D. Ussishkin,. Who first built the walls of Jerusalem? However, the debris only contained pottery from the Babylonian and Early Persian periods. Others conclude from the archaeological finds (or rather, the dearth thereof) that Jerusalem in Persian times was a very small settlement, not including the western hill, impoverished, unwalled, insignificant. Today, this water tunnel is known as Hezekiahs Tunnel. supra. I take an intermediate position. King David's son, Solomon, enlarged the city northward to include the area of the Temple Mount. Then, Artaxerxes I or possibly Darius II allowed Ezra and Nehemiah to return and rebuild the city's walls and to govern Judea, which was ruled as Yehud province under the Persians. 4:1-14). During the Middle Bronze Age, the city of Jerusalem was fortified for the first time, with walls having been found in several areas around the City of David and surrounding the strategically important Gihon Spring. A. Faust, Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period: The Archaeology of Desolation, Atlanta, Ga 2012. Recently, the Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar conducted excavations on the top of the hill, where she found the so-called `Palace of David' (Mazar 2009; see for a refutation of that interpretation Steiner 2009). These are the same walls that surround Jerusalem today. The many Yehud stamp impressions indicate inclusion in an economic network, the exact nature of which still eludes us. But irrespective of whether those walls did or did not exist, in my opinion Jerusalem was not as desolate as is sometimes assumed, both before and after the arrival of Nehemiah. Plan of Jerusalem in the Iron Age. It was chiseled from both ends to the middle at the same time. In 1981, the Jerusalem walls were added, along with the Old City of Jerusalem, to the UNESCO World Heritage Site List. K. A. Ristau, Reconstructing Jerusalem: Persian Period Prophetic Perspectives, University Park, Pa, 2016. The people returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall about 70 years later. G. Barkay, Excavations at Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem, in: In: H. Geva, (ed. Whether as individuals, families, a church, a nation, or globally difficulties must be faced fully & directly. What do we learn from Nehemiah about how to face the challenges in our lives? Take a video tour atop the walls of the Old City. Although eight gates can be seen along the walls, only seven are in use today. In 1202 to 1212 Saladin's nephew, Al-Malik al-Mu'azzam 'Isa, ordered the reconstruction of the city walls, but later on, in 1219, he reconsidered the situation after most of the watchtowers had been built and had the walls torn down, mainly because he feared that the Crusaders would benefit of the fortifications if they managed to reconquer the city. This is not the last time that happened on a construction job. Later - in Persian times - the temple would have been provisionally restored and Jerusalem would have been a non-walled, largely empty settlement where some priests lived who maintained the temple services. The finds do not disprove my dating of the tower in the Maccabean era. M. L. Steiner, `The Palace of David Reconsidered in the Light of Earlier Excavations, op http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/palace_2468.shtml (2009). Or was it an unimportant, undefended settlement, in which only the local temple still had any meaning? Diana Edelman, who made an in-depth study of Jerusalem in Persian times based on biblical texts, archaeological finds and information on the Persian empire, sees Jerusalem as a birah, a small fortress used by the Persians (Edelman 2005). He stands before the depressed, fearful, skeptical citizens of Jerusalem & says look at what God has done already, through the heathen king of Persia no less. If Persian pottery was found underneath the tower, this means that the tower itself was built later. There would have had to be some economic and some military activity and so a population more than negligible, so at least some attention to fortifications. Indeed, the walls that surround the Old City of Jerusalem today are only around 500 years old, having been constructed by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in the mid-16th century. It went as far as the royal cemetery, . Submitted by Martin Hughes on Mon, 10/25/2021 - 01:00. Nehemiah, Cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, returned to Jerusalem with the King's decree to repair Jerusalem's walls and gates which had remained in disrepair and ruin since the time of the Babylonian exile. . The first one to announce that she had found part of the Persian city wall was the English archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon. century. ), Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, Jerusalem 1994, 85-106. This suggests that the rubble was swept down before the Late Persian period began, and that a city wall may have been built there at that time. NEHEMIAH AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WALL Jerusalem had been completely destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar army. Source: Chronological Reference Points,Middle East Insight, January-February 1999. D. Edelman, The Origins of the Second Temple: Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem, London 2005. It would be this city layout that would exist during the time of Christ. 2011, 307-17. The Walls of Jerusalem (Hebrew: , Arabic: ) surround the Old City of Jerusalem (approx. Like Churchill, Nehemiah begins by stating how bad the problem truly is, looking not only at the wall but at their vulnerability without it. Noah was not a professional ship builder, but he was motivated by the dark storm clouds overhead & the knowledge that he was building a boat that would carry his loved ones, himself, & his future. . E. Mazar, The Palace of King David. At the top of the slope there was a large tower and a stretch of city wall from the Late Hellenistic period, built by the Maccabees in the 2nd century BC. This made it necessary to reinforce western Palestine, especially the provinces of Yehud and Samaria and the coastal areas (Carter 1999, 293). Israel Finkelstein (2008), for example, sees Jerusalem of Persian and Early Hellenistic times as a small village without walls, with at most a few hundred inhabitants. But is it plausible that these were repaired too by the small group of people who lived in the city after the Exile? How long did it take to rebuild the. Nehemiah 2. During this time, observant Jews refrain from certain joyful activities and commemorate the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, as well as other historical tragedies. 