5 The Walls and Gates of the City
“Even stone walls,” says Mr Lewin, “cannot fail to awaken some degree of interest, when it is remembered that upon the result of the inquiry depends the question, Where was Calvary? and where the Holy Sepulchre?” If we desire to understand Old Testament events as well as those of the Gospels we shall take some interest in the question of the correct line of the walls. The walls were perambulated by Nehemiah’s two companies on the Thanksgiving Day; certain of the gates are mentioned by name in connection with events of the history; and our reading of the narrative will gain in vividness if we can follow the events like those acquainted with the ground.
The First Wall, or Wall of the Upper City.—Josephus says there were three walls; but as the third or most northerly was not built until A.D. 43, we will leave it out of account for the present. We shall endeavour to fix the lines of the walls and the positions of the gates as they were in Nehemiah’s time, and then we shall have those of still earlier date, for Nehemiah only repaired walls and gates which had been thrown down, and did not build afresh.
Beginning at the remarkable neck of land near the present Jaffa Gate a wall ran eastward along the northern brow of the hill, and in the line of the Causeway, and ended at the west cloister of the Temple. This was the north wall of the Upper City. That city had a wall all round it; and on the west, south, and east the wall simply followed the brow of the hill. From the Jaffa Gate it ran southward (facing westward) along the brink of the Valley of Hinnom, by Bethso (the Hebrew term for Dung place) to the Gate of the Essenes. At the south-west corner of the hill an escarpment of the rock was noticed by Robinson; was further traced by Mr Maudslay, who in 1872 found there a tower, reached by rock-cut steps; and is clearly marked in Conder’s plan. From this corner the wall faced the south for a while, and then, according to Josephus, made a bend above Siloam; and this must have been, as Mr Lewin points out, a bend up the Tyropœon Valley, along the edge of the High Town (to the Causeway), and then back again along the edge of the Low Town on Ophel (until it joined the Wall of Ophel discovered by Warren). The wall from Siloam, we learn from Josephus, bending there, faced to the east at Solomon’s Pool, and holding on as far as the place called Ophla, joined the eastern cloister of the Temple.27 The eastern cloister of the Temple—i.e., the south-eastern angle of the enclosure—was, in Josephus’s day, coincident with the south-east angle of Solomon’s palace of earlier time; and the city wall which joined it was the Wall of Ophel itself.
According to this description Solomon’s Pool was in the Tyropœon Valley, between the two walls of the High Town and the Low Town. Probably at a very early period many houses were built in this valley, and it became an intramural suburb. In view of war it would be deemed necessary to protect it; and for its defence the most obvious plan would be to build a dam or a wall athwart the valley. Such a work would greatly strengthen the city itself, by preventing all access up the valley, especially if the mound or wall was aided by a castle at the Ophel end of it. We shall see reason to believe that the dam and the castle were built and were called Millo and the House of Millo. The suburb thus became immured in the city, but continued to be called the Suburb; and we read that the west wall of the Temple enclosure had two gates leading to the Suburb (Josephus, “Antiquities” xv. 11, 5; 1 Chron. xxvi. 16, the gate Shallecheth).
The course of the first wall as thus described by Josephus does not appear to differ much from its course in Nehemiah’s time; and in all essentials it seems to be the wall of David’s day, preserved upon the old foundations. Josephus indeed states as much in the following passage:—“Now of these three walls, the old one was hard to be taken, both by reason of the valleys and of that hill on which it was built, and which was above them. But besides that great advantage as to the place where they were situated, it was also built very strong; because David and Solomon and the following kings were very zealous about this work.”
The Second Wall.—The description of the second wall, given by Josephus, is short, and may be quoted entire: “It took its beginning from that gate which they called Gennath, which belonged to the first wall; it only encompassed the northern quarter of the city, and reached as far as the tower Antonia.”
The necessity for this wall arose as follows. Through the increase of the population a suburb had sprung up, not only in the upper reach of the Tyropœon Valley, but on the hill beyond it. On the spur of this hill, which projected toward the Temple, stood the Akra fortress, but north-west of the fortress the ground was high and open, and unprotected by any deep valley. To protect this suburb it was necessary to carry a wall across the saddleback, sweeping round from the corner of the High Town to the north-west corner of the eastern hill; and this was probably done as early as David’s day.
