time of Ahaz. This inscription is the oldest of Jerusalem monuments as yet found, and is indeed the oldest purely Hebrew text known. It is of great importance as showing the civilisation of Hezekiah’s age, which, however, is equally attested by the historic cylinder of Sennacherib.

The present Pool of Siloam has been found (by Dr. Guthe in 1881) to be much narrower than that which was probably first cut by Hezekiah in connection with his tunnel, which perhaps required the reservoir to be deeper than the older pool there existing. The pool thus became 30 feet deep and 60 feet square,[135] having a flat walk on each side about 7 feet wide. The tunnel from the Gihon spring is a third of a mile long, and it was begun from both ends. The spring and the pool lie in a south-west direction respectively, but the tunnel winds, and the lower part runs west, either because some soft stratum of rock was followed, or more probably because, working in the dark, the direction was lost till a shaft, 30 feet high, was driven down from the surface, and the correct direction recovered. At the spring a short passage was driven in west, from the back of the cave, and from this the main tunnel (1,707 feet long) began. Here also it is first cut in the wrong direction, westwards, and then bends round south; and here also a great shaft (discovered by Sir Charles Warren), with a rocky stairway, was carried down from the surface of Ophel. This no doubt marks the site of the “Water Gate”; and access to the spring from within the city wall was so attainable, which may be what is intended by “brought water into the city.” Finally, when the two parties of miners heard each other calling, a short cross-cut was made east and west. This point I examined in 1881, and found that each of the tunnels had been abruptly stopped where this cross-cut (about 4 feet long) occurs. It seems also to have been then found that the tunnel was not at a sufficiently low level in its southern part, and that the water would not flow freely, which would account for the Siloam end of the tunnel being much more lofty than the part nearer the spring, the floor level having been cut down.[136]

THE SILOAM TEXT

The famous inscription was carved on the east side of the tunnel near its mouth, in ancient characters of the alphabet of Hezekiah’s age, presenting some minor peculiarities which became distinctive of the script of Israel. It was discovered in 1880 by a Jewish boy, and was reported by Herr Schick, and visited by Dr. Sayce. The first correct copy published was taken from my squeeze, and an excellent copy was almost simultaneously published by Dr. Guthe, through whose courtesy I had been enabled to work with ease in the tunnel. A cast was also fortunately made, for the text was afterwards cut out of the rock by a Greek villain, who was duly punished. Unfortunately, though now preserved in the Museum of Constantinople, this valuable inscription has been broken and damaged. When first found, the letters were full of lime deposit, which Dr. Guthe removed with hydrochloric acid without injuring the stone, and a true copy could not be made till this was done. The text may be thus translated, the ends of the lines being injured, when first found, by the scaling off of the rock.

THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION.

From the Author’s squeeze.

(1) “The tunnel, and this is the method of the tunnel: while (the miners) raised

(2) the pick each towards his fellow, and while yet three cubits were ... the voice of one calling

(3) to his fellow, for there was an excess in the rock to the right ... they struck to the right

(4) in the tunnel: they hewed this cutting each towards his fellow, pick to pick, and flowed

(5) the waters from the source to the pool for two hundred and one thousand cubits,

(6) and ... a cubit was the height of the rock at the top of this cutting.”

The hewing to the right hand in both the excavations was what actually occurred. The measurement—in round numbers—of 1,200 cubits gives us roughly a cubit of 17 inches, but the “three cubits” gives us more exactly a cubit of 16 inches, which appears to have been that used by Hebrew masons.[137]

