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PATON: THE THIRD WALL OF JERUSALEM 197
The Third Wall of Jerusalem and Some Exca-
vations on its Supposed Line
LEWIS BAYLES PATON
HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
Director of the American School in Palestine^ 1903-04
THE city of Jerusalem lies on a V-shaped plateau between
the deep, rocky gorges of the Kidron and the Hinnom.
By these gorges it is cut off from the surrounding ridges
on the east, south, and west. Only toward the north is
there open country, for here the plateau joins on to the
broad table-land of central Judaea. Toward this quarter,
accordingly, Jerusalem has expanded, and the successive
enlargements have necessitated the building of new walls.
These have served not merely to enclose the suburbs, but
also to strengthen the city on its weakest side. On the
sides toward the valleys a single rampart was suf5Eicient to
withstand the most powerful enemy. According to Josephus
(^Ant. xiv. 4^; B, J. i. 7^), Pompey made a reconnaissance
and came to the conclusion that from these quarters assault
was impossible. According to j5. J", v. 6^, Titus made a simi-
lar examination and came to the same conclusion. All the
other besiegers of Jerusalem have held the same opinion,
and the result has been that every attack known to history
has been made from the north. Here the city has no natural
defence, and here also it is possible to operate large bodies
of troops. On this side, accordingly, it was necessary that
Jerusalem should have several lines of fortification. As
early, apparently, as the reign of Manasseh a second wall was
erected on the north (2 Chr. 33^*), and a third wall was
begun by Agrippa about 40 a.d. (B, J", v. 4^) and was hastily
finished by the Jews at the time of the revolt (jB. J", ii. 11^
196
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V. 4^). Thus arose the condition of things described by
Josephus in B. J. v. 4^ : " The city had been fortified with
three walls, except in those parts where it was encompassed
with impassable ravines, for there it had only one enclosing
wall."
In describing the course of the first, or innermost, of these
walls, Josephus starts with the tower called Hippicus and
goes eastward toward the Temple. Then he returns to
Hippicus and goes southward around the west hill, eastward
toward Siloam, and northward to the east wall of the Temple
(jB. J". V. 42). This shows that Hippicus must have stood at
the northwest corner of the inner city. The same conclusion
is necessitated by the description of the third wall, which is
said to have also started at Hippicus and to have run thence
around the northern suburbs to the northeast corner of the
Temple, where it again joined the first wall. Hippicus is
further described (J?. J. v. 4^) as lying over against (avTi-
/cpx^} the Tower of Psephinus, which stood at the northwest
corner of the third wall, and as situated alongside of two
other great towers called Phasaelus and Mariamme. The
three towers (in the order, Hippicus, Phasaelus, Mariamme)
stood, according to B. J. v. 4*, on high ground in the north-
ern line of the first wall north of the palace of Herod. Hip-
picus, according to B. J. v. 4^ was twenty-five cubits square,
and Mariamme twenty cubits square. All were built of
blocks of white stone twenty cubits long, ten cubits broad,
and five cubits high. At the time when Titus destroyed the
walls, according to B. J. vii. 1^ these three towers were left
standing.
These passages lead us to look for Hippicus at a point
near the Jaffa Gate in the west wall of the present city.
Here two valleys, one running south, the other running east,
met ; and here, therefore, was the natural northwest corner
of the ancient city. At this point stands the citadel of
modern Jerusalem. In its northern wall is a massive tower,
now popularly known as the Tower of David, whose lower
courses contain immense blocks of stone, like those described
by Josephus and with characteristic Jewish dressing. There
PATOK : THE THIRD WALL OF JERUSALEM 199
is no room for doubt that this is Phasaelus, and that Hippicus
stood near the modern tower a little farther west. Here we
have a sure starting-point for determining the course of the
first wall. From Hippicus, according to Josephus, it ran
eastward past the Xystus and the Council-house to the west
cloister of the Temple. It must, therefore, have followed
the edge of the hill above the west arm of the Tyropoeon
until this joined the north arm, and then have crossed the
valley straight to the Temple.
