Beginning at the remarkable neck of land near the present Jaffa Gate a
wall ran eastward along the northern brow of the hill, and in the line
of the Causeway, and ended at the west cloister of the Temple. This
was the north wall of the Upper City. That city had a wall all round
it; and on the west, south, and east the wall simply followed the brow
of the hill. From the Jaffa Gate it ran southward (facing westward)
along the brink of the Valley of Hinnom, by Bethso (the Hebrew term
for Dung place) to the Gate of the Essenes. At the south-west corner
of the hill an escarpment of the rock was noticed by Robinson; was
further traced by Mr Maudslay, who in 1872 found there a tower, reached
by rock-cut steps; and is clearly marked in Conder’s plan. From this
corner the wall faced the south for a while, and then, according to
Josephus, made a bend above Siloam; and this must have been, as Mr
Lewin points out, a bend up the Tyropœon Valley, along the edge of the
High Town (to the Causeway), and then back again along the edge of the
Low Town on Ophel (until it joined the Wall of Ophel discovered by
Warren). The wall from Siloam, we learn from Josephus, bending there,
faced to the east at Solomon’s Pool, and holding on as far as the
place called Ophla, joined the eastern cloister of the Temple.[27] The
eastern cloister of the Temple--_i.e._, the south-eastern angle of the
enclosure--was, in Josephus’s day, coincident with the south-east angle
of Solomon’s palace of earlier time; and the city wall which joined it
was the Wall of Ophel itself.
According to this description Solomon’s Pool was in the Tyropœon
Valley, between the two walls of the High Town and the Low Town.
Probably at a very early period many houses were built in this valley,
and it became an intramural suburb. In view of war it would be deemed
necessary to protect it; and for its defence the most obvious plan
would be to build a dam or a wall athwart the valley. Such a work would
greatly strengthen the city itself, by preventing all access up the
valley, especially if the mound or wall was aided by a castle at the
Ophel end of it. We shall see reason to believe that the dam and the
castle were built and were called Millo and the House of Millo. The
suburb thus became immured in the city, but continued to be called the
Suburb; and we read that the west wall of the Temple enclosure had
two gates leading to the Suburb (Josephus, “Antiquities” xv. 11, 5; 1
Chron. xxvi. 16, the gate Shallecheth).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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