Searching for Roman Jerusalem

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The Romans destroyed Jerusalem at the end of the summer of 70 C.E. Under the command of the Roman general Titus, they burned the city and dismantled the Temple, thus ending the First Jewish Revolt (66—70 C.E.)—the so-called Great Jewish Revolt.

The Romans were not content simply to defeat the Jews. They pursued a policy of deliberate devastation, eradicating not only Jerusalem’s central religious institution but the city’s fortifications, public buildings and large residential quarters. Those Jews who managed to survive the long siege were later massacred by Roman soldiers or, in some cases, led into captivity and sold as slaves.

Silent but vivid evidence of these dramatic events in Jerusalem’s history was exposed during excavations in the 1970s at numerous sites throughout the city. Although no excavations took 036place on the Temple Mount itself, digs just outside the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount revealed tremendous piles of gigantic ashlars (squared stones) that covered the public courtyards and streets built by Herod the Great (37–4 B.C.E.) to serve those who came to worship at the Temple.^a The excavators found thousands of stones that had once composed the upper part of the Temple Mount’s massive retaining walls but had been deliberately toppled from their original places and thrown outside the Temple enclosure. Jewish prisoners of war had probably been forced by the Romans to undertake the long, tiring process of destroying the Temple and its surroundings. For the Jews, it was the ultimate humiliation—the destruction of their sacred Temple at their own hands.¹

While excavations were taking place adjacent to the Temple Mount, other digs were proceeding in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, the area known at the end of the Second Temple period as the Upper City, where the wealthiest and most prominent Jewish families lived. This area managed to hold out against the Romans for a month after the Temple Mount was captured. Excavations here exposed several large, elaborate mansions.^b The evidence clearly demonstrates that these buildings were destroyed by intense fire following the Roman conquest of this part of the city,² exquisitely illustrating the account of the first-century C.E. Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, an eyewitness to the bitter siege and defeat.³

An examination of the vast necropolis surrounding the city at the end of the Second Temple period reveals that Jews no longer lived in the city after this complete destruction. Nearly a thousand rock-cut burial chambers have now been examined. There is almost no evidence of use after 70 C.E. No new burial chambers appear to have been hewn in the period between the 037two revolts, although a few existing ones continued to be used. What little evidence there is of continued use completely ceases after the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (132–135 C.E.).⁴

It is sometimes argued that the evidence of Jewish burials between 70 C.E. and 135 C.E.—however scant it may be—shows that at least some Jews remained in the city after the Roman destruction. I disagree. The continued use of Jewish burial chambers may be better explained another way: I believe that a few Jews who had been exiled from the city continued to bury their deceased relatives in traditional family tombs. They may have obtained permission from the Roman authorities by paying them, or may simply have chosen to risk their lives by making unauthorized use of these burial chambers. Certainly, it would have been impossible for normal daily life to have continued in Jerusalem after the war. Even the surrounding rural areas that had supplied the city with food had been looted and devastated. Moreover, later literary sources indicate that Jews were not allowed to live in Jerusalem.⁵ Only on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, the anniversary of both the Roman destruction and the earlier Babylonian destruction of the Temple, were Jews even permitted to visit the city to pray at the ruins on the Temple Mount. For this, too, they needed to pay bribes to the Roman garrison then stationed in the city.⁶

In short, both the literary and the archaeological evidence indicate that the city was totally destroyed in 70 C.E. Not a single building remained standing.

The overall destruction of the city was obviously part of an imperial plan to fundamentally change the city’s destiny. Only in this way can we explain the tremendous effort and expense involved in removing all signs of the city’s Jewish past. The Romans clearly wanted to suppress any future Jewish nationalist aspirations to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.

The Romans also decided to change the administrative status of the province of Judea. Although the administrative unity of Judea was preserved because it was inhabited so heavily by Jews, Judea itself became an imperial province, governed by a high-ranking Roman official. Before the First Jewish Revolt, only auxiliary units served as the Roman garrison in Judea; that is, the soldiers who served in these units came from the native, non-Jewish population of Palestine. After suppressing the uprising, however, the Tenth Roman Legion remained to deal with the security needs of Palestine. As outsiders, they could do so without becoming emotionally involved in conflicts between various ethnic groups living in the region.

