Some Observations on the Gateways to the Herodian Temple in Jerusalem

Abstract

THE Temple of the Lord which Herod the Great built on the site of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem, in the first century B.C., consisted of a rectangular enclosure some 500 yards from north to south and 300 from east to west, surrounded with colonnades, and having near the middle of the court thus enclosed the sacrificial altar and temple cella. Somewhat similar plans are found in pagan temples in Syria; e.g., Baalbek, Palmyra, Damascus and jerash. However, in the Jewish Temple the central building was a much more elaborate complex than the single pedimented structures usual in pagan types, and there was also a notable difference in the arrangement of the gateways through which the temenos was entered. The pagan temples all had monumental, axially placed propyl~a, scarcely less important in the general architectural composition than the central buildings, whereas the Herodian Temple had no grand entrance, but, instead, a number of subsidiary doorways irregularly spaced in the circuit of the peribolos. There were not less than eight such gates: four on the west side, one on the north, one towards the northern end of the east wall, and two in the south wall.1 Fragments of four of these entrances survive in situ; the gate in the eastern wall, identified in early Christian times with the scriptural Golden Gate; the two southern gates, now known as the Double and Triple Gates; and a fourth gate near the south end of the western wall. The present notes are concerned with the Golden Gate, the Double Gate and the Triple Gate; and it will be a little less confusing if the two latter are referred to by their old names, the Western and Eastern Huldah Gates. These three entrances all had similar plans. Each consisted of a pair of twin doorways leading into vaulted passages, beyond which inclined ramps led up to the level of the temenos pavement. (PI. I.) In the case of the Huldah Gates, the temenos pavement \vas high enougll above them for it to be clear of the vestibule vaults, and tIle colonnades on that side of the temenos were thus not interrupted by the gateways, but continued unbroken over the top of the vestibules. Recent excavations by the Britisll School at Athens and the University of Ankara on the site of tIle archaic city of Smyrna2 have exposed a sixth-century temple \vitIl a ramped approach whic}l may have passecl underneath a raised temenos pavement in much the same \'\'ay as the approacIles to Herod's '!'emple. It may be