There is not now much difficulty in finding approximately the position of the gate Gennath, the starting point of this wall. We observe on Conder’s plan of the rock site that a narrow ridge runs north and south, immediately east of the Tower of David, and separates as a shed the broad head of the Tyropœon from the western valley. The Tyropœon deepens very suddenly, and any wall carried across it would of necessity be commanded by the ridge to the west of it. The only sensible course for the builders was to carry the wall along the ridge itself, on ground commanding all without it. Exactly along this ridge, at its western side, a wall was discovered in the year 1885, during the rebuilding of the Greek Bazaar. At a depth 15 feet below the present street Dr Merrill found two layers of stone, and at some points three, still in position; and the stones were of the same size and character as the largest of the stones in the Tower of David opposite. Broken Roman pottery was found in these excavations, and a stone ball, such as the Romans used in warfare. The discovery of these foundations enables us to lay down the second wall for a distance of 40 or 50 yards, with accuracy.28 Thus we know where the wall began, and where it ended. Its intermediate course can only be ascertained by arguments of probability, and by mapping every bit of ancient wall uncovered in connection with building operations and the making of drains. Upon the true course of this wall depends the answer to the question whether the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was without the city or within. We are contented here to adopt the line of wall arrived at by Herr Conrad Schick, who has studied the question on the ground, who is acquainted with every bit of ancient wall that has come to light, and has a reason for every twist and turn and every gate and tower here represented. It will be seen by his plan that he does not stop at the Tower of Antonia, but continues his line of wall so as to defend the northern and eastern sides of the Temple. This is required by Nehemiah’s descriptions. But when Herod enlarged the Temple courts, if not before, these portions of the wall would be interfered with—the northern portion would be removed, the eastern portion had perhaps become buried—and so Josephus is silent about them.
With the course of the walls thus definitely marked out, it becomes possible to follow the descriptions in the Book of Nehemiah, and to identify the towers and gates and places there mentioned.
Nehemiah’s Night Ride to Survey the Ruins.—Jerusalem had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s general, and although the Chaldeans entered by a breach on the north side, they afterwards burnt the palace and every great house, and brake down the walls of Jerusalem round about (2 Kings xxv. 4). Nehemiah returned from the captivity to rebuild the city of his fathers, and prudently decided to make first a quiet survey of the extent of the destruction.
In chapter ii. 13, we read, “I went out by night by the Valley Gate, even towards the dragon’s well, and to the Dung Gate.” This Valley Gate was at or near the Gennath Gate, at the head of the Tyropœon Valley, and at the same time close to the Valley of Hinnom. It could not be far from the present Jaffa Gate. The Dung Gate—Josephus’s “Bethso”—comes between the Jaffa Gate and the south-west corner of the city; a position also required by chap. iii. 13. “Then I went on to the Fountain Gate and to the King’s Pool.” The Fountain Gate would be a convenient exit from the city to a path leading down to Siloam Pool; The King’s Pool (el-Berekath) was probably Solomon’s Pool, mentioned by Josephus as being by the east face of the old wall. In after times it would be called in Scripture the King’s Pool, because it was appropriated and used by Solomon’s successors, just as Solomon’s Palace is called the king’s house in Neh. iii. 25. This pool would be within the protected suburb. Nehemiah continues, “But there was no place for the beast that was under me to pass.” Why? Because here we have two walls in a narrow space, and the destruction of both of them had filled the valley with debris. “Then I went up by the brook (nachal, the Kedron) and viewed the wall: and I turned back and entered by the Valley Gate, and so returned.”
The Rebuilding of the Walls and Gates.—Nehemiah decides that the walls can be and shall be rebuilt; and he parcels out the work among forty-six of the principal people, who each have their retainers. The work is sacred, and is appropriately begun by the high priest, who naturally selects a spot near the Temple—the Sheep Gate of the city wall, which would seem to have been about midway between the north-eastern and north-western corners of the temple area of that time. The description of the repairs takes us westward, or to the left, and carries us all round the city to the same point again. “Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests, and they builded the Sheep Gate; they sanctified it, and set up the doors of it; even unto the tower of Hammeah29 they sanctified it, unto the tower of Hananel.” These two towers, we may suppose, with Mr Lewin and Herr Schick, already occupied the site of the future Antonia. In fact they were parts of the Baris or Castle where Nehemiah himself intends to reside (Neh. ii. 8, where the Hebrew word is the Birah).
