Who Built the Western Wall?

ARCHAEOLOGY ARCHAEOLOGY

Who built the Western Wall? It has long been common knowledge that King Herod built the Western Wall, but the latest archaeological findings indicate that was not the case. Even more surprising, Josephus’s canonic work, The Jewish War, confirms this, relating that the Jewish people built the Temple Mount over several generations, completing it during the reign of King Herod’s grandson, King Agrippa II. > by Yadin Roman Photography: Vladimir Naikhin

Above: he Second Temple and the Temple Mount, actions… to bring it to perfection, and this would Drawing of the T together with its massive retaining walls and be sufficient for an everlasting memorial of him” Western Wall by cloisters, always has been portrayed as a singular (Antiquities, XV, XI, 1). the Palestine Exploration monolithic endeavor that was the epitome of King Josephus dedicates the rest of the chapter to tell- Fund, 1865. Herod’s vast building projects not only in Judea, but ing the story of the Temple’s construction. The (Flavio Sklar/ also throughout the Roman world. 10,000-laborer workforce that Herod put together Courtesy of PEF) “And now Herod, in the eighteenth year of his included 1,000 priests who were taught the trade of reign,” the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius building and stone dressing so that they could con- Facing page: The mikve recounts in his book, Antiquities of the Jews, struct the holy areas that only priests were permit- under the “undertook a very great work, that is to build by ted to enter, he relates. Western Wall. himself the Temple of God, and make it larger in Josephus also describes the large cloisters that compass, and to raise it to a most magnificent alti- were built around the Temple after it was recon- tude, as esteeming to be the most glorious of all his structed: “[T]wo of the cloisters rested on the wall,

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ter looked to the gates of the Temple, and it had been adorned by many kings in former times: and round about the entire Temple were fixed the spoils taken from barbarous nations, all these had been dedicated to the Temple by Herod, with the addition of those he had taken from the Arabians” (Antiquities, XV, XI, 2-3). Josephus continues his narrative by describing the building of the Antonia Fortress to the Temple’s north, the gates that were in the wall surrounding the Temple, and the various Temple courtyards. He also tells how long it took to complete the project. The cloisters and the area around the Temple took eight years to finish, while the Temple itself was completed in a year and five months. From the description in Antiquities, it can be assumed that Herod built the Temple, the areas around it, and the Temple Mount with its massive retaining walls, cloisters, and the open areas that were created when the retaining walls were completed. In The Jewish War, which Josephus published 15 years before Antiquities, he also dedicates a whole chapter to the description of the Temple and the construction process. “The Temple, as I have previously mentioned, was built on a fortified hill,” he writes (The Jewish War, V, V, 184-237). “At first, the flat area on the summit could barely encompass the Temple building and the altar [which was in front of it – YR], as steep slopes surrounded the summit. After King Solomon, who had built the Temple, surrounded the side facing east with a wall, a cloister was erected on the ramp, but the other sides of the Temple remained exposed. In the next generations, the people continued to pour earth on the hill, until the ground was flattened and expanded. When the eastern wall was also breached, the area that later was Above: and the wall itself was the most prodigious work surrounded by the wall of the Temple Mount was The drainage that was ever heard of by man. The hill [the Temple added to the hill. They surrounded the foot of the channel under Robinson's Arch, Mount] was a rocky ascent that ascended by degrees hill from three sides with a retaining wall and com- 1891. (Flavio towards the eastern parts of the city until it came to pleted their work above what was expected. They Sklar/ Courtesy the summit of the hill.” This hill, Josephus writes, invested many generations in this work and all the of PEF) was the one that Solomon had encompassed by treasures of the Temple – that had been provided building a wall around its summit. When Herod from donations to God that were sent from the Facing page: Lifting the redesigned the summit of the hill, he “filled up the whole settled world – and built, from this side, the stones covering hollow places which were about the wall and made outer walls around the Temple Mount, and from the the mikve. a level and even area on the summit of the hill… on other side, the internal wall around the Temple.” Archaeologist the inner side of this wall and near the summit Josephus continues with a description of the huge Eli Shukron is on another wall surrounded the hill: on the east quarter retaining walls around the Temple Mount, adding, the right. a double cloister, of the same length as the wall, in “The abundance of money and the generosity of the the midst of which was the Temple itself. This clois- people, encouraged them to do wondrous and unbe-