The stationing of the Tenth Legion in Jerusalem marked the beginning of Roman colonization of the city. That the Tenth Legion was in fact garrisoned there is shown by a number of inscriptions uncovered in the last one hundred years.⁷

To commemorate its defeat of Jerusalem, the Tenth Legion erected several triumphal columns. Two of these columns bearing fragmentary dedicatory inscriptions have been found. Engraved in 038Latin, they mention both the Tenth Legion and Titus, the Roman conqueror of Jerusalem who became emperor in 79 C.E. The fragments were found in secondary use south of the Temple Mount.⁸ These inscriptions doubtless once stood at central, symbolic points in the ruined city, perhaps at the entrance to the Temple Mount or at one of the city gates.

The Tenth Legion—its full name was Legio• X• Fretensis (Fretensis refers to either the region where its soldiers came from or a place where it had won an important victory)—had previously served in northern Syria, where it guarded the Roman border along the Euphrates River. In 68 C.E. the Tenth Legion swept across Galilee to suppress the Jewish Revolt; during the siege of Jerusalem, led by Titus, it was stationed on the Mount of Olives. Later, in 72 and 73 C.E., under a commander named Silva, the Tenth Legion was the main Roman force in the battle of Masada.

Josephus tells us that when Titus ordered the demolition of the fortifications of Jerusalem, he decided to spare three towers on Jerusalem’s western hill, in the northwestern corner of the so-called First Wall: These three towers, which Herod had named Phasael, Hippicus and Mariamme, served as headquarters and barracks for the Tenth Legion, according to Josephus.⁹ On the basis of Josephus’s writings, it has been suggested that the legion’s camp in Jerusalem was erected on the city’s western hill, adjacent to these towers. This hill has several topographical advantages. It is higher than other parts of ancient Jerusalem, so that a garrison stationed there could easily control the city; it is bordered on three sides by deep valleys; and its flat summit is convenient for military settlement.

While scholars agree that a Roman camp was established on the western hill of Jerusalem, the exact location, size and shape of the legionary camp remains a matter of dispute. One thing is clear: Roman soldiers never inhabited the Second Temple period dwellings of the Upper City; after they finished looting and destroying the city, not even one building was still standing in this formerly elegant quarter. The Roman camp was built on the destruction layer that covered the entire hill.

It has often been suggested that the Tenth Legion’s camp in Jerusalem was confined to the southwestern part of what is now known as the Old City, that is, to the modern Armenian Quarter and to the area of David’s Citadel, just south of Jaffa Gate. This is really quite a small area—about 1,300 feet by 800 feet. The assumption has been that a typical Roman military camp was founded here, protected by a wall enclosing its rectangular plan and divided by two main intersecting streets.

This theory cannot be proven. The archaeological evidence simply does not support this hypothetical reconstruction of the Roman military camp.

In the 1970s, I excavated in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City with the late Professor Nahman Avigad. In site after site, the same stratigraphical picture appeared. Over the destruction layer marking the Roman conquest of the Upper City in 70 C.E., we consistently identified a 039construction layer of the Byzantine period (fourth to seventh centuries C.E.)—with nothing in between! In very limited areas, we excavated some earth fills containing a large number of ceramic roof-tile fragments, many bearing the insignia of the Tenth Legion. Many more of these roof tiles were found in Byzantine earth fills. We were surprised, however, to find no architectural remains that could be related to these fragmentary roof tiles. Even more surprising, we did not uncover any other significant artifacts typical of Roman military camps (such as sculptures or Latin inscriptions)—only a few coins and a few baskets of sherds.

The conclusion cannot be avoided: The Roman stratum is absent in most of the excavated areas!

So where are the remains of the Roman military camp? Perhaps elsewhere on the western hill? The evidence is similar wherever excavations have been conducted on the western hill, whether in the Armenian Quarter or further south, on Mt. Zion.

What about the wall that is assumed to have enclosed the Roman military camp? Excavations have failed to uncover any sign of such a wall from the Roman period. On the contrary, the excavations along the remains of the so-called First Wall (the wall that encircled the western hill of Jerusalem prior to the Roman destruction) show that it was not used by the Romans and that no new wall was built here by the Roman army.

