HOME "IT WAS IN THE HEART OF DAVID, MY FATHER, BIBLE REFERENCES TO BUILD A TEMPLE FOR THE NAME OF THE LORD, THE GOD OF ISRAEL" BOOKLIST I KINGS 8:17 GILA’S GIFT SHOP HOLY LAND HEADLINERS HOLY LAND HEROINES HOLY SITES: GILA’S HIGHLIGHTS SONGS & PRAISE TIPS FOR TOURS It all started on a hot summer’s day in 1865. British Baroness Angela Burdett Coutts, ABOUT GILA on a pilgrimage to the holy city, was thirsty. When Mahmoud, her guide, drew up a bucket of stinking water from a courtyard cistern, Coutts thought to herself, would CONTACT Jesus have drunk such smelly water? And what about King David? When she returned to England, Coutts donated 500 pounds sterling to help establish the Palestine Exploration Fund. She convinced her friend and neighbor Vicky to be a sponsor of the new organization. (Vicky, by the way, was none other than Queen Victoria.) The goal of the P.E.F. was to promote research into the archaeology and history, manners and customs, culture, topography, geology and natural sciences of biblical Palestine and the Near East. Illustration in the Land and the Book by W. M. Thomson, published 1869 Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount at the time of Charles Warren Two years later, the P.E.F. sent 27-year-old Lieutenant (later Captain) Charles Warren of the British Royal Engineering Corps to Jerusalem. His instructions were to http://www.itsgila.com/headlinerswarren.htm 3/14/17, 101 AM Page 1 of 7 investigate the site of the Temple, the line of fortifications, the City of David, and the authenticity of the traditional Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Warren had previously made a name for himself by perilously scaling and charting the Rock of Gibraltar. In February 1867, Warren, a buddy from the Gibraltar climb named Corporal Henry Birtles, (promoted to sergeant during the course of the expedition), two other corporals, a photographer, a surveyor and 8 mule-loads of equipment including crowbars, ropes, jacks, handspikes, blocks and wheels, arrived in Jerusalem. At the time, the Ottoman Turks ruled the holy land and holy city. As the firman (permit) to dig had not yet arrived from Constantinople, Warren insisted that the British consul arrange a meeting for him with the pasha, the Turkish ruler of Jerusalem. To the consul’s surprise, Warren convinced the pasha to approve digging around (but not inside) the Haram es-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, known to us as the Temple Mount. A Moslem ruler would not allow an excavation inside the Haram, third holiest site to Islam, containing the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque. Warren, however, was not deterred. He hired local diggers and at a distance from the outer walls of the Temple Mount, he dug a number of shafts and then began to tunnel towards the Temple area. The people of Jerusalem noted he was always underground and nicknamed him “The Mole.” At one point, the curious pasha wanted to see what was going on underground, and demanded to be let down the shaft. The pasha was slowly lowered on a board attached to two ropes and just before he reached the tunnel leading towards the Temple Mount, expedition members holding the ropes began to yank them. The frightened pasha shrieked and begged to be pulled up above ground. Wiping the sweat off his forehead, the pasha congratulated Warren on his bravery. Wilson and Warren, The Recovery of Jerusalem Warren works by light of a candle in one of the underground shafts, 1869 When the firman finally arrived from Constantinople, Warren was startled to read that the expedition was permitted to dig everywhere, except for Christian and Moslem religious sites. Well, that was exactly where he intended to excavate. Warren decided to wave the firman around and say “I got it,” but be sure to show it to no one. For the next few months, he and his team sank shafts around the Temple Mount, digging down through more than 130 feet of rubble to reach bedrock. The task was difficult and dangerous, as the mountain of debris above their heads tended to shift. They had a procession of “lucky escapes,” when falling stones nearly crushed them to death. One nineteenth century British historian wrote, “It was Warren who stripped the rubbish from the rocks and showed the glorious temple standing within its walls 1,000 feet long and 200 feet high, of mighty masonry. It was he who laid open the valleys now covered up and hidden; he who opened the secret passages, the ancient http://www.itsgila.com/headlinerswarren.htm 3/14/17, 101 AM Page 2 of 7 aqueducts, the bridge connecting the temple and the town.” (Warren, in fact, found not the walls