The Monumental Building by Wilson's arch (Masonic Hall), part 2

  In the previous post, I wrote about the monumental dining hall built during the Second MIkdash era. However, this building underwent significant changes at some point before the Churban

The masonic hall, room 23, looking northwest [עמוס גל, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons]

    The first change that was done to the building was the removal of the flat roof of the hall. The building was then divided into three rooms (rooms 21, 22, & 23), through two walls that ran from the two ends of the fountain wall to the southern wall of the hall. The walls did not take the pilasters into account; it blocks three of them; and stops the drainage channel cut into the floor. These rooms were then covered with vaults aligned to a north-south axis. A thin curved was found on the fountain wall, it was made in preparation of the construction of the vault. (This change from a flat roof to a vault was probably done to support the bridge above this hall, and if this is correct, we can say this change was done around the year 3790 [30 CE].)

    Some sort of water installation, probably a pool, was made inside room 22 (the previous fountain area). The plaster for the pool covered the lower part of the fountain wall (under the cornice) with a second layer of plaster, and it probably also covered the rectangular opening. Plaster was also placed on the stone pavement on the floor, and it blocked and filled the channel there. A small section of plaster revealed (during Alexander Onn's excavations) in the northwestern corner of Room 22 extended up from the pavement of the room on the lower part of the fountain wall, and onto the (added) side wall bearing the roof vault. It seems that the pool stretched the entire width of Room 22; its length is unknown. A coin dating to the reign of Nero (58/59 CE) was discovered inside the plaster.

​   A large Mikveh was also built inside Room 21 at this time (after 3819 [59 CE]) and three coins dating from 3814-3819 (54-59 CE) were discovered in its foundation. This Mikveh has two staircases to go into it, one on the north and one on the south, each staircase having eleven steps.

the hall after the changes

Reference

Onn A., Weksler-Bdolah S. and Bar-Nathan R. 2011. Jerusalem, The Old City, Wilson’s Arch and the Great Causeway. HA-ESI 123.

Onn, Alexander, and Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah. “Jerusalem, The Western Wall Tunnels: Preliminary Report.” HA-ESI 128