In the courtyard of David’s Citadel, south of Jaffa Gate, a long section of the northwestern corner of the First Wall was uncovered. Several wall sections and towers found here, all dating to the Hasmonean and Herodian periods, were destroyed in 70 C.E. and never rebuilt.¹⁰

This picture became very clear after we examined a tower at the southern end of the courtyard of David’s Citadel. Erected in the early first century C.E. on the remains of Hasmonean and Herodian towers, this new southern tower included at least three rooms. The floor of the tower was covered by a thick destruction layer, which contained building stones, ceiling plaster and charred wooden beams—indicating that the tower was destroyed in a large conflagration. The small pottery finds and the stratigraphy indicate that the fire was set by the Roman army in 70 C.E.¹¹ When the Roman army occupied the city, a water installation made of clay pipe was built over the remains of this southern tower. So the supposed western wall of the Roman camp could not have been located here. Only many years later was the northern side of this tower incorporated into a new tower, erected when a new wall was built around Jerusalem at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century C.E.

Where the southern wall of the Roman military camp was purportedly located (that is, along the line of the southern wall of the modern Old City), no Roman wall has been found, although excavations have been conducted below the foundations and on both sides of the southern Old City wall. The eastern section of the southern Old City wall is in fact built on 040top of the outer wall of an Umayyad (Arab) palace, while the western section of the present-day wall, on Mt. Zion, lies on the remains of a medieval city wall, with no earlier wall below.

In sum, no wall has been found that could have enclosed the area of the assumed Roman military camp. Further excavations throughout the western hill have not exposed any structural remains identifiable with the encampment of the Tenth Legion. The only evidence was uncovered in the courtyard of David’s Citadel; it includes a few fragmentary walls and sections of water installations, consisting in part of a clay-pipe drain bearing stamp impressions of the letters LXF, short for Legio• X• Fretensis, or the Tenth Legion.¹² The bulk of the Roman period materials excavated all over the western hill consists of numerous broken roof tiles and a few bricks impressed mainly with rectangular Tenth Legion stamps reading “Leg(io)• X• Fretensis.”

The archaeological data effectively refute the suggestions that a typical Roman legionary camp was founded in Jerusalem and that it was confined only to the area of the Armenian Quarter and David’s Citadel in the Old City. There is no difference between the Roman period finds uncovered in David’s Citadel and the Armenian Quarter and those retrieved from other parts of the western hill, such as the Jewish Quarter or Mt. Zion.

The archaeological evidence clearly indicates that the entire western hill was only sporadically and sparsely inhabited during the Roman period. I would propose a different scenario from that of a common military camp: After the Roman army captured Jerusalem, it departed for other campaigns, leaving only a small detachment of the Tenth Legion in the ruined city. Because the city was not located on the border of the empire, no outsiders posed a significant threat to the city. In short, Jerusalem was unimportant. The major role of the detachment was to ensure that the Jews did not return to the city.

Other small detachments of the Tenth Legion encamped in strategic locations around Jerusalem. Remains from these Tenth Legion detachments have been recorded at Ramat Rachel, Bethany, Ein Yael, Cremisan and Givat Ram.¹³ In the latter site, the remains of a Tenth Legion industrial area, including kiln works for the production of ceramic construction material, have recently been uncovered.¹⁴

The small Tenth Legion detachment that served as the Roman garrison in Jerusalem was probably commanded by a high-ranking officer, since Jerusalem served as headquarters for the Tenth Legion units stationed near the city. The bulk of the Tenth Legion, however, encamped at Caesarea, the provincial capital of Palestine during the Roman period.

The few Roman soldiers assigned to Jerusalem, as far as we can judge, encamped all over the city’s western hill.

The three Herodian towers, Hippicus, Phasael and Mariamme, were part of the 041defended headquarters, which provided security for the legionary soldiers in emergencies. Small units of Roman soldiers were no doubt also stationed at other strategic points in the city. But there was never any organized and planned Roman military camp with a wall around it in Jerusalem.

Only a few buildings were constructed on the western hill at this time. Most of these were probably made of wood, with ceramic-tile roofs. The wood later disintegrated or was taken for secondary use, leaving only fragments of roof tiles behind.