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leads from the area of today’s Damascus Gate all rest, which meant it needed to be level and solid. As the way down to the Pool of Siloam. In order to the excavation team exposed the bedrock, a series make it possible for the public to tour “underground of cracks in the rock appeared. The cracks formed Jerusalem,” excavations were conducted last year three big blocks of stone. along the tunnel. The excavations were conducted “At first, I thought that these cracks belonged to on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) an old quarry, or were signs that in order to level and led by archaeologist Eli Shukron. the rock, quarrying operations had been conducted One leg of the underground tour was planned to on the bedrock,” Shukron says. run along the shaft that Charles Warren opened in But then, at the edge of one of the cracks, they 1869. The Palestine Exploration Fund had sent him found plaster on the rock. Plaster hints that there to investigate the walls around the Temple Mount. once was a cistern or mikve here and that it was As the Moslems were suspicious of any attempt to filled when the foundation of the Western Wall was dig under the Temple Mount, Warren sunk his shafts laid. When the crack with the plaster was cleared, it at a distance from the walls of the Temple Mount turned out that the three blocks of stone were not and then tunneled from the shafts to the base of the part of the bedrock, but a carefully laid filling for an wall. One shaft was sunk under the remains of an ancient cistern. That means that whatever is found arch jutting out of the wall that is known as below those stones would provide an indication of Robinson’s Arch in honor of American biblical when the Western Wall was built. explorer Edward Robinson, who had first noticed it Shukron began to excavate the southern part of 30 years earlier. After digging down for nearly 100 the cistern. The stones that had been placed in it feet, Warren stumbled across the Second Temple weighed hundreds of kilograms; a special device period drainage tunnel. He then dug two additional that could lift as much as a ton of rock was brought tunnels that burrowed eastwards from the drainage into the tunnel. When the first stone was raised, a tunnel to reach the base of the Western Wall. small bronze coin was found underneath it. Warren’s shaft under Robinson’s Arch still exists “Coins like this have to be cleaned before any- today. This was planned to be the exit of the under- thing can be seen on them,” Shukron explains. “So ground tour. So, Shukron and his team dug from the I just gave the coin a number and recorded the shaft to the two tunnels that Warren had dug towards place where it had been found and then added it to the Western Wall. A new tunnel also was excavated the collection of coins that we had already found in along the Western Wall to connect Warren’s two the tunnel.” parallel tunnels so that visitors could walk along the As additional stones were removed, it became drainage tunnel and then along the base of the evident that they had not been placed there haphaz- Above: lievable tasks, and the work that you could not described here,” she writes in a note to this descrip- Western Wall. ardly. These stones had been fitted together very Crushed remains expect its completion was finished over the years tion. The description in Antiquities is the acceptable The earth removed from the excavation was taken carefully so that the foundation wall could be built of an Herodian oil lamp found because of their stubborn perseverance.” norm today: Herod dismantled the modest Second for wet sifting, a process which revealed many coins over them. When the second stone was lifted, in the mikve. Lisa Ullmann, who recently completed a new Temple that had been built by the exiles who and pieces of ancient glass, pottery, stone and bone Shukron discovered a plastered step underneath it, translation of The Jewish War into Hebrew (I have returned from Babylon, replaced it with a new one, utensils, and more. which indicated that “we were standing inside a translated sections from her translation into English and surrounded the Temple Mount with massive “Like all students of archaeology and history, I mikve that had been here before the wall had been for this article – YR), noticed that there was a fun- retaining walls – one of which is the Western Wall also have been taught that Herod had built the built,” he says. damental difference between the descriptions in The – that supported the platform around the Temple retaining walls of the Temple Mount, as described Shukron divided the excavation area in the mikve Jewish War and Antiquities. In Antiquities, Josephus with its cloisters and royal stoa. The retaining walls by Josephus, and I didn’t have any doubts that we into three parts. After taking out the stones from the describes a monolithic building project that was the also supported the bridges, stairways, and tunnels were digging along the base of Herod’s great con- first section, he left the middle unexcavated and work of King Herod, while in The Jewish War, the that led to the Temple Mount. All this, according to struction works,” Shukron says. started to excavate the final section. building of the Temple Mount itself, the retaining the description in Antiquities, was completed in “We cleaned the bedrock along the tunnels, built “I didn’t move from the mikve,” he recalls. “There walls, the enlarged area, and the cloisters is only eight years. retaining constructions to prevent the collapse of were huge blocks of stone there that had to be bro- described as a project executed by the people over the tunnel, and reached the Western Wall. As we ken with a compressor before we could remove many generations. Unexpected Archaeological dug along the wall, we found out that the Western them. Out of this excavation, came more coins and “Josephus describes the building of the Temple Evidence Wall is built on bedrock in a shallow 10-centimeter- pottery.” on the Temple Mount as if it was a communal proj- A large drainage tunnel from the Second Temple deep foundation trench.” After a few days of digging, the steps into the ect of the Jewish people, and it is strange that he period runs along the valley between the Temple The foundation trench and the first layer of the mikve were exposed and IAA surveyors were sum- does not mention Herod, who built the Temple Mount and western hill of Jerusalem. The tunnel wall are the base on which the whole edifice would moned. One of them, Yakov Shmidov, discerned

