Article,
The Walls of Jerusalem at the End of the Second Temple Period / חומות ירושלים
Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies / ארץ-ישראל: מחקרים בידיעת הארץ ועתיקותיה, (1971)
Abstract
This article deals mainly with the northern walls of the city. The discussion opens with the 'Third Wall', as identified by Sukenik and Mayer. The line of the second wall is fixed by the author on the basis of remains discovered during the 1880's along the Turkish walls, from the New Gate to Damascus Gate. An important trace of this wall is on the southern side of Damascus Gate, where four courses are in situ, now comprising the inner walls of the gate-tower. The author's main innovation is his proposed line of the 'First Wall'. Somewhere near 'David's Tower', the wall touched one of the three towers of Herod's palace. Traces of a wall were found opposite, however, during the digging for the foundations of the Imperial Hotel building. At the edge of the plot, bordering on the street of the Greek Catholic Patriarchate, two or three courses of wall were exposed for a length of 40 m; the wall was 3.50 m thick. The next trace was found during repairs in the Coptic church north of Hezekiah's Pool. Further on, remains of a wall were discovered during construction of the Omariya mosque, opposite the Holy Sepulchre. When the foundations were dug for the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, a 13 m long section of wall was found at a depth of 7 m. At the Alexandrovsky Hospice, north of the Church of the Redeemer, the threshold of a gate was found, along with a street pavement and a gate-tower. From here, the wall ran approximately along the Via Dolorosa, where there are two additional traces of the wall: in the foundations of the Church of St. Veronica, and in a house denoted the House of Simon of Cyrene. Here, the wall crossed the valley separating the Upper City from the Temple Mount, and ran to the north-western corner of the pre-Herodian Temple Mount, some 10 m south of Bab en-Nadhir. It has already been noted that Josephus' description is incomplete, and that he neglected altogether to deal with the wall of the Upper City, where the last fighting took place fully a month after the destruction of the Temple. The point of departure for the line of this wall is Bliss's excavations of 1894—97. At the eastern edge of the Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion, he found a part of the southern city-wall running northward, with two towers towards Burj el-Kabrit. Isolated remains, uncovered during construction work in the court of the Batei Mahse, continue the line to the east of the Jewish Quarter, whence it ran to St. Mark Street, passing the Haret el-Ya'qubiye mosque to the area of 'David's Tower'. Two gates are known in this wall; one is mentioned by the Sages as the 'Dung Gate' and stood between the Upper City and the Lower City; and a second gate stood between the Upper City and the Temple Mount, traces of which are to be found in Habad Street (Khan Khalili).