Although the discovery of thousands of roof tiles on the western hill may seem to suggest considerable building activity, that is not the case. The average intact roof tile is little more than 21 inches (54 cm) long and about 18 inches wide (47 cm on one side and 46 cm on the other side). Thus, it takes about five or six tiles to cover a square meter (taking into account the required overlap). A roof of 100 square meters would take, conservatively, 700 flat tiles and the same number of partially curved tiles to cover the joins. Every second or third tile was stamped with the Tenth Legion seal. In the excavation in the Jewish Quarter, we found more than 500 stamped tiles, so the total number must have been no more than 1,500. Our conclusion is that this was enough to roof only a few structures of medium size (built over a period of more than 200 years).¹⁵

In 130 C.E. the emperor Hadrian decided to establish a Roman colony, named Aelia Capitolina, on the site of what had once been Jewish Jerusalem.^c This led to the Second Jewish Revolt (132–135 C.E.). The rebellious Jews, centered in Judea, south of Jerusalem, wanted to liberate Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple, thus reestablishing Jewish national independence.

Scholars are still debating whether the rebels captured Jerusalem at one point in the revolt. The most common view is that they not only captured the city briefly but even conducted Jewish rituals on the site of the destroyed Temple. That the Roman defenses were thin makes this scenario possible. Yet, we do not have any direct or certain historical sources proving that the Jews seized Jerusalem during this revolt. Nor is there any record that the Roman army needed to recapture the city; the written sources are generally silent. One piece of evidence supporting the view that the rebels did capture the city comes from coins minted by the rebels: They show the Temple facade, as if boasting of the rebels’ success (See coin in “Aelia Capitolina: Jerusalem No More”). Those who support this view will quote certain Jewish sources that can be interpreted to mean that Jerusalem was controlled by the Jews, and that even hint at the renewal of religious activity in the Temple area.

My own view is that the rebels probably never captured Jerusalem.¹⁶ Despite years of intensive excavations in the area of ancient Jerusalem, no remains of any kind have been found from the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome. There is no evidence of the construction of a wall or even the rebuilding of old walls, and there is no evidence that any houses were built at this time. But if Jews had returned to the city, they surely would have needed houses to live in and walls to protect themselves against Roman counter-assault.

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The evidence from the necropolis just outside Jerusalem is also negative. Further, we know of only a few coins from the Second Jewish Revolt that were found in Jerusalem,¹⁷ compared with the large number of such coins found in the Judean mountains, where the rebel forces were concentrated.¹⁸

Even if the rebels did capture Jerusalem, they did not hold it long. If they had, the Romans, after retaking the city, surely would have protected their encampment with a wall. But no such wall has been found. The archaeological evidence reflects no change after the revolt was suppressed in 135 C.E.

We may surmise that during the three-year revolt the Roman forces in Jerusalem were strengthened and that this kept the rebels away. After all, the Roman authorities knew Jerusalem’s symbolic value to the Jews. If the rebels had captured the city, that would have changed the course of the war by inspiring the imagination of the Jews and encouraging more of them to join the rebels, thus spreading the revolt all over the country. That it did not is a further indication that the rebels never conquered Jerusalem.

Little construction was carried out in the new Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina (the name Hadrian gave Jerusalem) before the revolt was suppressed in 135 C.E. The civilian sector of Aelia Capitolina was built north of the western hill and the military settlement. The construction strictly adhered to the usual Roman plan, with public buildings arrayed along an orderly 043geometric network of streets. Even today a map of the Old City reveals a clear difference in the street plan between the northern and the southern sectors. In the northern sector (today’s Christian and Moslem quarters), the alignment of streets at right angles reflects the organized Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina. In marked contrast, the southern part of the Old City (the Jewish and Armenian quarters) is a jumble of streets coming together at odd angles. This area was quickly but indiscriminately settled, without any central plan, after the Tenth Legion was transferred from Jerusalem to Aila (modern Aqaba) at the end of the third century C.E.

To grace Aelia Capitolina, the Romans built two temples, one where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands today and the other on the site of the destroyed Jewish Temple.^d

Lined with columns, the Cardo Maximus, the major north-south street of the Roman city, extended from the Damascus Gate in the north through the civilian sector of Aelia Capitolina as far south as the northern border of the legionary campsite (David Street today). Further south, no remains of the Roman-era Cardo were found.