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that the collection of pottery pieces found on one of the steps was actually a smashed Herodian oil lamp. These lamps are well known from Jerusalem, Masada, and the Judean mountains. But despite their name, they are all from the first century CE, that is, after Herod’s death. “The lamp was the first indication that there was something dramatic in this dig,” Shukron says. “What is an oil lamp manufactured after the days of Herod doing in a mikve that was underneath the foundation of the wall that was supposedly built by Herod? I was beginning to suspect that maybe Herod did not build this wall, meaning that Herod did not build the Western Wall.” He decided to wait until the coins were dated before drawing conclusions. As the excavation of the mikve progressed, it became clearer that very meticulous work had been performed in order to fill it. After the stones were carefully laid in the hole, mortar and earth were put between them to form a solid foundation that would be able to support the wall on top of it. Finally, when the last third of the mikve was excavated, two more Herodian oil lamps were found at the bottom of the steps. This strengthened Shukron’s hunch that Herod had not built the retaining walls around the Temple Mount. The other pottery found in the mikve also was dated to the first century CE. However, the 33 coins discovered in the mikve were the final evidence. Dr. Donald Tzvi Ariel, who heads the IAA’s coins department, cleaned them. The earliest coin was from the days of Antiochus III, who ruled between 187 BCE and 223 BCE. But eight of the coins were from after Herod’s reign. Four of them were dated to 17 and 18 CE, which were the days of Valerius Gratus, who served as the Roman prefect of Judea between 15 and 25 CE. This means not only that the Western Wall could not have been built during the time of Herod, but also that the earliest that it could have been built was 20 years after his death. “I returned to Josephus, to Lisa Ullmann’s new Right: Captain Warren translation of The Jewish War. There, in book V, examining the chapter V, I found the note that Ullmann had writ- foundations of ten. Ullmann asks why Josephus did not mention the southeastern Herod when he describes the building of the corner of the Western Wall. I knew the answer: Herod had not retaining wall of the Temple built it,” Shukron says. Mount, 1891. North of the mikve, another plastered cistern was (Flavio Sklar/ found that probably also was a mikve. This one too Courtesy of PEF) had been filled with huge blocks of stone. The