The second wall is described by Josephus (jB. J", v. 4^) as
beginning at the Gate Genath in the first wall, as encircling
(^fcvfcXov/iepov^ only the northern part of the city, and as
ending at the Tower of Antonia at the northwest angle of
the Temple. The third wall is described in the same pas-
sage as beginning at the Tower Hippicus, running thence to
the Tower Psephinus, thence past the monument of Helena,
Queen of Adiabene, through the Royal Caverns, past the
Fuller's Monument, to the northeast angle of the Temple,
From these accounts the course of these two walls cannot
be determined, and we are forced to turn to archaeology for
help.
Along the line of the present north wall numerous ancient
remains have been discovered. In laying foundations for
the Grand New Hotel in 1885 a wall of huge Jewish stones
was discovered running in a northwesterly direction from
the so-called Tower of David. This wall serves now as a
foundation for the east wall of the hotel, and unfortunately
is no longer visible. Following the street east of the hotel,
parallel to the present city wall, we reach in five minutes
the School of the Latin Patriarchate in the northwest corner
of the city. Here formerly lay the extensive ruins known
as Qal'at Jalud, or Goliath's Castle. Most of these have
been removed to make room for the school, but in the cellar
part of a wall of massive Jewish stones, similar to those in
the Tower of David and under the Grand New Hotel, has
been left in place. It is hard to believe that this is not a
continuation of the piece of wall found under the Grand
New Hotel. Along the entire course of the present north
200 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE
wall as far as the Damascus Gate traces of the same old wall
have been discovered. At the Damascus Gate ancient drafted
stones still appear above ground, and the top of the ancient
gate is still seen built into the foundations of the modern
gate. There is good archaeological evidence, accordingly,
that an old Jewish wall followed substantially the course of
the present city wall from the Jaffa Gate on the west to the
Damascus Gate on the north. Which wall then was this ?
Was it the second described by Josephus, or the third ? This
is one of the fundamental problems of Jerusalem topography,
and to it no satisfactory answer has yet been given.
Let us first consider the theory which identifies these re-
mains with the third wall of Josephus.
1. In support of this theory, appeal is made to the loca-
tion of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre inside of this wall.
According to Matt. 27^2, Mark 152^ John 19i7-2o,4i^ Heb. IS^,
Christ was crucified and buried outside of the city wall, that
is, outside of the second wall, since Agrippa's wall had not
yet been built. If the traditional site of the Sepulchre be
correct, then the present wall cannot be the second wall, but
must be the third wall that was erected after the crucifixion.
Unfortunately, the genuineness of the Sepulchre rests
upon too slender historical evidence for its location to be
a decisive argument in the case. There is, doubtless, an
unbroken chain of tradition back to the time of Constantine's
founding of the Church, but during the two preceding cen-
turies evidence fails us. It is easy to assert that Macarius,
Bishop of Jerusalem, must have had good reason for selecting
this spot when the order came to search for the true cross,
but it is impossible to prove this. It is claimed that the first
Christians must have reverenced the Sepulchre as a sacred
spot and must have transmitted a knowledge of its location
to their successors, but of this there is no evidence in the New
Testament or elsewhere. It is claimed also that the interval
between the crucifixion and the reign of Constantine is so
short that memory of the location of Golgotha could easily
have been preserved, but when one remembers the vicissi-
tudes that attended the flight of the Christians, the siege of
paton: the third wall of Jerusalem 201
the city, its destruction by Titus, and all the changes that
were effected by later emperors, one questions whether it
is likely that knowledge of the spot survived. The false
traditions in regard to Zion, City of David, Gihon, and most
other localities of ancient Jerusalem show rather that the
thread of authentic tradition was broken at the time of the
fall of the city, and that all subsequent identifications were
worthless guesses. Eusebius nowhere tells us that Macarius
knew a tradition in regard to the location of Golgotha ; in
fact, he expressly informs us that the tomb of Christ was
found "contrary to expectation"; and later historians assert
that the discovery of the spot was miraculous. When one
considers the ease with which holy places have been identi-
fied, and are still identified, by interested ecclesiastics, one is
not sure that Macarius must have had the best of historical
evidence before he gratified the emperor by informing him
that the true cross and the Holy Sepulchre had been dis-
covered. The location of the third wall cannot be deter-
mined, therefore, by an appeal to the position of Constantine's
Church. This question must be decided on its own merits
without regard to the bearing of the answer for or against
the genuineness of the Holy Sepulchre.