The famous Madaba mosaic map of Jerusalem from the sixth century C.E., however, shows the Cardo extending much further, from the Damascus Gate (in the northern wall of the Old City today) all the way to the Dung Gate (in the southern wall of the Old City). Nahman Avigad, who excavated the Cardo, was therefore surprised when he was unable to find any Roman remains of this thoroughfare in his excavations south of David Street in the Jewish Quarter.^e All the evidence dated the southern part of the Cardo to the late Byzantine period, when the city was Christian.¹⁹

The reason is now clear. In the mid-sixth century, the Byzantine emperor Justinian built the Nea Church, 045a huge structure with accompanying buildings dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus. The impressive remains of the Nea Church have now been recovered, just where it is shown on the Madaba map, at the southern side of the western hill. Justinian obviously extended the Cardo south to reach this church. Thus, the northern section of the Cardo was part of Roman Aelia Capitolina; Justinian’s extension (built in typical Byzantine style, easily recognized by experts) ran to the magnificent Nea Church. That is why the Byzantine period Madaba map shows the Cardo extending all the way to the southern gate of the city.

During the Roman period, then, the city was divided into two distinct areas—the civilian sector in the north and the Roman encampment in the south. The Cardo traversed only the civilian area.

Hadrian erected a triumphal gateway to serve as the northern entrance to Aelia Capitolina, opening onto the Cardo. Its remains have been exposed under the foundations of the Damascus Gate.^f Defended by two towers, this impressive gateway had three entrances, of which the central one was widest and highest. It is the most complete Roman structure exposed in Jerusalem.

The most famous structure from Aelia Capitolina, however, is the Ecce Homo arch north of the Temple Mount, so named because of the tradition that under this arch Pontius Pilate displayed the scourged Jesus to the crowd, proclaiming, “Behold, the man” (John 19:5). In fact, the arch did not exist in Jesus’ time. The Ecce Homo arch was not an entrance to Pilate’s praetorium but the central arch of a three-arched triumphal gateway, also built by Hadrian, opening onto a plaza. The beautiful pavement of this forum, exposed at the end of the last century in the basement of the Sisters of Zion Convent, was once revered as the Lithostrotos, where Jesus was thought to have been judged by Pontius Pilate. But this pavement, like the monumental triumphal arch resting on it, dates not to the time of Jesus but to that of Aelia Capitolina, about 100 years later.

Although it may seem strange, Aelia Capitolina was not protected by a wall at first, despite general opinion to the contrary. While the trimphal gateway under Damascus Gate served as the northern entrance to the city, there is no evidence that this gateway was 072attached to a wall. If it had been, we would expect to find remains of this wall under the foundations of the present northern wall of the Old City. But no such remains have been found, either here or elsewhere in the many excavations carried out along the Old City walls.

Many scholars have long believed that the wall surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City today preserves in outline the plan of Aelia Capitolina. Hadrian’s city, they assumed, was built as a typical Roman colony—that is, square in plan with streets intersecting at right angles. But excavations have shown that this is not the case. The earliest wall built along the northern side of the Old City is Byzantine; the earliest wall built along the southern side dates no earlier than the medieval period.

When you think about it, there was no need for a city wall in the Roman period after 70 C.E. The Jewish population was no longer a threat, as Jews were forbidden to cross the boundaries of Jerusalem.²⁰ Further, unlike such highly fortified sites as Dura-Europos²¹ and Palmyra (Tadmor),²² which protected the eastern edge of the empire, Jerusalem held no strategic value.

At the end of the third century C.E., Roman Jerusalem began to change. The Tenth Legion was transferred to Aila (Aqaba) to ward off an Arab invasion, leaving Jerusalem unprotected. At the beginning of the fourth century, after Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire, the city became an important religious center. Only then was the decision made to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

The Romans destroyed Jerusalem at the end of the summer of 70 C.E. Under the command of the Roman general Titus, they burned the city and dismantled the Temple, thus ending the First Jewish Revolt (66—70 C.E.)—the so-called Great Jewish Revolt. The Romans were not content simply to defeat the Jews. They pursued a policy of deliberate devastation, eradicating not only Jerusalem’s central religious institution but the city’s fortifications, public buildings and large residential quarters. Those Jews who managed to survive the long siege were later massacred by Roman soldiers or, in some cases, led into captivity and sold […]