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mikve was underneath the wall – but between the ended,” he writes. “The people saw the over 18,000 Facing page: Western Wall and the western side of the mikve laborers will now be out of work and in need of a The stones covering the there was a 40-centimeter gap that was seven meters salary… they tried to persuade the king to rebuild mikve in the long and over a meter deep. The gap had been uti- the cloisters in the east.” tunnel along the lized as a kind of foundation trench for the Western The king refused the request, but “did not prevent Western Wall. Wall. Some more bronze coins emerged from the them from paving the city with marble stones.” gap; the latest were from the days of the first Roman This reference to the paving of the streets of prefect of Judea, Coponius. He had been nominated Jerusalem coincides with the archaeological evi- in the year 6 CE. dence. In the drainage tunnel, under Robinson’s The building of the Temple Mount was probably Arch, is a huge stone weighing a few tons that fell a protracted process that started in the days of into the tunnel, probably as a result of a building Herod, but continued for many years after him. accident during the construction of the arch. The Herod probably built the Temple itself, the court- stone was left in the tunnel. When the construction yards around it, and the Antonia Fortress to its of the Western Wall and the arch was completed, north. The western retaining wall – what is known the area around the wall was filled with earth, cov- today as the Western Wall – at least its southern ering the tunnel and the lower courses of the wall. A part, was built two decades or more after Herod, as road then was constructed along the wall and paved were the structures that abutted it, like the grand with large white stones. Josephus provides the stairway of Robinson’s Arch and the royal arcade or details, writing, “at the place where the retaining stoa to the south of the Temple Mount. walls were built, from the deepest points the wall Josephus describes how the Temple Mount’s was 300 cubits high, and at some places even high- western slope declined steeply into the ravine that er. But the foundations of the wall were not visible, separated the Temple Mount from the western hill. because in most of the places the ravines were filled In order to enlarge the area of the Temple Mount, because they wanted to level the alleys of the city.” the western retaining wall was built to the west of The Jewish War (Book V, 36-37) offers another the bed of the ravine. In order to construct it, the interesting fact about the construction of the Temple dwellings at the bottom of the slope and in the when Josephus describes the deeds of John of ravine were evacuated and the area was leveled. In Giscala, a leader of one of the Jewish factions fight- order to prevent the rainwater that drained down the ing in the city on the eve of the Roman siege. John, western hill and the riverbed from reaching the base Josephus reports, used the wood brought for build- of the retaining walls, the drainage tunnel was built. ing the Temple to build war machines. The bottom of the tunnel was carved into the bed- “Before the people and the high priests had decid- rock, but the upper parts were built and covered ed to strengthen the foundations of the Temple with a vaulted roof. Together with the construction building and to raise it 20 cubits, and for this pur- of the drainage tunnel, the cisterns and mikvaot in pose King Agrippa did not save money and work the area, that were associated with the evacuated and brought the appropriate wood from the moun- houses, were filled in. Only after all this was fin- tains of Lebanon – beautiful trunks straight and tall. ished did the construction of the wall and But the war stopped the construction work…” Robinson’s Arch begin. Josephus writes. The Gospel of John (2:20) in the New Testament The construction of the Temple Mount was a task recounts that the building of the Temple lasted for that took generations to complete. It was not the 46 years. This means that when Jesus visited the private initiative of Herod, but a communal effort Temple, in the early thirties of the first century CE, of the Jewish people, with people from all over the construction still was underway. world donating funds for it. The building of the Josephus provides a few more clues about the retaining walls around the Temple Mount, including building of the Temple Mount. In Antiquities (Book the Western Wall, the huge platform that the walls XX, 9, 7), he reveals that construction work on the supported, and the structures on the platform went Temple Mount ended at the conclusion of the pre- on for decades, coming to an end only in 64 CE, fecture of Albinus, in the year 64 CE, during the two years before the outbreak of the Great Revolt reign of King Agrippa II, Herod’s grandson. against Rome and six years before the destruction “At that time, the building of the Temple also of Jerusalem and the Temple. 0

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