2. It is claimed that traces of a second wall are found
between the first wall and the present wall, and that, there-
fore, the present wall must correspond with the third wall.
The ruins of the Muristan south of the Sepulchre were
formerly supposed to be partly remains of a city wall, but
the clearing of this spot incidental to the building of the
new German Church has disproved this hypothesis. Sepp
thought that he had found a city gate east of the Sepulchre,
but further excavation has shown that this is Byzantine
work and is probably part of Constantine's erections. The
most elaborate attempt to trace a second wall inside of the
Sepulchre is that of Schick in the proceedings of the Russian
Palestinian Society for 1884, and subsequently in the Zeit-
schrift des deutschen Paldstina- Vereins^ 1885, part 4. Schick
notices a line of cisterns south and east of the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre which leads him to conjecture that a city
202 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE
moat once ran here. East of the Sepulchre he finds some
ancient stones which he supposes belonged to a city wall.
On the strength of these discoveries he lays down the follow-
ing line for the second wall. It began with the ancient
drafted blocks under the Grand New Hotel and ran a short
distance northwest. Then it turned northeast and followed
the street known as Harat el-Ma wazine, which is the short
cut from the Hotel to the Church of the Sepulchre. Thence
it ran due east a thousand feet south of the Church of the
Sepulchre, turned suddenly at a right angle, and ran first
north and then east to the northwest corner of the Temple.
This view has found wide acceptance, and this course for
the second wall has been put down as probable on most of
the recent maps of Jerusalem, for instance, those of Ben-
zinger in Baedeker's Palestine^ Buhl in his Greographie des
alien Paldstina^ Guthe in Hauck's Realencyclopddie and in
the Kurzes Bihelworterhuch^ Meyer in the Jewish Encyclope-
dia^ George Adam Smith in the Encyclopcedia Bihlica ; never-
theless, it is doubtful whether any of the remains that Schick
discovered are really parts of a city wall. The bit of masonry
southwest of the Church of the Sepulchre has no resemblance
to the great wall under the Grand New Hotel. Cisterns
and cellars could not be dug within the sacred precincts of
the Holy Sepulchre, but would be dug as near to them as
possible. Thus they would come in course of time to form
an almost unbroken chain around the Church and its adja-
cent chapels. Their presence, therefore, is no evidence of
an original moat at this point. The remains east of the
Church consist of massive drafted stones similar to those
under the Grand New Hotel, but the portal which they
enclose suggests that they belong to a public building rather
than to a city wall. The scarps discovered east of the Church
of the Sepulchre seem to be natural rock terraces. They bear
no resemblance to the splendid artificial cuttings at the south-
west corner of the city. An impartial investigation of these
remains leads one to the conclusion reached by Sir Charles
Wilson {PEF, Quarterly Statement, 1903, p. 247) : " From
an archseological point of view . . . there is no sufficient
PATON: THE THIRD WALL OF JERUSALEM 203
proof that the masses of masonry which are supposed to
have formed part of the [second] wall ever belonged to
it." Sir Charles is favorable on the whole to the genuine-
ness of the Holy Sepulchre, so that this cannot be regarded
as the testimony of a prejudiced witness.