After these towers of the Baris the various gates and places come before us in the following order:—
The Fish Gate, placed in Herr Schick’s plan where the first main line of street ran out into the country.
The Old Gate, where the next main line of street ran out. It is where these two roads cross one another that we get, at a later period, the Damascus Gate set up. Streets running direct towards a city wall seem to demand a gate in that wall to complete their usefulness.
Next we have the Throne of the Governor-beyond-the-River. This, like the preceding, is some structure occurring in the course of the wall. In chap. ii. 7, 9, the phrase “beyond the river” seems to mean westward of the Jordan, where the district was governed by a viceroy of the king of Assyria. The viceroy lived or had lived in Jerusalem,30 and his castle appears to have come into the line of the second wall, in the part which is south-east of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and perhaps exactly at the re-entering angle.
The Broad Wall, which is named next, was not necessarily broad in itself. Open spaces, such as we should name Squares, were in Jerusalem called Broads. There was one such broad space south of the Temple water gate, on Ophel, in which the people sometimes assembled (Neh. viii. 1; Ezra x. 9). There seems to have been another near one of the city gates, where Hezekiah addressed the people, alarmed at the approach of Sennacherib (2 Chron. xxxii. 6). Sennacherib would approach the city on the north-west, and the people were very likely gathered by the Valley Gate discussing the matter, in an open space afterwards utilised by the construction of the “Pool of Hezekiah.” The “Broad” wall might be so called from running along one side of this broad space. It perhaps started from the second wall at the point which Nehemiah’s description has now reached, and extended southward to the wall of the high town, and so constituted an inner line of defence. Nothing is said of repairing it: perhaps it had not been thrown down; or, as an inner wall, Nehemiah neglects it for the present, as he does also the north wall of the Upper City. At any rate the description carries us beyond it. At the north-west angle of the second wall there was a Corner Gate (2 Kings xiv. 13; 2 Chron. xxv. 23), which is called also the Gate that Looketh. A gate here would command a view of the city walls as far as the Fish Gate on the one hand and the Valley Gate on the other. But this gate also is passed over in the present description.
We have next the Tower of the Furnaces, probably west of the “Pool of Hezekiah.” The word may mean hearths furnaces, ovens, or altars; but we cannot say to what it related.
And then we come to the Valley Gate, which we have already seen must have been near the present Jaffa Gate, and probably was exactly where the present David Street passes the end of the wall discovered, by the Greek Bazaar, in 1885. Unless a gate existed there, the street would lose half its use. Yet there is Herr Schick’s alternative, that the name was given to a gate south-west of the Citadel, and opening on to the Valley of Hinnom.
In verse 13, from the Valley Gate it is “1000 cubits on the wall to the Dung Gate.” This forbids any identification with the present dung gate, in the Tyropœon, and fixes within a little the position of Bethso.
In verse 15, Shallun, who repairs the Fountain Gate, repairs also “the wall of the Pool of Shelah by the king’s garden.” Allow that Shelah is Siloam, yet this need not be a wall running down to Siloam—if we were to take that line we should go wrong all the rest of the way—it is the transverse wall in the same valley above. Through a gate in this wall the Pool of Siloam would be conveniently reached from the Suburb; and this would be the “Gate between two walls,” through which Zedekiah fled away (2 Kings, xxv. 4; Jer. xxxix. 4; lii. 7). The wall was by the king’s garden (le = by or near). Shallun pursues his work along the transverse wall eastward “unto (ad) the Stairs (maaloth) that go down from the City of David.” So the City of David includes Ophel, and the Stairs descend the Ophel slope westward into the bed of the Tyropœon.
REFERENCE.
