854
JERUSALEM
JERUSALEM
Fountain — called, apparently, by Josephus ' Solo- mon's Pool ' — and thence to ' a certain place -which they called Ophlas, where it joined to the eastern cloister of the Temple' {BJv. iv. 2).
Extensive remains of this ■wall have been traced. Those of the great tower at the S. W. corner were examined by Maudslay in 1S74. He found the base of a tower 20 feet high he^^^l out of the native rock. It was nearly square, and projected 45 feet from the scarp to which it was attached — altogether a great work, and at a point which must have always been specially well fortified.* A little to the east is another great scarp, and here Bliss t began to trace out the buried remains of the south wall. He found near the commencement of his excava- tions a gate wliich may very probably be the Gate of the Essenes. In tracing the wall towards Siloam, foundations belonging to two distinct periods were excavated. Bliss considered that the higher of these belonged to the wall of the period between Herod and Titus. A little to the AV. of Siloam he found the remains of a tine gateway showing three periods of use — the sill lying at dittbrcnt heights in each period — and a fine rock-cut underground drain, almost certainly Koman work, which he traced for a gieat distance up the W. side of the Tyropceon Valley, where it came to lie under a paved street ascending the valley in the direction of the Temple. After leaving the before-mentioned gate, there were indications — not, it must be admitted, decisive — that the wall at one period surrounded the pool on three sides, as Josephus apparently describes, whUe at another period it crossed the mouth of the Tyropceon Valley on an elaborate dam. To the east of the pool the rock scarp is exposed, and almost every trace of the wall lias been removed. As regards the E. section of this southern wall, Sir Charles Warren in 1875 traced the buried remains of a wall 14^ feet thick and, in places, 70 feet high from the S.E. corner of the Temple south- wards for 90 feet, and then S. W. for 700 feet. Two hundreil feet from the end he unearthed the re- mains of a massive tower standing to the height of 66 feet and founded upon rock. The wall itself had been built, not on rock, but on virgin soil. The course of the wall, as described by Josephus, thus appears to be very fully verified by modem discoveries.
(b) With regard to the second wall a great deal of uncertainty prevails. There are few more hotly disputed problems in Jerusalem topography. This second wall appears to have been on the line of that made by the later kings of Judah, to have been repaired by Nehemiah, and used by the Has- monieans. It is dismissed by Josephus (BJ v. iv. 2) in a very few words ; it ' took its beginning from that gate which they call Gennath, which be- longed to the first wall ; it only encompassed the northern quarter of the city and reached as far as the tower of Antonia.' It had 40 towers on it. Ko remains of the gate Gennath have been found, but the configuration of the ground makes it improb- able that the wall could have taken its rise very far to the E. of the present Jaffa Gate, as here there exists a narrow neck of high ground, but a little to the E. the level abruptly descends into the W. arm of the Tyropaon. In 1886 some 30 yards of the remains of wliat seemed a city wall were discovered 15 feet below the street, where the foundations of the Grand New Hotel were dug. They were sup- posed by Messrs. .MirriU and Schick to be part of the second wall ;it its \V. m.l, but too short a piece was examined to alln« of jiositive conclusions. The other supiios.-d traces of the second wall are even more ambiguous. In the N. part of the
, Jerusalem, 1S94-97,'
1 and Dickie,
JIfiinstan, where to-day stands tlie German churcli, Schick found remains of which he said, ' I am con- vinced that these are traces of the second wall ' : these would fall in line with a wall 10 or 12 feet thick, which, according to Ilobinson (BEP i. 408), was found N. of the Pool of Hezekiah, when the foundations of the Coptic Convent were laid. Again, just to the N. of the German church and E. of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were found extensive ruined walls, which are to-day treasured by the Russian ecclesiastical authorities as sure evidences that the site of the traditional Holy Sepulchre was outside the ancient walls. It is, however, much more probable that these remains, which are quite unlike city walls, are really frag- ments of Constantine's Great Basilica.
The question is thus quite an open one, but the argument tliat the second wall cannot, on military grounds, have followed a course S. of the site of the Sepiilchre is an unsafe one. As Sir C. Wilson * points out : ' There are several Greek towns in Asia Minor where the city walls or parts of them are quite as badly traced according to modern ideas. In ancient towns the Acropolis was the principal defence, the city wall was often weak.' It may indeed be suggested that tins very weakness made Agrippa undertake his new wall along a better line for defence.