This remarkable engineering work had perhaps not long been finished when, in the third year of his reign, Sennacherib invaded Philistia in 703 B. C., and sent his Tartan or “general,” his Rabsaris or “chief eunuch,” and his Rabshakeh or “chief headman” from Lachish “with a great host against Jerusalem.” The curled and oiled Assyrian mockers stood beneath the wall, beside the “conduit” at the west gate, and parleyed in Hebrew with the men above. The Hebrew politicians were much divided in opinion, whether to submit to Assyria or to seek aid from Egypt. Isaiah alone seems to have relied on the help of Jehovah in that hour of danger, which passed away when misfortune overtook Sennacherib on the borders of Egypt. In his own boastful inscription[138] the invader gives us no reason why the city escaped, though it appears from his account, as well as from the Bible, that Hezekiah had already offered tribute. “As for this Hezekiah,” says Sennacherib, “he shut himself up, like a bird in a snare, in Jerusalem, his royal city. He raised forts for himself. He was forced to close the gates of his city.”[139] But no siege or capture is recorded, and it is only claimed that the priests and warriors of the city subsequently sent tribute, and Hezekiah large presents, including gems, slaves, and an ivory throne. Never again, apparently, did Sennacherib attempt the conquest of Jerusalem: he “went and returned and dwelt at Nineveh,” and was busy fighting in Babylonia and Elam till his murder about 681 B. C.

Manasseh succeeded his father Hezekiah in 699 B. C., and was also a tributary of Assyrian kings; of him it is recorded[140] that he “built a wall outside the city of David, westwards to Gihon in the valley, and to the entrance of the Fish Gate, and surrounded Ophel and raised it very high.” This apparently refers to the line of the Ophel wall, which, in later times at least, ran south-west from the corner by the Horse Gate, for about 250 yards, to the Water Gate above the Kidron spring. The Fish Gate, as will appear later, was on the north side of the city.

TOMBS OF THE KINGS

Manasseh was not buried with his fathers, but in the palace garden near Siloam, where also, in the “field of burial,” the leper Uzziah had probably been buried, and perhaps Ahaz also. This cemetery is afterwards noticed as the “sepulchres of David,” but we may now inquire where the seven kings who were buried, “in” or “at” the city of David, with David himself and Solomon, were most probably entombed; for the site was clearly not the same,[141] and was either within or close to the old city of David’s time. The seven later kings buried “with their fathers” were Rehoboam, Abijah, Jehoshaphat, Amaziah, Jotham, Hezekiah, and Josiah, and of these Hezekiah is said to have been laid in the “upper chamber” (m’aalah) of the tomb, which was still known in the time of Herod, and yet later in that of the apostles.[142] Josephus gives a remarkable account of this tomb, which was opened by John Hyrcanus in 134 B. C., and “another room” by Herod yet later, in search of treasure. He says that the latter “did not come to the coffins of the kings themselves, for their bodies were buried underground so artfully that they did not appear even to those that entered into their monument.” The sepulchre was evidently one of the kind used by the Hebrews, and by the Phœnicians, with kokîm, or “tunnels”—one for each body—running in lengthwise from the sides of the chamber. But it had the peculiarity that some at least of these were under the floor, as in the earlier Phœnician examples—an arrangement which is not usual in Hebrew tombs; while the mention of an “upper chamber,” in which Hezekiah was buried, shows that a second tier, on the ground level, was excavated for later kings thought worthy to rest with David and Solomon who lay below. There is only one known ancient sepulchre at Jerusalem, in the city of David, to which this account applies—namely, the tomb in the west apse of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,[143] traditionally containing the graves of Joseph of Arimathæa and of Nicodemus. A wall has been built across it, but it appears to have had originally nine kokîm graves, of which six are on the ground level, while three (on the south) are under the floor, together with a pit[144] probably used for the purpose of funereal deposits, such as Josephus says were taken out by Herod, including “vessels of gold and precious things.” The mouths of the kokîm were originally closed by slabs, and, if these were like others which I have myself removed, it would be possible to enter the chamber without knowing—till very closely examined—that there were any kokîm behind them, while those under the floor would be even less suspected. The remarkable correspondence between the statements above noticed—in the Bible and in the accounts by Josephus—seems to make it highly probable that we have here, still existing, the tombs of the more famous kings. Whether they were just inside or just outside the north wall of the city of David is perhaps uncertain, but that they were visible in a low scarp, facing east, even later than Herod’s time, seems to be clear. This tomb of David was distinct from the cemetery in the garden of the palace near Siloam, which has not as yet been found, but to which the term “field of burial belonging to the kings” seems to be first applied in speaking of Uzziah, “for they said, He is a leper.”[145] The above suggestion has met with acceptance by several writers since I first made it thirty years ago, but it unfortunately leaves us without hope of recovering either the treasures which were abstracted by Hyrcanus and Herod, or the bodies of the kings, which, if they had not crumbled away, appear to have been removed by later desecrators of this very ancient sepulchre.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR

