The Streets of Jerusalem

Abstract

How old is the present street layout ofJerusalem ? Since we can recognize part of it in the Madaba Map (see Fig. I) some of the streets have their origin before A.D. 600 when the map was made. But they may well be considerably older, since there are cities in the Middle 'East like Laodicea or Damascus where parts of the street system have remained in continuous use for over two millennia.! Most of this article consists of an examination of the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem with a view to establishing their development and chronology. But as a preliminary we need to ask why it is so common to find traces of a Hellenistic or Roman street plan still in force today. It can hardly be because of traffic, since subsidiary roads are as likely to continue in use as larger ones, and we can hardly imagine that the direction and intensity of traffic would have remained constant in any city throughout its history. The importance of the streets is rather that they define the boundaries of properties, an importance reflected in the story, often true, that the property lots were granted to the founding fathers of the city at its inauguration. The lines of the streets are therefore likely to remain and be respected so long as property laws remain in force, or, in other words, they are likely to be permanent unless there comes a time of anarchy or totalitarian rule. Large-scale changes in the street-system may be rare, but small adjustments and encroachments take place the whole time, as one land owner takes over some of his neighbour's property, or, as public property is annexed by individuals. Streets, being essential to trade and publicly owned were particularly liable to encroachment at times when municipal authority became weak, and the wide Roman streets of cities in the Middle East have almost everywhere become narrowed into alleys. The Madabamap shows that even in the final years of Byzantine rule the wide columned streets were regarded as one of the civic glories ofJerusalem. But it shows also that Jerusalem was not laid out in the classic Roman plan, with a kardo and two decumani. Nor is the layout we can see at all like that of Antinoopolis,2 which Hadrian founded at almost the same time as Jerusalem or, as he finally named it, Aelia Capitolina.