Suggested line of wall — — —
1 Valley gate.
2 Dung gate.
3 Fountain gate.
4 King’s pool.
5 Wall of Pool of Shelah.
6 King’s Gardens.
7 Stairs of the City of David.
8 Sepulchres of David.
9 The Pool that was made.
10 House of the mighty.
11 Turning of the wall.
12 The Armoury.
13 Turning of the wall.
14 House of Eliashib.
15 Turning of the wall.
16 The Corner.
17 Turning of the wall.
18 Tower at King’s house. (Tower that standeth out.)
19 Water gate.
20 Tower that lieth out.
21 Great Tower that lieth out.
22 Wall of Ophel.
23 Horse gate.
24 Houses of priests.
25 Gate Miphkad.
26 Ascent of the corner.
27 Going up of the wall.
28 House of David.
29 Gate between two walls.
30 Gate of the Guard (2 Kings, xi. 19).
31 Gate of the Guard (Neh. xii. 39).
Verse 16, “After him repaired Nehemiah, the son of Azbuk, unto the place over against (neged = in front of) the sepulchres of David.” The wall of the Pool of Shelah was an offshoot from the wall of the High Town, so the writer returns and continues his description of the wall of the High Town. Nehemiah, the son of Azbuk, takes up the repairs at the Fountain Gate and works northward. He comes over against the royal sepulchres, which are therefore on the Ophel side of the Tyropœon, a little north of the Stairs. The entrance would have to be low down in the valley bed to be outside the wall which protects Ophel on the west; but there is no reason why it should not be low down. The only doubt we need have is whether the spot marked in the plan is quite far enough north. In either case the excavations for royal tombs were so extensive as at length to approach the south wall of the Temple, perhaps even to touch the wall (at a point now under the mosque El Aksa). This is complained of by the prophet Ezekiel as a desecration. “The house of Israel shall no more defile my holy name, neither they, nor their kings, by their whoredom, and by the carcases of their kings in their death; in their setting of their threshold by my threshold, and their door-post beside my door-post, and there was but the wall between me and them” (Ezek. xliii. 7, 8).
Nehemiah, the son of Azbuk, continues working northward “unto the pool that was made” (berekah, probably the “king’s pool” of ii. 14, and the “reservoir between two walls” of Isaiah xxii.). He goes on “unto the house of the mighty men.” If this is the house of the king’s bodyguard, the men of war mentioned in 2 Kings xxv. 4, we shall find that they are conveniently placed about midway between the armoury and the king’s house.
In the remaining short space on the west side of the Tyropœon we have no less than four bands of workers, indicating that the destruction had been very great, as indeed Nehemiah found it to be when there was no possibility of his beast getting along; and the next indication of locality is in Verse 19, “the turning” of the wall, “over against the ascent to the armoury.” The armoury, therefore, was in or near the north-eastern angle of the suburb.
Verse 20. We are now carried from “the turning” of the wall by the armoury, southward, “unto the door of the house of Eliashib, the high priest;” and we are not surprised to find his house here, for we are close alongside the Temple courts. The workers come unto the door of Eliashib’s house, which thus seems to project westward, so as to be quite near to the line of wall; but they only come over against the less important houses which follow.
Verse 24. The sixth worker down this side comes to “the turning” of the wall and “unto the corner.” The turning is not the same as the corner; the Hebrew language uses different words for a re-entering and a salient angle. Each of the two turnings at the causeway (vv. 19, 20) is called a miqtzoa (= a re-entering angle); but now, in v. 24, they come to a miqtzoa and to a pinneh (= a projecting angle). It is to be observed that we should not have such angles at this part but for the vacant square which Warren’s examination of the masonry compelled him to leave—the wall for 300 feet each way from the south-west corner of the Haram being more recent than the rest.
The first salient angle is passed over because the worker who begins north of it continues his labours till he comes south of it, and so its mention is not necessary in defining the work done. (In like manner, in vv. 6–8, the Gate of Ephraim is passed by without mention, although, according to xii. 38, 39, it existed between the Broad Wall and the Old Gate; and the Corner Gate, which we know existed, is passed over by Nehemiah.)
Verse 25. The mention now of another re-entering angle might perplex us, only that the same verse speaks of a “tower standing out from the king’s upper house,” and this may easily afford the angle.
Verse 26. We are now fairly on the Hill of Ophel, and accordingly the workers who have been set to labour here are “the Nethinim dwelling in Ophel.” There is also mention in v. 31 of a house of the Nethinim near the northern end of the east wall—still outside the Temple precincts.31
As soon as the Nethinim of Ophel get far enough south to look beyond the projecting tower and see the Triple Gate, they are stated to be over against the Water Gate. Lewin says that “the Water Gate proper was that of the inner Temple, to the south of the altar, and led down to the great southern gate of the outer Temple, which was probably also called the Water Gate.” The Nethinim find themselves at the same time looking eastward, or their wall facing toward the sun-rising. They are also over against the tower that standeth out. This is not the tower mentioned in the previous verse as projecting from the king’s house, but may perhaps be the one at the bend of the Ophel wall, discovered by Warren.
