Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/34

 18 JERUSALEM. Jehoshaphat is occupied by a high roclvj ridge or swell of land, which attains its highest elevation a little without the north-west angle of the present town. The city, then, occupied the termination of this broad swell of land, being isolated, except on the north, by the two great valleys already described, towards which the ground declined rapidly from all parts of the city. This rocky promontory is, how- ever, broken by one or two subordinate valleys, and the declivity is not uniform. (3) There is, for example, another valley, very inferior in magnitude to those which encu-cle the city, but of great importance in a topographical view, as being the main geographical feature mentioned by Josephus in his description of the city. This valley of the Tyropoeon (cheese-makers) meets the Valley of Hinnom at the Pool of Siloam, very near its junction with the Valley of Jehoshapliat, and can be distinctly traced through the city, along the west side of the Temple enclosure, to the Damascus gate, where it opens into a small plain. The level of this valley, running as it does through the midst of a city that has undergone such constant vicissitudes and such repeated destruction, has of course been greatly raised by the desolations of so many gene- rations, but is so marked a feature in modern as in former times, that it is singular it was not at once recognised in the attempt to re-distribute the ancient .Jerusalem fi-om the descriptions of Josephus. It would be out of place to enter into the arguments for this and other identifications in the topography of ancient Jerusalem ; the conclusions only can be stated, and the various hypotheses must be sought in the works referred to at the end of the article. Hills. — Ancient Jerusalem, according to Jo- sephus, occupied " two eminences, which fronted each other, and were divided by an intervening ravine, at the brink of which the closely-built houses termi- nated." This ravine is the Tyropoeon, already re- ferred to, and this division of tiie city, which the historian observes from the earliest period, is of the utmost importance in the topography of Jeru-^alem. Tile two hills and the intermediate valley are more minutely described as follows: — ( 1 ) The Upper City. — " Of these eminences, that which had upon it the Upper City was by mucli the loftier, and in its length the straiten This emi- nence, then, for its strength, used to be called the .stronghold by king David, but by us it was called the Upper Agora. (2) The Lower City. — "The other eminence, which was called Acra, and which supported the Lower City, was in shape gibbous (d.uc^i/cupTos). (3) The Temple Mount. — "Opposite to this latter was a third eminence, which was naturally lower than Acra, and was once separated from it by another broad ravine : but afterwards, in the times when the Asmonaeans reigned, they filled up the ravine, wishing to join the city to the Temple; and having levelled the summit of Acra, they made it lower, so that in this quarter also the Temple might be seen rising above other objects. '■ But the ravine called the Tyropoeon (cheese- makers), which we mentioned as dividing the emi- nences of the Upper City and the LoYer, reaches to Siloam ; for so we call the spring, both sweet and abundant. But on their outer sides the two emi- nences of the city were hemmed in within deep ravines, and, by reason of the precipices on either side, there was no approach to them from any quarter,'" (5, Jud. v. 4, 5.) JERUSALEM. This, then, was the disposition of the ancient city, on which a few remarks must be made before we proceed to the new city. The two-fold division, which, as has been said, is recognised by Josepbus from the first, is implied also in the sacred narrative, not only in the account of its capture by the Israelites, and subsequently by David, but in all such passages a« mention the city of David or Mount Sion as dis- tinct from Salem and Jerusalem. (Comp. Josh. xv. 63; Judges, i. 8, 21 ; 2 Sam. v. 6—9 ; Psalms, Isxvi. 2, &c.) The account given by Josephus of the taking of the city is this: that " the Israelites, having besieged it, after a time took the Lower City, but the Upper City was hard to be taken by reason of the strength of its walls, and the nature of its position" (^Ant. v. 2. § 2); and, subse- quently, that " David laid siege to Jerusalem, and took the Lower City by assault, while the citadel still held out" (vii. 3. § 1). Having at length got possession of the Upper City also, '' he encircled the two within one wall, so as to form one body" (§ 2). This could only be effected by taking in the inter- jacent valley, which is apparently the part called Millo. (4) But when in process of time the city over- flowed its old boundaries, the hill Bezetha, or New City, was added to the ancient hills, as is thus described by Josephus: — "The city, being over- abundant in population, began gradually to creep beyond its old walls, and the people joining to the city the region which lay to the north of the temple and close to the hill (of Acra), advanced consider- ably, so that even a fourth eminence was surrounded with habitations, viz. that which is called Bezetha, situated opposite to the Antonia, and divided from it by a deep ditch; for the ground had been cut through on purpose, that the foundations of the Antonia might not, by joining the eminence, be easy of ap- proach, and of inferior height." The Antonia, it is necessary here to add, in anti- cipation of a more detailed description, was a castle situated at the north-western angle of the outer enclosure of the Temple, occupying a precipitous rock 50 cubits high. It is an interesting fact, and a convenient one to facilitate a description of the city, that the several parts of the ancient city are precisely coincident >vith the distinct quarters of modern Jerusalem : for that, 1st, the Armenian and Jewish quarters, with the remainder of Jlount Sion, now excluded from the walls, composed the Upper City ; 2dly, the 5Ia- hommedan quarter corresponds exactly with the Lower City ; 3dly, that the Haram-es-Sherif, or Noble Sanctuary, of the Moslems, occupies the Temple Mount; and 4thly, that the Haret (quarter) Bab-el- Hitta is the declivity of the hill Bezetha, which attains its greatest elevation to the north of the modern city wall, but was entirely included within the wall of Agrippa, together with a considerable space to the north and west of the Lower City, in- cluding all the Christian quarter. The several parts of the ancient city were enclased by distinct walls, of which Josephus gives a minute description, which must be noticed in detail, as fur- nishing the fullest account we have of the city as it existed during the Roman period ; a description which, as fitr as it relates to the Old city, will serve for the elucidation of the ante-Babylonish capital, — as it is clear, from the account of the rebuilding of the walls by Nehemiah (iii., vi.), that the new fortifications followed the course of the ancient enceinte.