Endnote 8 – Hadrian’s Legion

On the eastern side of the corner, Kenyon uncovered a bedrock scarp hewn directly under and in alignment with the face of the wall, adding almost 20 feet to its height. At the foot of the scarp, she exposed a quarry on top of which were Byzantine buildings. Thus, Kenyon concluded that the original wall, reflected by the bedrock scarp, can be “sandwiched” chronologically between the southern Temple Mount enclosure wall of the Herodian period to which it adjoins and the Byzantine buildings alongside the bedrock face. In this way, she reasoned that the wall was originally the city wall of Aelia Capitolina (Kenyon, Jerusalem: Excavating 3000 Years of History, p. 90). I believe that the wall is not a city wall as posited by Kenyon, but was built with the founding of Aelia Capitolina in order to enclose the Xth Legion camp that was located at the foot of the southwestern corner of the enclosure.