The Walls

The Walls.

The account of Tacitus ("Hist." v. 8-12) is meager. He mentions the walls with towers 120 feet high, part of which height was that of the natural elevation upon which they were built. He mentions also a perennial fountain of water. Further details, especially of the walls, are given by Josephus ("B. J." v. 4). He says that the city lay upon two opposite hills, with a valley between: the one containing the upper city was much higher and longer, and was called in his day the "upper market-place"; the other hill, called "Acra," was ἀμφίκυρτος ("gibbous"), referring, no doubt, to the city of David of the Old Testament, i.e., Zion. Over against this was a third hill, lower and separated from it by a valley, evidently the Temple mount. In addition to this there was the "new city" (for another, novel but unacceptable, view of these designations see Gatt in "Z. D. P. V." xxv. 178). This would give the city an extent of about 33 stadia or 6 square kilometers; though Eusebius gives only 27 stadia. The walls were three in number. That on the north was a triple one, on account of the vulnerable condition of the city from that direction. The southern-most wall encompassed the upper and the lower city and Ophel. It started at Hippicus, ran south to the Gate of the Essenes at the southwest corner of the city, then east, curving as it approached the Kidron Valley, from which it ran north-northeast, joining the Temple enclosure at its southeastern extremity. Bliss supposes that this wall did not include the Siloam Pool, as Josephus ("B. J." v. 9, § 4) speaks of the pool as being in the hands of the Romans. On the north it ran from Hippicus directly east to the northern edge of the southwestern hill, near the Xystus, where it joined the western porch of the Temple. The second wall to the north has been partly retraced by the excavations of Schick. It must have started near Hippicus and the gate Gennath, running slightly northward, enclosing the Amygdalon Pool, and then east; thence it ran north-northeast until it reached the Antonia. Schick supposed that it did not include the place where now the Church of the Sepulcher stands; but, according to Mitchell, he made a wrong estimate of the material found by him in 1887, and the wall included this space ("Jour. Bib. Lit." xxiii. 142). The third wall was that built by Agrippa I. It started also at Hippicus, ran northwest, then northeast, over against the monuments of Helena, passed by the tomb of the kings, and joined the old wall in the Kidron Valley. It seems probable that this coincided with the present northern wall of the city. See frontis-piece, map of Jerusalem (time of destruction).

Jerusalem