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Early Explorers of the Har Habayis

3/27/2022

The main archeological explorations of the Har Habayis were between the years 1850-1900. Since after the six-day war, excavations were made outside the walls, but no excavations were done inside the walls, and the main information we have about it comes from these early archeologists. In this post, I will give some details about some of these archeologists.

Melchior de Vogue was a French diplomat and scholar who visited Yerushalayim in the years 1853 and 1862. During his second visit, he explored parts of the Har Habayis, especially the outer walls and its different styles of masonry. In 1864 he published a book in French about the Har Habayis, called Le Temple de Jérusalem.
Captain Charles Wilson was in charge of the ordnance survey of Yerushalayim, which took place in the years 1864-65. He made a detailed map of the whole city, including the Har Habayis and some of its water cisterns. He published this in 1866 (click here for the book).
Lieutenant Charles Warren was sent by the Palestine Exploration Fund (a British society founded in 1865 for the exploration of Eretz Yisroel) in 1867 to conduct excavations in Yerushalayim, specifically by the Har Habayis. He dug shafts and tunnels alongside the outer walls of the Har Habayis , and explored different cisterns and areas inside the Har Habayis, together with the help of his assistant, sergeant Henry Birtles. He published the results of his work in The Recovery of Jerusalem, Underground Jerusalem, and in the Jerusalem volume of The Survey of Western Palestine, which he wrote together with Claude Condor.
Lieutenant Claude Reignier Condor was sent to Eretz Yisrael in 1872 to take over command of the recently started Survey of Western Palestine from Captain R. W. Stewart, who had become sick and had to go back to England. Condor was in charge of the Survey until 1875, when he had to return to England. During this time, besides for exploring the whole Eretz Yisrael, he also explored parts of the Har Habayis, and made some new discoveries.
Conrad Schick was a German architect (and missionary) who arrived in Yerushalayim in 1846. He was the architect of some of the major building projects from that time, including Meah Shearim. In 1872 the Turkish authorities wanted to make a model of the Har Habayis, to be displayed by the great exhibition in Vienna, and hired Schick for this job. After this, he made several models of Har Habayis showing how it appeared in different times. He was able to get permission to explore the Har Habayis, and was able to explore many areas that had not been previously explored. (To see his models online, click here.)

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The Western Wall of the Har Habayis, part 3 (Warren's gate)

3/21/2022

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Three-hundred and fifty-five meters to the north of the southern corner of the western wall, there is a gate going through a tunnel into Har Habayis, called now Warren's gate. This gate is mentioned by Josephus, who says (Antiquities 15:11:5): Now in the western quarters of the enclosure of the temple there were four gates; the first led to the king's palace, and went to a passage over the intermediate valley; two more led to the suburbs of the city; and the last led to the other city, where the road descended down into the valley by a great number of steps, and thence up again by the ascent". This is one of the gates which led to the suburbs, as it was located outside the original walls of Yerushalayim, in the area inside the second wall.

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The Western Wall of the Har Habayis, part 2 (the northern edge of the street)

3/12/2022

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The northernmost 79 meters of this wall are not in the same line as the rest of the wall, but projects around 2.5 meters outwards. Although you can say that was because of a tower that was there, this does not seem to be the case, being that this projection is 79 meters wide, way too wide for a tower.

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The western wall of the Har Habayis, part 1 (the street)

3/7/2022

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The western wall of Hurdus's expansion of Har Habayis, is 485 meters long. This wall, as mentioned in an earlier post, is not perfectly aligned with the north-south-east-west axis, rather it is on a ten-degree angle from it. It had four gates (Josephus, antiquities 15:11:5), two of which led through tunnels to the top of Har Habayis, and the other two opened on top, straight into the plaza of Har Habayis. The northern lower gate is now called Warren's gate, and the southern one is called Barclay's gate. The two upper ones were on top of what is now called Wilson's arch and Robinson's arch. I will IMY"H discuss these gates in future posts.

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Early Explorers of the Har Habayis

The Western Wall of the Har Habayis, part 3 (Warren's gate)

The Western Wall of the Har Habayis, part 2 (the northern edge of the street)

The western wall of the Har Habayis, part 1 (the street)

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