tine. It was not easy with the kind of locks they had to keep intruders out of tombs. This led to the cutting of a large groove by the side of the doorway into which a rolling-stone was fitted. When it was desired to open the tomb, the stone could be rolled back. The stones were too heavy to be easily disturbed. It was in a new tomb of this type that the body of Jesus was laid, and it was such a stone that the women found rolled away on the resurrection morning. (See Matt. 28:2; Mark 16:3, 4; Luke 24: 2; John 20: 1, and Fig. 238.)

CHAPTER XIII

JERUSALEM1

SITUATION. GIHON. CAVE-DWELLERS. THE EL-AMARNA PERIOD. JEBUSITE JeruSALEM. THE CITY OF DAVID: Millo. David's reign. SOLOMON'S JERUSALEM: Site of Solomon's buildings. Solomon's temple. Solomon's palace. FROM SOLOMON TO HEZEKIAH. HEZEKIAH. FROM HEZEKIAH TO THE EXILE. THE DESTRUCTION OF 586 B. C. THE SECOND TEMPLE. NEHEMIAH AND THE WALLS. LATE PERSIAN AND EARLY GREEK PERIODS. IN THE TIME OF THE MACCABEES. ASMONEAN JERUSALEM. HEROD THE GREAT: Herod's palace. Herod's theater. Herod's temple. THE POOL OF BETHESDA. GETHSEMANE. CALVARY. AGRIPPA I AND THE THIRD WALL.

1. Situation. Since 1867 excavations have been made at Jerusalem from time to time. The most important of these were mentioned in Chapter IV. An attempt will be made here to set before the reader the growth and development of Jerusalem from period to period, as that growth is now understood by foremost scholars. Our knowledge of the situation and form of the city in the different periods is based partly on formal excavations, partly on remains that have been accidentally found, and partly on a study of the references to Jerusalem in the Bible and other ancient writings. These references are interpreted in the light of the topography and of the archæological remains.

Jerusalem is situated on the central ridge of Palestine, where the ridge broadens out to a small plateau. The plateau at this point is approximately 2,500 feet above the level of the Mediterranean Sea. In a narrower sense the site of the city is two rocky promontories which run south from the plateau with the valley El-Wad (in Roman times the Tyropoon) between them. On the north these promontories merge into the plateau, but on the east, south, and west the valleys of Hinnom and the Kidron sharply separate them from the surrounding land. The steep sides of these valleys made fortification easy in ancient times. The highest point of the western hill is about 400 feet higher than the bottom of the Kidron valley, which in ancient times was 20 to 40 feet deeper

All who can do so should read George Adam Smith's Jerusalem from the Earliest Times to A. D. 70, New York, 1908, and Hughes Vincent's Jerusalem, Paris, 1912. Or, if this is not possible, L. B. Paton's Jerusalem in Bible Times, Chicago, 1905.

than now; (see Fig. 240). Indeed, the position was almost impregnable. Only on the north was the city vulnerable.

West of the city hills gently rise to a slight elevation and shut out the view. The easternmost of the two promontories is lower than the western, which in its turn slopes to the east. Just south of the Mount of Olives, to the east of Jerusalem, there is a rift in the hills through which the distant mountains of Moab can be seen. From elevated buildings in the city the Dead Sea is also visible. The slope of the hills of Jerusalem and her broader outlook to the eastward are significant of the influences that moulded her earlier history. During the centuries that Israel was an independent nation the Philistine plain was nearly always in the hands of a hostile people. Jerusalem was thus cut off from influences that might otherwise have reached her from across the Mediterranean, and was shut up to influences that reached her through kindred tribes and nations to the east. Thus in intellectual kinship, as well as in physical outlook, the gaze of Jerusalem was directed toward the Orient.

All Palestinian cities of importance were situated near perpetual springs. There are at Jerusalem but two unfailing sources of water-the Ain Sitti Miriam (the ancient Gihon) and the Bir Eyyub (Biblical En-rogel). These are both in the Kidron valley, the former just under the brow of the eastern hill some 400 yards from the southern point of the hill, the latter at the point where the valley of Hinnom and the Kidron unite. Of these two sources of supply, the Gihon is pre-eminently fitted to attract an early settlement. It is almost under the hill, whereas the other is out in the midst of the open valley. Gihon, too, is at the base of a hill that can be defended easily on three sides, whereas a town built on a hillside above En-rogel, as the modern Silwan is, could be easily attacked from above. These conditions determined the situation of the earliest settlement, which was near Gihon.