3They replied, The survivors there in the province who escaped captivity are in great trouble and shame; the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been destroyed by fire., August 3, 2014 October 2021. In the 16th century, Suleiman decided to rebuild the city walls on much of the remains of the ancient walls that already existed. Whether Jerusalem was a birah, a Persian fortress, or a provincial capital possibly fortified by or with the permission of the Persian authorities to safeguard their interests cannot be determined on the basis of current evidence. He set to work resolutely and built up all the wall that was broken down and raised towers upon it, and outside it he built another wall, and he strengthened the Millo in the city of David. In 1535, when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Suleiman I ordered the ruined city walls to be rebuilt. [3], The city of Jerusalem has been surrounded by defensive walls since ancient times. Often times our need for faith will increase when were truly aware of the facts of a situation or crisis we are facing. Despite evidence of permanent settlement dating back to at least the Early Bronze Age (c. 33002300 B.C.E. Supporting his case, every non-biblical mention of Jerusalem found in the ancient Near East refers to the city as 'Jerusalem'. 3 And they said to me, "The remnant . A series by Phil & Kath Henry. A portion of the wall was discovered in the 1970s by Israeli archaeologist Nahman Avigad and dated to the reign of King Hezekiah (716-687 BC). The biblical books Nehemiah 2 and 3 relay the story of Nehemiahs trip around the destroyed town of Jerusalem and of the rebuilding of its fortifications. He places this project in the context of strengthening the interests of the Persian empire vis a vis the growing threat from Greece and Egypt. Was it a walled town with a central temple, the seat of the governor, the centre of government, religion and economy? The walls were extensively renewed by the Empress Aelia Eudocia during her banishment to Jerusalem (443460). The Old City of Jerusalem is currently divided into the Muslim, Christian, Armenian, and Jewish Quarters. He can see that rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem is a restoration job on several levels. 2:3). Many people thought this was impossible. The Persian pottery underneath the tower only gives a terminus post quem, a date after which something could have happened. Hes not afraid to use words like trouble, ruins, disgrace. No good comes from minimizing the difficulties of a task or situation that lies before us whether it is physical, relational, spiritual, financial, emotional, political or something else. But when Sanballat the Horonite & Tobiah the Ammonite official, & Geshem the Arab heard of it, they mocked & ridiculed us, saying, What is this that you are doing? Judah and her capital were mostly in ruins, its population decimated, the economy destroyed. "The survivors there in the province who escaped exile are in great trouble and shame; the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire" (Neh 1:3; cf. Are you rebelling against the king? Then I replied to them, The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, & we his servants are going to start building; but you have no share or claim or historic right in Jerusalem.. the southern kingdom was conquered by the Babylonians, and Solomon's Temple was destroyed. Jerusalems walls were largely neglected by the Crusader kingdom, although moderate rebuilding activities attempted to close breaches in the walls. Fortifying the town would certainly not have been tolerated by the Persian authorities, and the story as told in the biblical book of Nehemiah would be a much later construction. An accurate analysis of the finds I made shows, however, that the tower and the wall date from the Late Hellenistic period and are part of the fortifications described above (for an extensive analysis see Steiner 2011). during the siege led by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon at the time of King Zedekiah of Judah. 3 And they said to me, The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. He can see that rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem is a restoration job on several levels. Further north on the hill Kenyon found a smaller tower with part of a wall that according to her originated from the Persian era. Ancient foundations of the walls of Jerusalem. Although the walls size varies at different points, on average, it stands 40 feet tall and measures 8 feet thick. In 701 BC, the Assyrians, headed by Sennacherib invaded Judah, the Southern Kingdom of Israel, because of their disobedience to God. This does not immediately make the story in Nehemiah 3 untrue, but it cannot be substantiated either. Agrippa I began the construction of an additional wall of the city which was completed just at the beginning of the First JewishRoman War in 66 AD. The city walls and gates that the Babylonians destroyed have never been rebuilt.' Nehemiah was upset. About ten feet thick and up to fifty feet high, Suleiman's wall is dotted with forty-two defensive lookout posts. I. Finkelstein, `Jerusalem in the Persian (and Early Hellenistic) Period and the Wall of Nehemiah, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 32 (2008), 501-520. Unfortunately, the Bible texts remain vague on the exact location of these structures. A series by Phil & Kath Henry. The most famous cemetery is that of Ketef Hinnom, in the southwest part of the present-day city, where a number of tombs have been excavated, most of them robbed except one which was full of luxury material from the Late Iron Age, the Babylonian and the Persian periods (Barkay 1994). In the second element of his speech, Nehemiah acknowledges the seriousness of the situation. They had to be rebuilt by the Fatimids, who left out the southernmost parts that had been previously included: Mount Zion with its churches, and the southeastern hill (the City of David) with the Jewish neighborhoods which stood south of the Temple Mount. Tisha B'Av: The 9th of Av is observed as a fast day known as Tisha B'Av, which commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.