Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/669

JERUSALEM (541 golden gate, must be placed the horse gate (Jer. xxxi. 40). South of this again came the fortifications of Ophel and the upper palace, and from this point the enceinte swept round to the pool of Siloah. The lower wall of Manasseh in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 14 is described as an outwork in the Kidron valley extending all along the eastern side of the town and round the north-east corner. The long blank in the history of the Jews which follows the time of Nehemiah makes it impossible to trace the progress of Jerusalem in any detail. Under the Persian empire the Jews enjoyed little prosperity. Alexander spared the city, but in 320 its walls were rased by Ptolemy I. (Appian, Syr., 50). A period of comparative prosperity followed, culminating in the high priesthood of Simon II. (219-199 B.C.), who repaired the temple and strengthened its defences and fortified the city. The walls were again destroyed and the city burned by the army of Antiochus Epiphanes in 168 B.C. When Judas Maccabseus reconsecrated the temple (165) he also fortified the holy mountain of Zion (the Temple hill) with wall and towers. Once more rased by the Greeks, the walls of the city were renewed with hewn stone by Jonathan. It is plain froml Mace. iv. 60, vi. 7, x. 11, that up to this time the fortified city was still identical with the Temple hill ; but a new topographical problem is raised by what is related of the citadel (Akra) erected by Epiphanes to dominate the town. The Akra is identified by the author with the city of David. It continued to be held by the Greeks after the town was fortified by the Macca bees, and indeed was ultimately reduced by the erection of a special wall cutting off the Greek garrison from access to the city and market (xii. 36). The natural inference from all this is that the Greek citadel lay on. the Temple hill, and presumably on the site of the later Antonia. That hill is certainly the Zion of 1 Mace. ; and the city of David, with which the Akra is identified, had always meant the fortress of Zion. The same result seems to follow from the language of Joseph us. When Josephus lived Jerusalem was almost a new town. Under the Maccabees, and again under Herod, the prosperity of the Jews was greater than at any previous time. The sanctuary was a centre of pilgrimage from the most distant lands, and the sovereigns of Jerusalem had an empire greater than any of the kings after Solomon. The growth of the city must have been enormous, and the great buildings of Herod and his successors had wholly changed its aspect, especially in the quarter of the temple and on the western hill where the royal palace stood. These changes were very apt to mislead an uncritical writer with regard to the ancient topography, and in fact Josephus falls into a radical blunder by assuming that the fortress of David belonged to the upper city, like the royal castle of his own day, 1 and that the western hill had always been part of Jerusalem. But of Jerusalem as he himself saw it he gives a vivid description (B. J., v. 4, 1). The city stood on two hills divided by the Tyropceon valley, into which the houses descended tier beneath tier. The higher western hill was called the upper market, the lower hill across the Tyropceon was the citadel hill, and was called indifferently the Akra or the lower city. That this Akra included the ridge south of the temple is clear from several marks: the hill was a/j.<piKvpros, "hog-backed"; it was cut off by ravines on the outer side, and had a continuous approach to the temple, which stood on the higher ground ; finally, it extended to Siloah at the mouth of the Tyropceon. 2 Thus we see that, though Josephus himself has lost the true tradition as to the city of David, he furnishes additional proof that the citadel hill, still identified with it by the author of 1 Mace. , was no other than the eastern hill. A different view of the Akra was maintained by Robinson, and has been elaborated by Messrs Warren and Conder 3 in connexion with recent better observations as to the two heads of the Tyropceon valley. It is maintained that the Akra was a knoll, west of the Temple hill and north of the traditional Zion, between the two heads of the Tyroprcon. To gain any show of plausibility for this view it is necessary to lay great weight on a statement of Josephus that the Temple hill was once a third eminence lower than the Akra, and divided from it by a broad ravine, and that Simon after taking the Aicra destroyed the citadel and laboured for three years to reduce its site below the level of the temple plateau and fill up the inter vening hollowj/?. J., v. 4 ; Ant., xiii. 6, 6). This story is pro- 1 A perpetuation of this blunder gives the current name Tower of David to the Herodian tower, probably Pliasael, which still stands by the Jaffa gate. On this tower compare a paper by Schick in Zeitschr. d. Deut. Paldstina- Vereins, vol. i. 2 R. J., vi. 7, 2 ; comp. v. 4, 1, and the association of Siloah and the Akra in v. 6, 1. 