2. Gihon.-The Parker expedition of 1909-1911 revealed by its excavations the fact that the source of the spring of Gihon is a great crack in the rock in the bottom of the valley far below the present apparent source. This crack is about 16 feet long, is of great depth, and runs east and west. The western end of it just enters the mouth of the cave where the apparent source is today, but the eastern end passes out into the bed of the valley. All the 1 See Dr. Masterman in the Biblical World, Vol. XXXIX, p. 295, f.

water would discharge into the valley but for a wall at the eastern end of the rift, built in very ancient times, which confines the water and compels it to flow into the cave. This wall was constructed by some of the earliest inhabitants of the place. The spring thus produced is intermittent. Its flow is not ceaseless. The water breaks from the hole in the rainy season, three to five times a day; in the summer but twice a day; and after the failure of the spring rains, less than once a day. This fact indicates that the waters collect in some underground cavern from which they are drained by a siphon-like tunnel. The "troubling" of the Pool of Bethesda (John 5: 4) is thought by some scholars to have been due to the action of such a siphon-like spring.

3. Cave-dwellers.-About this spring the Parker expedition found large caves and rooms excavated in the rock, and indications that these had once been inhabited. A great deal of pre-Israelite pottery was also found around the spring. These indications seem to show that the site was inhabited for at least a thousand years before David, and perhaps for two thousand, and that its first inhabitants were cave-dwellers. One naturally thinks in this connection of the cave-dwellers of Gezer. It is possible that the first Jerusalemites belonged to the same period and were of the same race. One thinks, too, of the sacred cave and the stone altar on the next peak of the eastern ridge to the north, where the temple afterward stood, and wonders whether it may not have been the sanctuary of this early cave-dwelling race. A definite answer cannot be given to this question. One can only recognize that it may possibly be

true.

4. The El-Amarna Period.-The next knowledge we have of Jerusalem comes from the letters of Ebed-Hepa, which were written to Amenophis IV of Egypt between 1375 and 1357 B. C. At that time it was already a walled city, for Ebed-Hepa speaks of "throwing it open.'

ניי.

The fortified city of Ebed-Hepa was, no doubt, identical with the later Jebusite city. It was situated on the eastern hill just above the spring of Gihon. Probably in the period just before this time it had, like Gezer, been surrounded by a massive wall. In connection with this fortification the rock near Gihon had been scarped (cut to a perpendicular surface) in order to increase the difficulty of

1 See Part II, Chapter XV, Letter V, and the writer's note in the Biblical World, XXII, p. 11, n. 5.

scaling the wall. As the wall of Gezer lasted for a thousand years, so this Egyptian wall continued to the reign of David.

It is privately reported that Weil in his excavation in 1913-14 found on the eastern hill remains of a wall with a sloping glacis similar to that belonging to the earliest period of Megiddo. This would not only confirm our inference that Jerusalem was a walled city in the time of Ebed-Hepa, but indicate that its wall had been built at a much earlier time. It was also in the fourteenth century B. C. the capital of a considerable kingdom which Ebed-Hepa ruled as a vassal of the king of Egypt. This kingdom extended as far west as Beth-shemesh and Keilah (1 Sam. 23 : 1), including, perhaps, Gezer. Aijalon seems to have been included in it on the north, and Carmel in Judah (1 Sam. 25 : 2) on the south.

When the letters of Ebed-Hepa were written, his kingdom was being attacked and apparently overcome by the Habiri, a people who may have been the first wave of the Hebrew conquest.2 The letters of Ebed-Hepa cease without telling us whether or not the Habiri captured his city. If they did and they were really Hebrews, they did not hold it long, for, when the Biblical records lift the veil that hides so much of the past, Jerusalem was in the hands of the Jebusites. (See Josh. 15: 63; Judges 1: 21.)

5. Jebusite Jerusalem.-The Jebusites held it all through the period of the Judges (Judges 19: 10, 11). Israel did not capture it until the reign of David. (See 2 Sam. 5:6-8.) At some earlier period of the history of Jerusalem an underground rock-cut passage similar to the one at Gezer3 had been made, so as to permit the inhabitants in case of siege to descend to the spring for water without going outside the walls; (see Fig. 241). The natural slope of the hill had been reinforced at this point by the escarpment of the rock, and the Jebusites felt so secure that they taunted the Hebrews from the top of the walls. Joab, however, discovered the way to this underground passage through the cave back of the spring, Gihon, and, leading a band of men up through it, appeared suddenly within the city, taking the Jebusites by surprise, and captured it.

6. The City of David.-David then took up his residence at Jerusalem, thus making it the capital of the kingdom of Israel. Thus the city of the Jebusites, situated on the eastern hill, which was called Zion, became the "city of David."

1 See Biblical World, XXXIX, 306.

2 See Part II, Chapter XV.

See Chapter VI, § 8.