Passing on to the history of the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, it may be noted that the empire of Assyria collapsed suddenly on the death of Assur-bani-pal in 626 B. C. He was a very remarkable ruler who imitated ’Ammurabi by concentrating in his own hands even the most minute details of government. We possess his political letters, which give us a high opinion of his justice and courtesy. On his death, Nabopolassar, governor of Babylon, became independent, and about 610 B. C. he took Nineveh in alliance with the Medes. He died apparently in 608 B. C., when his son Nebuchadnezzar became king of Babylonia in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, king of Judah. This new race of Babylonian monarchs was apparently native to the city, for Nabopolassar says in a recently discovered text: “I and the chief rulers of the great city have purified Babylon where we dwell—our land which the oppressor seized—to establish in its midst the throne of righteousness.”[146] He refers to Nebuchadnezzar as his eldest son, the “delight of his heart,” “upholding the dominion faithfully and gloriously with my hosts.” The first attack on Palestine was made by Nebuchadnezzar as prince, after the defeat of Necho the Pharaoh at Carchemish. The latter had aided the attack on Nineveh, but the allies soon quarrelled. Josiah had been slain by Necho in 612 B. C., and Nebuchadnezzar was obliged to hurry back from Palestine on his father’s death four years later; but the respite was short, and Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians about 590 B. C.

We do not as yet possess any monumental account of Nebuchadnezzar’s campaigns in Palestine, though he has left rock texts in Lebanon and near Beirût. These record his piety in erecting temples, but one recently found attests his widespread conquests,[147] for, speaking of contributions to a temple, he says: “I gathered revenues from all peoples of mankind, from the upper sea to the lower sea, from distant lands of widespread peoples of mankind, kings ruling the mountains and the sea coast.... Princes of the land of the Hittites, near the Euphrates on the west—for by command of Merodach my lord I had swallowed up their power—were made to bring strong beams from Mount Lebanon to my city Babylon.”

IDOLATRY

There are many passing allusions in the Book of Jeremiah to the Jerusalem of this age.[148] When the city fell, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the men of war fled towards Jericho by night, “by the way of the gate between two walls which is by the king’s garden.” This gate, as we shall see later, was at the recess above Siloam where the wall crossed the Tyropœon Valley at a re-entering angle. The whole city was then burned, and its treasures carried away, with its chiefs, priests, and all but the “poor of the land, vine-dressers and husbandmen.” Jerusalem had become a pagan city, full of ugly little statues of Ashtoreth, and of Baal shrines at each street corner; for “according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to Bosheth, altars to burn incense to Baal.”[149] The ancient human sacrifices, offered to Molech, continued to be celebrated in the Valley of Topheth as in Isaiah’s time. The city in extent was the same which Nehemiah found in ruins, and its ancient walls were then merely rebuilt, but a more detailed account of this topography will be conveniently deferred till the next chapter, in which the work of Nehemiah’s time is to be considered.

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER III

[96] 2 Sam. v. 6–9; see LXX. The Greek reads “and his house” for “and inwards.”