Verse 27. Where the Nethinim cease their work it is taken up by the Tekoites, who presently come “over against the great tower that standeth out,” namely, the large tower which Warren found. This identification struck Warren himself, and he mentions it in the “Recovery of Jerusalem,” p. 295. It now wanted but a little extension of the work to complete the junction with the Wall of Ophel, at the point where Warren found that wall to end abruptly, and the narrative tells us that the Tekoites effected the junction.
Verse 28. The Ophel Wall being in good repair, is no more referred to; but the next thing mentioned is the Horse Gate. As Warren could not find any gate in the Ophel Wall, the Horse Gate must have been north of it; and here it would be at a point convenient for entrance to Solomon’s Stables, which would be under the palace, and perhaps under the present vaults known as Solomon’s Stables. There is a depth of about 100 feet of unexplored rubbish between the floor of Solomon’s Stables and the rock at the south-eastern angle. The true stables may lie buried in this rubbish.
“Above the Horse Gate repaired the priests, every one over against his own house.” These houses of priests are in a position exactly corresponding with the house of Eliashib and others on the west side. The expression “over against,” implies that the city wall which is being repaired stands removed from the priests’ houses, which border the Temple courts, and it would be eastward of the present Haram wall. Herr Schick draws it so.
Verse 29. An East Gate is referred to (Mizrach), not to be confounded with the Gate Harsith, the so-called East Gate of Jeremiah xix. 2 in the Authorised Version. It may be the Shushan Gate, which, according to the Talmud, stood over against the east front of the Temple.
When we come over against the Golden Gate—which Nehemiah calls the Gate Miphkad—we are just where Warren’s tunnelling work was arrested by a massive masonry barrier—probably a part of the ancient city wall—50 feet east of the Haram wall. The wall was built of large quarry-dressed stones, and was so thick that a hole made into it for 5 feet 6 inches did not go right through. A few feet north of the Golden Gate the wall began bending north-west, as though following the contour of the hill; and Warren was also led to suspect that the wall is a high one, extending upward through the debris to near the surface, since immediately above it, in the road, there are some large roughly-bevelled stones lying in the same line.32
In Nehemiah’s description we are now immediately at “the ascent of the corner” (pinneh, a projecting angle). There is no corner now visible at the surface immediately north of the Golden Gate, and no ascent from a depth. But we have seen already that the northern cloister of the Temple would strike the east wall of the Haram a little north of the Golden Gate, and consequently here would be the corner of the Temple courts. We have also seen that the rock now shelves down to the north, for the valley from Herod’s Gate came out here, and at 300 feet north of Golden Gate the rubbish is 125 feet in depth, so that from this low ground there would be an ascent in turning west. The wall itself would go up, ascending toward the ridge of the hill. There is no more likely spot for the elbow of the wall than that marked by the little building called the Throne of Solomon. The great depth of the valley here gave fearful height to the corner tower; and eastern imagination would be not unlikely to suggest that only Solomon or the demons could have built it.
Having reached “the ascent of the corner,” one more band of workers brings us to the Sheep Gate, where the description began.
The Route of the Processionists.—Chapter xii. affords striking confirmation of the foregoing positions. At the dedication of the walls two companies start from the Valley Gate and go opposite ways to meet in the Temple. Presumably the Valley Gate was chosen to afford journeys of about equal length; and this is another indication that the wall did not go down to Siloam. The party going south pass the Dung Gate, and reach the Fountain Gate. And now which way will they go? The wall has been repaired right ahead of them, and also the wall turning north, and they will have to choose between two routes. The Revised Version says they went “by (ad) the Fountain Gate and straight before them,” and ascended by the Stairs of the City of David at the going up of the wall (not by this time, nor really “at,” but “in”—ba-maaleth le-chomah, i.e., in the stairway of the wall by the Stairs of David—a different stairway from the Stairs of the City of David, which descended into the valley bed).