3. In support of the theory that the third wall is to be
identified with the present wall it is urged that the ruins of
Qal'at Jalud near the northwest corner of the modern city
correspond with the Tower of Psephinus, which, according to
Josephus, B. J. V. 4^, stood at the northwest corner of the
third wall ; and that the caverns known as Jeremiah's
Grotto and the Cotton Grotto east of the Damascus Gate
correspond with the Royal Caverns through which Josephus
says the third wall passed before reaching the Temple. There
is nothing, however, about the ruins of Qal'at Jalud that iden-
tifies them specifically with the Tower of Psephinus. Ac-
cording to B» J. V. 4^ the second wall had forty towers, and
these ruins may belong to one of these towers quite as well
as to Psephinus. The name Royal Caverns is far too vague
to allow any certain identification with the quarries known
as Jeremiah's Grotto and the Cotton Grotto.
These are the main arguments that are adduced to prove
that the present north wall corresponds with the third wall.
None of them can be regarded as conclusive. Let us now look
at some considerations that are opposed to this identification :
1. The second wall as traced by Schick follows an incon-
ceivably bad course. A glance at the contour map shows
that it is on low ground all the way, while it might have
stood on high ground, if it had been moved a few hundred
feet to the north.
2. The zigzag course pursued by this wall is also very
unlikely. It makes three rectangular bends with no appar-
ent reason except to keep inside of the Church of the Sepul-
chre, although by going outside of the Sepulchre it might
have shortened the distance and have occupied higher ground.
Josephus describes this wall as " circling about," KvicKoiyuevov,
It is doubtful whether such a term could be applied to the
wall as laid down by Schick.
204 JOUBNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATUKB
3. If the second wall had had the singular bend inward
at the Church of the Sepulchre which Schick assumes,
Josephus would have mentioned this fact and have named
Golgotha as the place where the deflection from the natural
course occurred.
4. Josephus states (J5. J", v. 7^) that after the capture of
the third or outer wall " Titus moved his camp so as to be
within at the place called the Camp of the Assyrians, occupy-
ing all the intervening space as far as the Kidron, but keep-
ing a sufficient distance away from the second wall so as to
be out of range of missiles." This statement indicates that
there was space enough between the third wall and the
second for Titus's army to camp inside of the third and still
be out of reach of the stones and darts that the Jews could
hurl from their military engines on the second wall. No
such space exists between the present wall and Schick's
assumed second wall. The greatest distance between these
two walls is not more than 1000 feet and at many points
they are not more than 500 feet apart. This argument bears
with equal force against all other theories which locate the
second wall inside of the Church of the Sepulchre. They
do not leave enough room between the second and the third
wall to allow for the statements of Josephus.
5. In B, J, V. 4^ Josephus states that the circumference
of the city was 33 stadia. If the present wall is the third wall,
the city cannot have measured more than 27 stadia, even if all
the bends and projections of the towers are counted in.
6. The immense population that, according to Josephus,
found shelter in the city at the time of the Passover points
to a larger area than that included by the present north
wall. The calculation of Cestius from the number of pas-
chal lambs (J?. J, vi. 9^) would give a population not far
from 3,000,000 at the time of the feast. According to B, J,
vi. 9^ 1,100,000 perished at the time of Titus's siege.
7. Ant, XX. 4^ states that the outer wall was three stadia
distant from the monument of Queen Helena. This monu-
ment is identified with a high degree of probability as the
so-called Tombs of the Kings near the present residence of
PATON : THE THIRD WALL OF JERUSALEM 205
the Anglican Bishop, but they are at least four stadia from
the present city wall.
8. According to B, J. ii. 19* and v. 2^ Titus pitched his
camp on Scopus, seven stadia distant from the city. Scopus
is doubtless the high plateau north of Wady-ej-J6z, and it is
considerably more than seven stadia from the present north
wall. Those who identify the third wall with the present
north wall are compelled to assert that in all these passages
Josephus exaggerates the size of the city, but no reason for
exaggeration appears, and the consistency of his statements
with one another indicates rather that he has told the truth.
These considerations seem to show that the third wall can-
not be identified with the present wall.
This brings us to a consideration of the second possible
theory, namely, that the present wall is the second wall, and
that the third wall lay considerably further toward the north.