[97] 2 Sam. v. 7; 1 Kings viii. 1; 1 Chron. xi. 5; 2 Chron v. 2. Josephus, “Ant.,” VII. iii. 1; “Wars,” V. iv. 1.

[98] Septuagint of 2 Sam. v. 9; 1 Kings xi. 27 (1 Chron. xi. 5–8 differs in the Greek).

[99] Ps. xlviii. 2.

[100] Zeph. i. 11.

[101] Neh. iii. 8. See LXX., tou plateos.

[102] Some references seem to make the city of David include the lower town—see 1 Kings viii. 1, ix. 24; 2 Chron. v. 2, viii. 11; 1 Macc. i. 33, ii. 31, vii. 32—but these are of late date. Stairs ascended from near Siloam to the city of David (Neh. iii. 15, xii. 37).

[103] 2 Sam. v. 11; 1 Kings viii. 1, ix. 24; 1 Chron. xv. 29; 2 Chron. v. 2, viii. 11.

[104] Wellhausen’s views as to a double narrative have nothing convincing to support them.

[105] 2 Sam. iii. 36.

[106] 2 Sam. xv. 12, xxiii. 34; cf. xi. 3.

[107] 2 Sam. xv. 13–30, xvii. 17, xviii. 18.

[108] 1 Kings i. 5–53. The Hebrew eben means “a rock” as well as “a stone” (Gesenius, “Lex.”). Gen. xlix. 24; Job xxviii. 3.

[109] The learned fancy which makes the Cherethites (“hewers”) and Pelethites (“swift ones”)—who are otherwise called Kāri (“stabbers”) and “runners”—to have been mercenary Philistines and Carians, has no solid foundation in any ancient statement. A “Gittite” was a dweller in Gath—like David himself—but not of necessity a Philistine.

[110] 1 Kings i. 33, 38, 45; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 14. The naḥal is noticed in the latter passage; and, in 2 Sam. xv. 23, the term applies to the Kidron, as also in 1 Kings ii. 37, xv. 13; 2 Kings xxiii. 6, 12; 2 Chron. xv. 16, xxix. 16, xxx. 14; Neh. ii. 15; Jer. xxxi. 40; and probably 2 Chron. xxxii. 4. Josephus (“Wars,” V. iv. 2) calls the Kidron spring “Solomon’s Pool.”

[111] Ezek. xliii. 12; Micah iv. i. Josephus, “Ant.,” VIII. iii. 9, XI. iv. 1; “Wars,” V. v. 1, tô anôtatô khthamalon autou.

[112] “Ant.,” XIV. iv. 2; “Wars” V. v. i.

[113] Yoma, v. 2.

[114] The Bîr el Arwâḥ, or “Well of Souls.”

[115] See my account of the rock granary at Yâfa, near Nazareth (“Mem. West Pal. Survey,” i. pp. 353, 354). It is a cave with inner chambers, and two tiers of grain wells under the floor.

[116] Bordeaux Pilgrim, 333 A. D., “Sunt ibi et statuæ duæ Hadriani, et non est longe a statuis lapis pertusus, ad quem veniunt Judæi singulis annis et unguent eum et lamentant se cum gemitu,” etc.

[117] 1 Kings vi. 1–35.

[118] 1 Kings vi. 36.

[119] See Exod. xxvii. 9, 12.

[120] 2 Chron. iv. 9; see 2 Kings xxi. 5. The “Higher Gate” (2 Kings xv. 35) is perhaps the “High Gate of Benjamin” (Jer. xx. 2; see Ezek. ix. 2); the Gate Sur (“of departure”), 2 Kings xi. 6, may be Shallecheth (“casting out”), 1 Chron. xxvi. 16, on west; the “Foundation” or “Middle” Gate (2 Chron. xxiii. 5; Jer. xxxix. 3), the Gate of the “Muster” (Miphkad, Neh. iii. 31) or “Guard” (Neh. xii. 39; 2 Kings xi. 19, “of Runners”), and the “New Gate of the Higher Court” (Jer. xxvi. 10, xxxvi. 10) are doubtfully placed. The “King’s Gate” (1 Chron. ix. 18) was on the east.

