Image Details

The pool of Israel. The photo shows Ritmeyer’s model of the pool that lay just north of the Temple Mount’s northeast corner. Directly to its west was the impressive Antonia Fortress (upper right in the model). To defend his placement of the northern wall of the Temple Mount (center in model), Ritmeyer points to a rare photograph, taken in 1894, that shows two partial walls back to back (see photograph). The placement of the stones, says Ritmeyer, locate the Pool of Israel (and therefore the northern wall of the Temple Mount) with certainty. Jacobson’s proposed northern wall, writes Ritmeyer, would cut through the Antonia Fortress and the Pool of Israel. In another critique, Ritmeyer notes that pilasters—stones pushed forward on a wall to create the appearance of attached columns—never continue right up to a corner, as can be seen at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron (see photograph), a point overlooked by Jacobson.