Jerusalem in the Persian Period - 1

There is no doubt that the walls of the city were partly (but not completely) destroyed when the Babylonians conquered the city in 586 BCE (see, for example, Nehemiah 1:3; 2:3, 17). They also destroyed Solomon’s Temple along with much of the rest of the city and deported its citizens to Babylonia. In Jerusalem, “Only the poorest people in the land were left” (2 Kings 24:14).

In less than half a century, Babylonian (or, more precisely, neo-Babylonian) hegemony would be succeeded by the ruler of the world’s new superpower, the Persians. Judah, including Jerusalem, became the province of Yehud. And a more benign ruler, Cyrus the Great, allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and its capital. For many of the exiles, life had become quite cushy in Babylon, and they elected to stay put. Others, however, returned.

Those exiles who did return were neither wealthy nor particularly skilled. But in the latter part of the sixth century B.C.E., under the leadership of Zerubbabel, they built what must surely have been a modest temple (that is, the Second Temple, which was later rebuilt by Herod the Great on a much grander scale more than 400 years later.) The returning exiles also restored the city walls, as described at considerable length in Nehemiah 3. The rebuilding of the wall was apparently completed in only 52 days (Nehemiah 6:15).

Archaeological evidence has led most scholars to conclude that this wall enclosed a small, impoverished community confined to the Temple Mount (on which the Second Temple was built) and the small ridge that extends south of the Temple Mount known as the City of David. This ridge still bears that designation today.

As its name implies, this is the area comprising the city when it was supposedly conquered by King David in about 1000 B.C.E. and renamed by him as his own city (2 Samuel 5:9).

This area has been intensely excavated for nearly a century, and the wall systems are clear. The earliest fortification wall enclosing the city dates from about 1800 B.C.E., the era scholars refer to as the Middle Bronze Age or MB for short (MBII to be precise). Another strong wall was built in the eighth century B.C.E. (the Iron Age), possibly by King Hezekiah, when Jerusalem grew in size and became the largest and most prosperous city in the kingdom of Judah. At this time the famous tunnel under the city, known today as Hezekiah’s Tunnel, was built to carry the water of the Gihon Spring to the southern end of the city.

Whether the MB wall was in use for a millennium (from about 1800 BCE to c. 720 BCE) is a matter of scholarly dispute. I definitely believe it was not. Jane Cahill, writing in these pages,a says that it was and that it served as a fortification wall during King Solomon’s time. We need not resolve that dispute here.

But almost everyone agrees that the poor community of returning exiles abandoned the mid-slope walls on the eastern side of the city (the Kidron Valley side) and built a new wall higher up the slope. They didn’t need the extra space, so the argument goes. On the western side of the city, it is presumed that the wall built by the returning exiles followed the western edge of the ridge known as the City of David. It is these two suggestions that I contest.

The second is more important than the first. The first point involves only a small area, but the second involves a very large additional area that I believe was within the walls that the returning exiles restored—not only the southeastern ridge below the present Old City (the City of David), but also the southwestern ridge (including Mount Zion).

To understand this argument we must understand the two wall systems that once previously surrounded Jerusalem—the Middle Bronze wall dating to about 1800 BCE and the Iron Age wall built 1,000 years later. In a course on Second Temple period Judaism taught by the late Professor Joseph Klausner of the Hebrew University, it was said that he lectured only on the First Temple period. When the students complained, the professor explained that one cannot teach the Second Temple period without a proper introduction to the First Temple period. But once he had reached the end of the introduction, the semester as well had come to an end. That is somewhat the case here. One cannot understand the walls of Jerusalem in the Persian period, when the exiles restored them, without understanding the walls as they stood in the Middle Bronze and in the Iron Age periods. But I hope I will not conclude without explaining the walls restored by the returning exiles.

The Middle Bronze (MB) wall, it is correctly assumed, surrounded only the 10 acres or so of the southeastern ridge called the City of David. Sections of this wall were uncovered on the eastern slope of the ridge facing the Kidron Valley by British excavator Kathleen Kenyon in the 1960s, by Yigal Shiloh in the 1970s and by Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron in the 1990s.

On the western side of the City of David, however, almost no archaeological work has been done. The MB wall has never been found on the western side. We assume, however, that certainly the city was fortified on all sides and that therefore the wall must have followed the topographical line on the western ridge. At the southern point of the ridge, the wall simply curved around and proceeded up the western side. On the northern side, the boundary of the settlement was somewhat arbitrarily fixed by Kathleen Kenyon. Possibly the line should be a little to the north, but I believe it is essentially accurate.

The Middle Bronze (MB) wall, it is correctly assumed, surrounded only the 10 acres or so of the southeastern ridge called the City of David. Sections of this wall were uncovered on the eastern slope of the ridge facing the Kidron Valley by British excavator Kathleen Kenyon in the 1960s, by Yigal Shiloh in the 1970s and by Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron in the 1990s.

On the western side of the City of David, however, almost no archaeological work has been done. The MB wall has never been found on the western side. We assume, however, that certainly the city was fortified on all sides and that therefore the wall must have followed the topographical line on the western ridge. At the southern point of the ridge, the wall simply curved around and proceeded up the western side. On the northern side, the boundary of the settlement was somewhat arbitrarily fixed by Kathleen Kenyon. Possibly the line should be a little to the north, but I believe it is essentially accurate.

The eighth century BCE wall system, possibly built by the Judahite king Hezekiah, enclosed a much larger area, as archaeology has conclusively demonstrated. While excavators in the City of David found segments of the eighth century BCE wall on the same slope where the MB builders constructed their wall, this does not demonstrate that the city greatly expanded in the First Temple period. That the city expanded was shown most dramatically, however, by the excavations led by Nahman Avigad in the present Jewish Quarter of the Old City and by various excavations in different parts of the southwestern ridge. It is clear from this and other excavations that during the latter part of the First Temple period, the city encompassed the southwestern ridge, including Mount Zion.

The unavoidable conclusion from all this is that a city wall was not built along the western slope of the City of David during the First Temple period, although the city wall of the Middle Bronze Age II settlement must have extended there, as it surrounded the settlement of the time. The large city of the eighth and seventh centuries BCE was protected by a city wall that included not only the City of David but also the Temple Mount, and most importantly, the southwestern hill. There was no need, however, to build a separate wall around the City of David.