Their way up these stairs and beyond carried them “above the house of David, even unto the Water Gate.” The house of David here is close by the king’s garden of iii. 15; and its position on the slope of the hill suggests a reason for calling Solomon’s palace the king’s upper house (or high house, iii. 25). Some say “the house of David” means David’s tomb; but if that be so, it only confirms the position which I am led to assign to the tomb. Observe also that the position required for the Water Gate here is again that of the present Triple Gate, the same as in iii. 26.
It deserves particular attention that the processionists pass quickly from the Stairs of David to the Water Gate, whereas in the rebuilding, these two places are very wide apart, because the bend of the wall is followed. In iii. 15, we have the Sepulchres, the Pool, the House of the Mighty, four more bands of workers, the turning of the wall, the armoury, the house of Eliashib, the turning, the corner, and the outstanding tower—all between the point over against the Stairs of David and the Water Gate; but none of these things come in the route of the processionists. This is easy to understand if the wall makes a bay up the Tyropœon, for then the short cut in the text corresponds with the short cut in the plan; but it can hardly be made intelligible on any plan which omits this bay and carries the wall down to Siloam.
A superficial objection may be raised that the detour up the valley and viâ the causeway, avoided by the processionists, would be avoided by Nehemiah in repairing the walls, for why should he do more than repair the short transverse wall, when his object was speed? My reply would be that his object was strength and safety as well as speed. The transverse wall was no sufficient protection by itself, there being an easy approach up the valley, but it was valuable as an addition to the inner walls. Besides, Nehemiah had workers enough to be engaged at all these parts at once, so that the completion of the work was not at all delayed by repairing the two north-and-south walls of the bend simultaneously with the cross wall, and indeed with the walls all round the city.
The second company, with whom was Nehemiah, started from the Gate of the Valley simultaneously with the first; and the earliest note of their progress is that they pass the Tower of the Furnaces and reach the Broad Wall. We now, of course, meet with the places in the reverse order to that in which we made their acquaintance, in following the builders from east to west. The order then was—
Sheep-Gate.
Tower of the Meah.
Tower of Hananel.
Fish Gate.
Old Gate.
Broad Wall.
Tower of the Furnaces.
Passing these now, in reverse order, we find the Gate of Ephraim noticed, between the Broad Wall and the Old Gate. I incline to place the Gate of Ephraim at the junction of several streets near the north-east corner of the Muristan, and I will give two reasons. (1) Taking the wall as drawn by Schick, a principal street of the city going west abuts upon the wall at that point and requires a gate. (2) A Corner Gate existed, apparently at the north-western angle of the second wall, west of the Broad Wall; the distance between the Corner Gate and the Gate of Ephraim was 400 cubits (2 Kings xiv. 13; 2 Chron. xxv. 23); and the place now proposed for the Gate of Ephraim corresponds to that distance. It may be that the tower of this gate was the throne of the governor, the viceroy of the Assyrian king.
Nehemiah’s company having at length reached the Sheep Gate entered the Temple courts and stood still in the Gate of the Guard.
Thus the two companies stood on the north and south sides of the altar, and rendered thanksgiving to God, for that an unbroken wall once more protected Jerusalem.
The line of wall being established, with the positions of David’s house, the gate between two walls, &c., we are confirmed in our conclusion that the City of David was the eastern hill and included Ophel. We see whereabouts the royal sepulchres are likely to be found by future excavation. We gain something immediately by being able to follow step by step the work of Nehemiah. And this is not all, for we obtain fresh light upon the history of the house of David at various points.
[Authorities and Sources:—The author himself is responsible for the views of Jerusalem topography set forth in this volume. The reader who wishes to consult other writers may find the following references useful:—“Jerusalem, a Sketch.” By Thomas Lewin. “Siege of Jerusalem.” Thomas Lewin. “Antient Jerusalem.” Joseph Francis Thrupp. “The Recovery of Jerusalem.” Sir Charles Warren. Trans. Soc. Bib. Archæol., vol. vii. (“Site of the Temple.” By Sir C. Warren). “The Holy City.” Rev. George Williams. “The Holy Sepulchre and the Temple.” James Fergusson, F.R.S. “Murray’s Handbook of Syria and Palestine.” (Dr Porter). “Quarterly Statements of the P.E. Fund” (numerous papers).]