[121] 1 Kings iii. 1, ix. 24 (see vii. 8); 2 Chron. viii. 11; Josephus, “Ant.,” VIII. v. 2 (see 1 Kings vii. 1–12); Isa. xxii. 8; “Middle Court,” 2 Kings xx. 4; the “throne,” 1 Kings x. 18; “Great Court,” 1 Kings vii. 9; “Horse Gate,” 2 Kings xi. 16; 2 Chron. xxiii. 15; Neh. iii. 25, 28; “High House,” Neh. iii. 25; “House of David,” Neh. xii. 37.

[122] Stade’s plan, given by Dr. G. A. Smith (“Jerusalem,” vol. ii. p. 59), is purely conjectural, and the Temple is wrongly placed on the west slope of the hill.

[123] 2 Kings xxv. 4; Neh. iii. 15; Jer. xxxix. 4; see 2 Kings xxi. 18, 26; Zech. xiv. 10; Ezek. xliii. 8: see LXX., “in the midst,” for “in high places.”

[124] 1 Kings xi. 5, 7; 2 Kings xxiii. 10, 13; Isa. xxx. 33.

[125] 2 Kings xiv. 13; 2 Chron. xxv. 23.

[126] 2 Chron. xxvi. 15, 20.

[127] 2 Chron. xxvii. 3.

[128] Isa. vii. 1.

[129] Isa. vii. 3, viii. 6, xxii. 9, 11, xxxvi. 2.

[130] Josephus, “Wars,” V. xii. 2.

[131] 2 Kings xvi. 10–16.

[132] 2 Kings xvi. 18.

[133] Now Tell en Naṣbeh; see Isa. x. 32, xx. 1.

[134] 2 Kings xx. 20; 2 Chron. xxxii. 4, 5, 30.

[135] The level of the bottom is 2,080 feet above sea-level, or 7 feet lower than that of the commencement of the tunnel.

[136] See my report, “Mem. West Pal. Survey,” Jerusalem vol., 1883, pp. 345–65. The inscription was copied by me on July 15, 1881.

[137] See my article “Weights and Measures” in “Murray’s Bible Dictionary,” 1908, p. 944, for details.

[138] Taylor cylinder; 2 Kings xviii. 17.

[139] 2 Kings, xviii. 14. The Assyrian reads: Sasu kima iṣṣuri kuuppi kirib ali Urusalimmu alu sarrutisu esir-su: khalsi ilisu urakisma, aṣie abulli ali-su utirra ikkibus, etc.

[140] 2 Chron. xxxiii. 14.

[141] 2 Chron. xvi. 14, xxvi. 23, xxviii. 27, xxxiii. 20; Neh. iii. 16. See for the suggested tomb of David my “Handbook to the Bible,” 1879 (3rd edit. 1882, p. 341). Rev. Selah Merrill has recently adopted this suggestion: “Anct. Jer.,” 1908, p. 258.

[142] 2 Chron. xxxii. 33; Tosiphta, Baba Bathra, ch. i.; Josephus, “Ant.,” VII. xv. 3, XIII. viii. 4, XVI. vii. 1. The kings elsewhere buried were Asa, Jehoram, Uzziah, Ahaziah, Joash, Ahaz, and Manasseh. See Acts ii. 29. The Mishnah (Baba Bathra, ii. 9) says that tombs should be 50 cubits outside the city, but the Tosiphta says that those of the family of David were inside it.

[143] “Mem. West Pal. Survey,” Jerusalem vol., 1883, pp. 319–31.

[144] This pit is too short to have been a grave.

[145] 2 Chron. xxvi. 23. This tomb is again noticed in chap. x.

[146] Hilprecht, “Nippur Memoir,” I. i. plate 32.