3 See Warren, The Temple or the Tomb, London, 1880; and Conder, Tent Work in Palestine, London, 1878, vol. i. bably exaggerated, for according to the early and trustworthy evi dence of 1 Mace. xiii. the Akra was not destroyed, but only purged, and strengthened by additional fortifications on the sacred moun tain. And in any case we know that the Akra was opposite the temple, and that in the time of Josephus there was no longer a ravine between, whereas the city opposite the temple to the west was still cut off by the deep Tyropceon (Ant., xv. 11, 5), except where a bridge led to the palace on the western hill. Nor is it possible that the western head of the Tyropceon can be the deep ravine which, according to Josephus, separated the upper and lower city, for that head is the theatre-shaped basin described in Ant., xv. 11, 5 as facing the temple across the ravine. Under the Hasmonean dynasty we meet with the first unambiguous evidence that the city had extended to the loftier western hill, where a new palace was erected over looking the temple (Ant., xx. 8, 11). This continued to be the royal quarter, and was raised to great splendour by Herod, who covered a vast extent of ground with his palace, its courts and pleasure grounds. The palace of Herod embraced two edifices transcending the temple in magnificence, and the three enormous adjoining towers, Hippicus, Phasael, and Mariamne, made the upper city the strongest part of Jerusalem. Here also in Herod s days stood the xystus or gymnasium, beneath the Hasmonean palace, where a bridge spanned the Tyropccon. The bridge already existed under the later Hasmoneans, when the new quarter had as yet minor importance and the Temple hill was still the only citadel. Here the warlike high priest Hyrcanus usually dwelt in the castle (Bapts, HTa) which Herod afterwards converted into the fortress of Antonia in the north-west corner of the enceinte of the temple (Ant., xv. 11, 4; B. J., v. 5, 8). Antonia had the form of a square keep, with loftier towers rising pinnacle-like at the corners. It commanded the temple and therefore the whole lower city, and by its two staircases the Roman soldiers descended into the porticoes of the temple to keep order among the worshippers (comp. Acts xxi. 35). When Pompey besieged the Temple hill in 65 B.C., the bridge was broken down, and the Tyropceon afforded a complete defence on the west. His assault was made from the north, where there was a strong wall with towers and a deep fosse which was with difficulty filled up to permit the advance of his siege train. This fosse must be identified with the rock-cut trench north of the Haram area, and from Josephus s description seems to have been still the northern limit of the town. The walls destroyed by Pompey were restored by Antipater, and ten years later yielded, after an obstinate resistance, to Herod and the Ptomans (37 B.C.). The Baris, occupied by Antigonus, was not surrendered till the temple and the rest of the city had been carried by storm, and we now read of two walls which had to be reduced successively. The most important buildings erected by Herod have already been alluded to, and his reconstruction of the temple will be considered under that heading. But the walls of the city as they existed at the time of the siege by Titus must still be described. They were three in number. The first wall consisted of a rampart to the north of Herod s palace, connecting Hippicus in the citadel of the upper city with the western porch of the temple, and of another line skirting the face of the western hill from Hippicus southward, thence curving round beyond Siloah, and joining the eastern wall of the temple enclosure at Ophel. Several traces of this wall still exist. The second wall, connecting a point in the northern line of the first wall with Antonia, enclosed the new town or trading quarter. Outside both these walls, on the hill side sloping southwards towards the temple, a suburb called Bezetha had grown up, which Agrippa I. in the time of Claudius Caesar began to protect with a third wall conceived on a gigantic scale, but never altogether finished. The precise compass of this wall, which began at Hippicus and rejoined the first wall in the XIII. 8 1