Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/36

 20 JERUSALEM, promenade, though not necessarily connected with a f,^ymnasium, but perhaps rather with another palace which occupied " this extremity of the Upper City ;" for the name was given also to a terraced walk with colonnades attached to Roman villas. (Vitniv. v. 1 1 .) (6) The House of the Asmanaeans was above the Xystus, and was apparently occupied as a palace by the Younger Agrippa; for, when he addressed the multitude assembled in the Xystus, he placed his sister Berenice in the house of the Asmonaeans, that she might be visible to them. (5. J. I. c.) (7) The Causeway. At the Xystus we are told a causeway (7ei|)upa) joined the Temple to the Upper City, and one of the Temple gates opened on to this causeway. That the yi^vpa was a causeway and not a bridge, is evident from the expression of Jo- sephus in another passage, where he says that the valley was interrupted or filled up, for the passage (rfjs (papayyos els SioSov airei]fifj.eyT]s, Ant. xv. 11. § 5.). As the Tyropoeon divided the Upper from the Lower City, and the Temple Mount was attached to the Lower, it is obvious that the Tyro- poeon is the valley here mentioned. This earth- wall or embankment, was the work of Solomon, and is the only monument of that great king in Jerusalem that can be certainly said to have escaped the ravages of time; for it exists to the present day, serving the same purpose to the Slahometans as foi-merly to the Jews: the approach to the Mosk enclosure from the Baza:u-s passes over this cause- way, which is therefore the most frequented thorough- fare in the city. (Williams, Holy City, vol. ii. pp. .392 -397, and note, pp. 601—607.) It is highly probable that the Xystus was nothing else than the wide promenade over this mound, adorned with a covered cloister between the trees, with which the Rabbinical traditions assure us that Solomon's causeway was shaded. It is clear that the north wall of the Upper City must have crossed the valley by this causeway to theGcte Shallecheth, which is explained to mean the Gate of the Embank- ment. (1 Chron. xxvi. 16.) (8) The Council- Chamber (j3oi;J, jSouAeuTT)- piof) is the next place mentioned on the northern line of wall, as the point where it joined the western portico of the Temple. And it is remarkable that the corresponding office in the modem town occupies the same site; the Mehkemeh, or Council-Chamber of the Judicial Divan, being now found immediately outside the Gate of the Chain, at the end of the causeway, corresponding in position to the Shalle- cheth of the Scriptures. We have now to trace the wall of the Upper City in the opposite direction from the same point, viz. the Hippie Tower at the NW. angle. The points noticed are comparatively few. " It iirst ran south- ward (i. e. with a western aspect), through a place called Bethso, to the Gate of the Essenes; then, turning E., it ran (with a southern aspect) above the fountain of Siloam; thence it bent northward, and ran (with an eastern aspect) to the Pool of Solomon, and extending as far as a place called Ophla, was joined to the eastern cloister of the Temple." ii. On the West Frontxithet of the names which occur are found again in the notices of the city : but Bethso may safely be assigned to the site of the garden of the Armenian Convent, and the Gate of the Essenes may be fixed to a spot not very far from the SW. comer of the modern city, a little to the W. of the Tomb of David, near which a re- JERUSALEM. markable ridge seems still to indicate the founda- tions of the ancient city wall. iii. Along the south face of the Upper City tliQ old wall may still be traced, partly by scarped rock and partly by foundations of the ancient wall, which have served as a quarry for the repairs of the neigh- bouring buildings for many ages. Its course from this point to the Temple is very difficult to deter- mine, as the steep dcchvity to the Tyropoeon would make it extremely inconvenient to carry the wall in a straight line, while, on the contrary, the absence of all notice of any deviation from a direct line in a description in which the angles are uniformly noted, would seem to imply that there was no such deflec- tion in its course. As it is clear, however, that the Upper City was entirely encompassed with a wall (i its own, nowhere noticed by Josephus, except so far as it was coincident with the outer wall, it may be safely conjectured that this east wall of the Upper City followed the brow of the ridge from the south- east angle of the Hill Sion, along a line nearly co- incident with the aqueduct ; while the main wall con- tinued its easterly course down the steep slope of Sion, aci-oss the valley of the Tyropoeon, not far from its mouth, — a little above the Pool of Siloam, — and then up the ridge Ophel, until it reached the brow of the eastern valley. It may sen-e to coun- tenance this theory to observe, that in the account of this wall in Nehemiah there is mention of " the stairs that go down from the city of David," by which stairs also the procession went up when en- compassing the city wall. (iii. 15, sii. 37.) iv. The further course of the old wall to the eastern cloister of the Temple is equally obscure, as the several points specified in the description are not capable of identification by any other notices. These are the Pool of Solomon and a place called Ophla, in the description already cited, to which may be added, from an incidental notice, the Basilica of Grapte or Monobazus. {B. J. v. 8. § 1.) The Pool of Solomon has been sometimes iden- tified with the Fountain of the Virgin, from which the Pool of Siloam is supplied, and sometimes with that very pool._ Both solutions are unsatis- factory, for Siloam would scarcely be mentioned a second time in the same passage under another name, and the fountain in question cannot, with any propriety, be called a pool. The place railed Ophh, — in Scripture Ophel — is commonly supposed to be the southern spur of the Temple Mount, a narrow rocky ridge extending down to Siloam. But it is more certain that it is used in a restricted sense in this passage, than that it is ever extended to the whole ridge. (See Holy City, vol. ii. p. 365, note 7.) It was apparently a large fortified building, to the south of the Temple, connected with an outlving tower (^Nekem. iii. 27, 2S), and probably situated near the southern extre- mity of the present area of the ilosk of Omar. And the massive angle of ancient masonry at the SE. corner of the enclosure, " impending over the Valley of Jehoshaphat, which here actually bends south- west round the comer, having a depth of about 130 feet," may possibly have belonged to the "out- lying tower," as it presents that appearance within {H.C. vol. ii. pp.311, 317). It is clear, in any case, that the wall under consideration must have joined the eastern cloister of the Temple somewhere to the north of this angle, as the bend in the valley indi- cated by Dr. Robinson would have precluded the possibility of a junction at this angle.