The Eastern Wall of Har Habayis, part 1

9/30/2022

The eastern wall of the Har Habayis is 466 meters (1530 feet) long. This wall is not exactly on the north-south axis, rather it is on an angle of 6 degrees to the north. The southern part of this wall is at an angle of around 93 degrees compared to the southern wall of Har Habayis, but at 73.2 meters (240 feet) away from this corner, the wall turns slightly to the east, so at a point 198.12 meters (650 feet) from the south-east corner, the wall is 2.43 meters (8 feet) to the east of a line in production of the first 73.2 meters (240 feet).

Southern joint [credit: Oren Rozen, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons]

In this wall you can see stones from the era of Shlomo Hamelech (the first Beis Hamikdash), and from the time of Hurdus, when he expanded Har Habayis (end of second Beis Hamikdash era). This is because when Hurdus rebuilt the Beis Hamikdash, he expanded the Har Habayis only on three sides (Josephus, wars 5:5:1), however, he did not expand it towards the east, as the Kidron valley which was there made it hard to expand in that direction. Therefore, the middle section of the wall is from Shlomo's Beis Hamikdash, however, the northern and southern sections are the walls of Hurdus's northern and southern expansions.

The Herodian stones in the southern end of the wall, goes until 32 meters (105 feet 6 inches) from the south edge, at which point there is a joint ("the seam"), where the Herodian masonry (which has flat middles) ends and the Solomonic masonry (which has bulging middles) begins. If you look closely at the seam, you can see the Solomonic masonry was cut into in order to place the Herodian masonry.

In the northern part of the wall, the Herodian masonry extends for around 121 meters (397 feet) to the south from the north-east corner, at which point there is another joint, and the Solomonic masonry begins. At this joint, the Solomonic masonry is set forward from the Herodian masonry about 60 centimeters (2 feet). (This joint is located 20.7 meters (68 feet) to the north of the Sha'ar Harachamim, and around 345 meters (1131 ft, 10 in) away from the southeast corner of the wall.)

As I mentioned in an earlier article, the northern end of the Migrash of Har Habayis is actually a little more to the south of this northern joint. Therefore, we must say that there was a tower at this place, sticking out of the Migrash. This tower is very likely the Aliyas Hapinah ("upper floor of the corner") mentioned by Nechemiah (3:31), which was in this area.

This eastern wall of the Har Habayis was the tallest of all the walls, as the ground on which it stood was lower than the ground under the other walls. In fact, Josephus writes that the other three walls were 300 Amos high (wars 5:5:1), while this wall was four hundred Amos tall (Antiquities 20:9:7, see also Antiquities 8:3:9). This number, like most of Josephus's numbers, is an exaggerated estimate, (He did not go around the Beis Hamikdash with a measuring stick when he wrote his books, rather he was writing from earlier accounts of the Beis Hamikdash, as well as from memory, at least ten years after he last saw it,) but we see from here that the eastern wall was the tallest.

In the southeast corner, the bottom of the wall is 695 m (2280 ft) above sea level, the bedrock then rises towards the middle, reaching a height of about 715 m (2345 ft) in the area of Sha'ar Harachamim. (The lowest point of the other walls of the Har Habayis, near the western edge of the southern wall, is 697.6 m (2289 ft) above sea level.) The rock then slopes downward, until it is 694.3 m (2278 ft) above sea level. The rock then goes up, until by the northeast corner, it is at a level of 710 meters (2330 ft) above sea level. As can be seen from this, Hurdus's northern expansion of the Har Habayis went past the northern edge of Har Hamoriah, and crossed over a valley, the Bezesa valley, to the hill on the north of Har Habayis. (See this article for an estimate of how high the Har Habayis walls went to.)