of the temple, but the outer retaining walls of the temple platform.) Wilson and Warren, The Recovery of Jerusalem Warren’s excavations near Robinson’s Arch 1867-1870 Photo: Gila Yudkin Robinson’s Arch and the southwest corner of the Temple Mount, 2005 Warren’s greatest contribution was his suggestion that Jerusalem D.C. (David’s Capital) lay outside the medieval walls of the Old City. At that time, everyone believed that the “Old City” was the old city, meaning fortifications from the days of David were located somewhere below the present city walls. However, at the bottom of one of Warren’s shafts outside the south-eastern corner of the Temple Mount, Warren found the remains of a massive city wall that was leading southwards, away from the walls of the Old City. As Warren tunneled alongside this wall for some 700 feet, he noted that it went way http://www.itsgila.com/headlinerswarren.htm 3/14/17, 101 AM Page 3 of 7 beyond the limits of the city. The wall itself later proved to be fifth century AD, but the possibility, never before considered, arose that the earlier city could have been located south of the Temple Mount and the city walls, close to the city’s source of water, the Gihon Spring. At the end of October 1867, Warren and his team explored a man-made conduit, leading away from the Gihon Spring. Warren recorded in his journal that in the beginning it was easy walking until they reached 600 feet into the tunnel. Then they began crawling on all fours. As they saw bits of cabbage-stalks floating by, they realized that the waters had started to rise. Warren described himself with a pencil, compass and field book in his hands, and the candle for the most part in his mouth. He and Birtles had just 4 inches breathing space. When observing, his mouth was under water. At 900 feet into the tunnel, they discovered false turns and began to go in a zigzag direction. It was here that Warren inadvertently swallowed part of his lead pencil, nearly choking. When they came out shivering, it was dark. They had been nearly four hours in the water. (Today, the 1750 foot walk through Hezekiah’s Tunnel is a LOT more fun. It takes us some 40 minutes – and the water is only knee-high!) SIGN UP for the FREEbimonthly e-letter: "Holy Sites: Gila's Highlights" Where the tunnel began at the spring, Warren noticed that the water first collected in an underground, cave-like chamber. With the help of his team and local Arab workers, Warren cleaned out the cave and found the entrance to a tunnel. He followed it for 40 feet, where it ended in a curious shaft which rose into the darkness above his head. A few days later, Warren and Birtles returned to climb the shaft. “By jamming the boards against the side of the shaft, we succeeded in getting up 20 feet,” reported Warren in a letter. “On lighting a piece of magnesium wire, we could see 20 feet above us, a piece of loose masonry impending directly over our heads and as several loose pieces had been found at the bottom, it occurred to both of us that our position was critical. Without speaking of it, we eyed each other ominously and wished we were a little higher up.” The intrepid Royal Engineers kept climbing to find another tunnel at the top of the shaft and a series of caves leading up towards a blocked entrance. Slowly, it dawned on Warren that he had unearthed a hidden water system leading to the spring from somewhere on the southeastern ridge. This, coupled with the ancient wall and the tunnel leading to the Pool of Siloam, had striking implications. It meant that there had definitely been a settlement outside the medieval walls of the city. Controversy raged for another hundred years until the implications of Charles Warren’s discovery became accepted by all. This was in the 1960s, when Kathleen Kenyon, also digging under the auspices of the P.E.F., revealed the 18th century BC city wall. The “oldest” city of Jerusalem was indeed located outside the “old city” walls, on the southeast ridge, close to the source of water. The “water system” discovered by Warren, today called “Warren’s Shaft” in his memory, seems to be a natural karstic limestone sinkhole and not man-made, as it was thought for over a hundred years. Excavations in the area, pioneered by Warren, are ongoing and the last word remains to be said. http://www.itsgila.com/headlinerswarren.htm 3/14/17, 101 AM Page 4 of 7 Underground passageway called Warren's Shaft Although Warren could not excavate within the Haram compound itself, his good relations with the guards enabled him to make a thorough examination of the structure of the Dome of the Rock and the network of cisterns within the area.