Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/667

 JERUSALEM 639 Zech. ix. 7). David himself occupied &quot;the mountain fortress ( n 7V9) f Zion,&quot; which was strengthened by new walls and received the name of the city of David. Here a palace was built by Tyrian architects, and the new capital was consecrated by the removal to it of the ark. The site of the city of David forms the fundamental question of Jerusalem topography. The current traditional view (but not that of the most ancient tradition even in the Christian church) makes Zion the southern eminence of the western hill, and places David s fortress there. More recently Messrs Warren and Conder have contended that the city of David is identical with the Acra of Josephus, and place the latter on the northern summit of the vrestern hill, between the two branches of the Tyropoeon (see below). A third view places the city of David on the southern part of the Temple hill ; and this opinion is not only conformed to the oldest post-Biblical tradition (1 Maccabees, Jerome, &c.), in which Zion certainly means the Temple hill, but is the only view that does justice to the language of the Old Testament. It is necessary at the outset to clear away the popular idea that the capital of David was already a great town, occupying a site comparable in extent with that of the later city. Certainly if all the Levites and sacred ministers mentioned in Chronicles were actually assembled at Zion in David s time, we might conclude that the town was already a capital on a grand scale. But the Chronicler constantly carries back later institutions into primitive times, and the early history, which alone can be viewed as a safe guide, gives quite another picture. Zion was merely one of the &quot; mountain fortresses &quot; found all over Palestine as places of refuge in time of invasion, and was garrisoned by a handful of mercenaries (the Gibboririi). The whole levy of Israel in David s time was but 30,000 men (2 Sam. vi. 1 ; comp. the 40,000 of Judg. v. 8), and before the development of trade among the Hebrews Jerusalem had not the natural conditions for the growth of a great city. In the first instance the town doubtless consisted mainly of the court and its dependants, with the Jebusite popula tion, who must have been predominantly agricultural and limited in number by the limitation of their territory. Now it is quite incredible that the Temple hill was ever excluded from Zion. Throughout the Old Testament Zion appears as the holy mountain, the seat of the sanctuary. It is true at the same time that Zion and the site of Jerusalem are interchangeable ideas in Hebrew literature ; but this only proves that the mountain of the sanctuary was essentially the mountain on which the city stood. 1 Further, it is clear from 1 Kings viii. 1 sq., 2 Sam. xxiv. 18, that the temple stood above the city of David, as else where in Hebrew holy places the sanctuary crowned the hill on whose slopes the town stood. Moreover, the graves of the kings, which were certainly in the city of David, encroached on the temple enclosure (Ezek. xliii. 7, 8), which indeed at the time of the captivity was closely built up (ibid.), and stood in the middle of the city (Ezek. xi. 23). Again, Micah iv. 8 identifies the ancient &quot; tower of the flock,&quot; the original seat of the kingdom at Jerusalem, with &quot; Ophel of the daughter of Zion.&quot; But Ophel is one of the few topographical names that can be traced down to the time of Josephus, whose description shows that it hy to the south-east of the temple. Still more precise is the determination given by references to the one fountain of Jerusalem, which, as we have seen, springs out under the temple hill on the east. According to IS T eh. iii. 15, xii. 37, the city of David was reached by a stair in the 1 The explanatory note of an editor in 1 Kings viii. 1, &quot;the city of David, which is Zion,&quot; cannot be, strained to mean that the removal of the ark from the city of David to the temple was its removal from the mountain of Zion to another hill. vicinity of the fountain gate and the pool of Siloah. 2 This ascent led up above David s palace to the water gate, where in Nehemiah s time there was an open space in front of the temple (comp. Neh. viii. 1, 16 with Ezra x. 9). Thus we see that David s palace lay between the temple and the pool of Siloah or King s pool (Neh. ii. 14). These notices are the more important because the water system connected with the Virgin s spring forms almost the only quite certain part of Jerusalem s topography. The spring itself is Gihon, which from its name must have been a true spring, while 2 Chron. xxxiii. 14 teaches us to look for it in the Kidron valley (?ru). The subterranean conduit which still exists had for its object to conduct the water inside the city, and appears to be that constructed by Hezekiah (2 Kings xx. 20). In Isa. xxii. 8, 11 we read of a lower pool and an old pool (no doubt identical with the upper pool, Isa. vii. 3 ; 2 Kings xviii. 17), whose waters- were collected in the time of Hezekiah, under apprehension of siege, in a reservoir between the two walls. From this passage, compared with Neh. iii. 15, we gather that Hezekiah s pool was protected by an outer line of fortifica tion, and here lay the gate of the two walls (2 Kings xxv. 4), with the royal gardens beside them. The supplementary notices of the conduit and the outer wall, given in Chronicles, have not the weight of contemporary history, but they show the writer to have still possessed the same tradition as to the place of the city of David, for he describes its outer wall as running along the Kidron valley west of Gihon (i.e., so as to leave the fountain outside, 2 Chron. xxxiii. 1 4 ; comp. xxxii. 3, 4), and tells us that Hezekiah s conduit brought the water of Gihon in a westerly direction to the city of David (chap, xxxii. 30). According to the Bible, then, the city of David lay on the southern part of the hill which his son crowned with the temple. 3 The chief feature in the fortifications was a tower named Millo, perhaps on the site of the modern barracks, protecting the approach to Zion from the north. The town had but little splendour. The king occupied a wooden palace, the work of foreign craftsmen, and the ark still dwelt in curtains. Under Solomon, who had the true Oriental passion for building and luxury, and squandered enormous sums on his court, great improvements were made, especially by the erection of the twin palaces &quot; the house of Jehovah and the house of the king,&quot; constructed of stonework strengthened by string courses of wooden beams in the still familiar style of Arabian building. The palace, which took nearly twice as long to erect as the temple, consisted of a great complex of buildings and porticos, including the porch of judgment, an armoury, and the palace of the queen. The site of the palace has been variously assigned by topographers. But it lay above the old residence of David * (1 Kings ix. 24), and all the indications given in the Old Testament lead us to place it quite close to the temple, with which its porticos seem to have been connected (2 Kings xvi. 18; xxiii. 11). &quot;Wellhausen indeed, from an examination of 1 Kings vi., vii., has made it probable that the royal buildings lay within the outer court of the temple (Well.-Bleek, JSinl., p. 232). The clearest details are con nected with a court of the palace called the prison court (Jer. xxxii. 2), where there was a gate called the prison gate, and a great projecting tower (Neh. iii. 25-27). This part of the building must have been close to the temple, for it was at the prison gate that the second choir in the 5 The fountain gate is the gate beside Siloah, which is itself called the fountain (TrrjyTj) by Josephus (B. J., v. 4, 1). 3 The statements of Josephus as to the topography of the city of David and Solomon are of no independent value. He possessed no sources except the Old Testament. 4 So in Neh. iii. 25 it is called the upper palace in distinction from the house of David, chap. xii. 37.