In 1838 Robinson found numerous traces of this wall still
extant, and he was able to plot its course from the north-
west corner of the city to the Nablus road (^Biblical Researches
in Pale8tine\ i. 465 ff.). He describes ancient stones similar
to those in the Tower of David and rock-hewn foundations
of towers. Old residents of Jerusalem assure me that they
remember a time when great drafted stones of this wall were
still to be seen in the open country north of the city, and
their descriptions of the size and the dressing of these stones
correspond with the account given by Robinson.^ The growth
of the modern city has, however, obliterated all traces of this
wall. For a distance of a third of a mile from the present
north wall the land has been thickly covered with houses,
and ancient stones have been broken up and used as building
material. The Russians have taken care that no vestiges
remain of the wall that Robinson was able to trace on their
extensive grounds northwest of the city. Others have been
equally active in destroying evidence of it on the line run-
ning northeast from the Russian grounds. Things have now
gone so far that people are able to assert that there never
1 See also S. Merrill, **A Section of Agrippa's Wall," PEF^ Quarterly
Statement, 1903, p. 158 f.
206 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITEBATUEB
were any traces of a wall outside of the present wall, and
that Robinson was mistaken when he thought he saw them.
I am willing to admit that Robinson could make mistakes,
but I am sure that he knew a Jewish stone when he saw it,
and that the dozen or more people who assure me that they
have seen such stones cannot all be mistaken. It is easier
to explain the disappearance of these stones with their unwel-
come testimony against the genuineness of the Holy Sepul-
chre than it is to explain how so many people could have
been victims of optical hallucination.
In spite of the systematic work of destruction, traces of
this wall still occasionally turn up. When the foundations
were dug for the house of Baron Ustinow at the corner of
the cross-road leading from the Nablus road to the Jaffa
road, one or two ancient stones were found. In the land
back of Mr. Hanauer's house others have been seen when
cisterns were dug. Unfortunately, these have all been
covered up again. One of the first duties of the Jerusalem
archaeologist, it seems to me, is to search for remains of this
wall and to establish its existence or non-existence before it
is too late to gather evidence.
During my nine months' residence in Jerusalem I explored
many times along the line laid down by Robinson. I found
several places where the surface suggested that stones might
be buried, but I could get no permission to dig in these spots.
The only place where remains were visible that might have
belonged to the third wall was at a point north of St. Ste-
phen's Church and east of the Nablus road. Here, in a field
back of some houses occupied by Sephardim Jews, is an old
cistern, thirty feet long, twenty feet broad, and fifteen feet
deep. The east, west, and south sides of this are built of
small broken stones, but on the north side four huge stones
fill the entire length of the top of the cistern. These average
seven feet in length by five feet in height. They have a broad
marginal draft, and resemble closely the great stones at the
Wailing Place. It cannot be doubted that they are of Jewish
workmanship. They are in the same east and west line with
the remains that Robinson discovered west of the Nablus road.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Dressed Rock-Face on North Side of Cistern
PATOK: THE THIRD WALL OF JERUSALEM 207
The conjecture is plausible that they are vestiges of the lost
third wall. These stones were not seen by Robinson, but
they were investigated by Wilson, and are described by him
in the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem^ 1865, p. 72. Wilson
dug a pit in front of one of the stones in the corner of the
cistern to see how far down it extended, and he also cut a
trench west of the stones to see if he could discover another
portion of the wall ; but his examination was too superficial
to establish anything in regard to the real character of the
stones. As he himself remarks, " After ascertaining its [the
pool's] character it was not considered advisable to incur
further expense by continuing the shaft to the bottom."
About 1875 Schick made another examination which ap-
parently he did not report at the time, but in the Quarterly
Statement for 1895, p. 30, he alludes to this investigation. At
the time of this report he was convinced that the second
wall ran inside of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, so that
he was not disposed to regard favorably any evidences for a
third wall outside of the present city wall. He remarks as
follows : " Immediately westward [of the stones] I found
the rock, and in it rock-hewn tombs ; also in searching the
north side of the wall I soon came to the rock, and ascer-
tained that the thickness of the wall is fourteen feet. I in-
tended to dig also on the east, but then the proprietor of the
ground hindered me. It seems that there is no continua-
tion eastward." How did he know this, if he did not dig?
" Thinking the matter over and over again, I came to the
conclusion that it was not a wall in the general meaning, but
simply a tomb monument, and that this * pool,' if we may
call it so, is simply the court sunk into the ground, like that
at the 'Tombs of the Kings,' only much smaller. In the
immediate neighborhood there are other similar tanks, as
may be seen on the plan. Once a stair went down into them,
and in one of the side walls was the small entrance into the
tombs. Afterward, in the Mohammedan time, these sunken
courts were converted into pools for water, the sides being
covered with masonry of small stones and then cemented.
... I think further, that if the pool in which trees are
208 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE
now standing, which proves that there is a good layer of
earth, were cleared out, and the cement masonry taken away,
the entrance to rock-cut tombs would appear under this wall
and north of it, as there I found the rock near the surface
of the ground. Jews are now residing in this neighborhood,
and cast their rubbish into this pool, so that in a few years
it will be filled up and disappear. I mention this in the
hope that excavations may be made. The proprietors would
probably give permission."
Some time after this Schick was commissioned by the
Exploration Fund to clear out this cistern. He did so,
throwing all the rubbish on top of the large stones, thus
greatly interfering with the investigation of their true char-
acter. He discovered no tomb-entrances such as he pre-
dicted would appear. I understand that he wrote to the
officers of the Fund that nothing of interest was to be found
here. No public report that I have been able to find ever
appeared, and the unsubstantiated tomb-theory remained
Schick's last word on the subject.
I could not help feeling that these ancient stones deserved
a more careful investigation than they had yet received and,
accordingly, I made inquiries in regard to the ownership of
the land in which they stood. I found that there was a
large number of part owners, but that these were represented
by two wakils or "trustees," one of whom was a British
resident, the other an educated Moslem. These two granted
permission to dig, on condition that I should leave every-
thing as I had found it and make good any damage done to
the grain that was standing on the land. I secured four
men from Silwan who had worked under Dr. Frederick Bliss
in excavating the south wall of the city, and we began dig-
ging. Dr. Spoer, the Fellow of the American School, and
I took turns in superintending, for we found that even
Dr. Bliss's training was not enough to make the men work
when they were not watched. It seemed desirable to ascer-
tain first how thick the wall was and what lay on its north
side. Wilson says that he found nothing but oil-cisterns
north of it. Schick says that he found the north face at a
PATON: THE THIRD WALL OF JERUSALEM 209
distance of fourteen feet from the exposed south face. We
started at the northeast corner and ran a trench northward
through the immense heap of earth that Schick had taken
out of the cistern. We found an uneven rock surface rising
toward the north and divided up by cemented partitions into
sections three or four feet square rising one above another
and opening into one another. These were evidently de-
signed to catch mud in the water flowing off the surface and
prevent its coming into the cistern. I could see no traces
of the oil-tanks that Wilson thought he recognized, unless he
regarded this filtering system as a series of oil receptacles. In
spite of Schick's assertion that the " thickness of the wall is
fourteen feet," I found no trace of a north face opposite to the
one exposed in the tank. A tunnel pushed northward as far
as we dared to go showed no end to the rock surface. It thus
became evident that we were not dealing with hewn stones
but merely with a face of native rock that had been dressed
to simulate stones. In order to make sure whether this were
the case, I ran anothe-r trench westward along the top of the
wall to the point where the first stone ended, and there found
that the separation between the stones extended only four
inches from the south face, and that beyond that depth the
two stones formed one continuous mass of rock. This fact
was not discovered either by Wilson or Schick, and I confess
that it was a great surprise to me. The stones have all the
appearance of the great stones in the enclosing wall of the
Haram. In most places the space between them is so small
that a knife's blade cannot be inserted, in other places the
blade may be thrust in up to the handle. Who would have
supposed that the drafting and the lines between the stones
were all a fraud ? I had the workmen pull out the grass
from the joints and examine them carefully, and it then
appeared that the joints were drilled with some narrow
instrument to a depth of about four inches. On these stones
Conder remarks in the article "Jerusalem" in Hastings's
Dictionary of the Bible, vol. ii. p. 596, " There are some fine
stones in the side of a tank farther north, which may have
belonged to the third wall, but they are not apparently in
210 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE
«i^ii." In the light of the investigation just described this
view is impossible. These supposed stones are native rock,
and are therefore very much in situ.
The next question to be investigated was whether this
rock cutting extended farther east and west than the portion
exposed on the side of the cistern. Both Wilson and Schick
had dug westward and had found no continuation. I con-
tented myself, therefore, with merely exposing the norths
west corner of the cistern. Here I found that the wall
descended in two steps to level rock, and that there was
no evidence of its having continued farther westward. I
also dug at the northeast corner of the cistern and found the
wall descending again in two steps to level rock. We ran
a trench some distance and cut two cross trenches in hope
of picking up the wall again, but without results. Just at
this time I fell victim to a serious eye malady, and the phy-
sician forbade my working longer in the bright sunlight, so
that I was obliged to conclude my investigations more hastily
than I wished. I should like to see a more thorough inves-
tigation of the ground east of the wall. It is open field
where digging can easily be done, and it seems to me very
likely that other cuttings similar to that seen in the face of
the cistern would be found.
And now, in conclusion, what is one to think of the char-
acter of these remains ? Schick's theory that they formed
part of a sunken rock-cut tomb is disproved by closer exami-
nation. The cistern is not cut out of solid rock, like the
antechamber of a tomb, but is rock-cut only on the north
side, and on the other sides is built up with Arab masonry
of small stones. There are no tomb-chambers opening off
any of the sides. Schick made diligent search for them
all around the cistern in order to prove his hypothesis, but
failed to find any. Conder's theory, that these stones have
been moved from some other locality to use them in build-
ing one of the walls of the cistern, is disproved by the fact
that they are native rock. The only remaining theory is,
that they served as foundations for some sort of building.
In laying a wall a rocky ledge was encountered on the
PATON: THE THIRD WALL OF JERUSALEM 211
selected line, and instead of cutting this away, its face was
dressed to imitate the masonry of the wall and its ends were
cut into steps so as to allow for stones to be laid upon it.
Much work of this sort is to be seen around Jerusalem.
Both rock scarps and ancient stones have had their faces
redressed to conform to later masonry. When the wall
was destroyed, the portable stones were carried off to use as
building material, but the rock ledge that formed its base
was not transportable, and therefore has remained in place
unto this day.
What sort of a building then was it for which these cut-
tings served as a foundation ? Their style of dressing points
to some great edifice of the Jewish period. A public build-
ing is hardly to be thought of so far away from the centre
of the city ; and moreover, the condition of the rock surface
shows that this wall cannot have enclosed any building.
By far the most natural theory is, that we see here part of
the foundations of Agrippa's wall. These remains are in
the same line as the remains that Robinson noted west of the
Nablus road. They are in the same line with the bit of
ancient wall that Wilson examined in 1864. The huge size
of the stones corresponds with Josephus's statements about
the stones in Agrippa's wall. The only objection to this
theory is that the face of this rock cutting is turned toward
the city and not away from it, as we should expect if this
were a city wall. It is true that scarps usually face out-
ward and are an important part of the defence of a city, but
this consideration hardly applies to so small a cutting. If
the wall were planned to follow a particular course, and it
happened to run over the brow of a ledge that faced inward
toward the city, it is not likely that its course would be
changed on this account. All that would be done would
be to cut the ledge to correspond with the masonry of the
wall and use it as a foundation. On the whole, therefore,
the most likely theory seems to me to be that in these stones
we have the only remains now visible of the third wall of
Jerusalem.
