The temples of the Jews and the other buildings in the Haram area at Jerusalem

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Preface

More than thirty years have now elapsed since I obtained access to the plans and drawing’s made in 1833 by Messrs. Catherwood and Arnndale, in the Haram area at Jerusalem. The circumstances under which I first saw these drawing’s, and afterwards became possessed of them, need not be repeated here, as they have already been narrated at length in the preface to my work on the ‘Ancient Topography of Jerusalem,’1 which was the result of their acquisition, and afterwards, more briefly, in a little work on ‘ The Holy Sepulchre and the Temple at Jerusalem,’ published in 1865.

Even at that time, it required only a very cursory inspection of these drawings to enable me to see at once that the so-called Mosque of Omar bad not been built by that Khalif, nor indeed by any Saracenic architect, but was undoubtedly a building of the age of Constantine ; and the conclusion seemed inevitable that, with the Golden Gateway, it formed a part of the group of buildings erected by that Emperor, in the early part of the fourth century, around the cave which he believed to have contained the Sepulchre of Christ. Since that time I have had repeated occasions to go carefully over the architectural history of that age, and have heard numerous criticisms on the views I then expressed, but nothing that has, in the smallest degree, shaken my confidence in the conclusions I then arrived at, or in the perfect trustworthiness of the data from which these results were obtained.

At the time of making this discovery and announcing it to the world, I had not the most remote idea that I was doing anything which required special knowledge, or for which I deserved any particular credit. I saw, at a glance, of what paramount importance to the Christian topography of Jerusalem it was, that the real site of Constantine’s buildings should be discovered, and felt perhaps more than most people the interest this knowledge possessed for the general history of architecture. Beyond this, however, I could only consider myself as fortunate in accidentally finding a treasure that had long been hidden, and in being the first

1 An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem ; with restored Plans of the Temple, and with Plans, Sections, and Details of the Church built by Constantine the Great over the Holy Sepulchre, now known as the Mosque of Omar. Royal 8vo. John Weale, High Holborn, 1847.

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to publish it to the world. My idea then was, that it would have been known ages ago, had it not been for the jealous exclusion of Christians from the Haram area since the time of the Crusades, and because no intelligent foreigner had seen the interior of the Dome of the Dock since the Middle Ages. Now, however, that the veil had been drawn aside, and its form and details revealed to the world, I felt convinced that nine educated men out of ten would see at once what I had seen, and my only anxiety was, that no one should have access to the drawings in the engraver’s hands, or hear the fact announced, before I had the somewhat selfish gratification of publishing it to the world.

The result, it need hardly be added, differed most widely from these anticipations. No one saw the facts in the same light in which I saw them, and the conclusions which I had drawn from them were consequently looked upon as idle dreams, and their author treated with very scant courtesy, I felt myself, in fact, in the position of a man who had accidentally acquired a knowledge of a dead language of which the rest of his countrymen were ignorant, and who, being asked to interpret an important inscription written in that tongue, had given a translation which was unexpected by all, and singularly distasteful to a few, who unfortunately were deeply interested in discrediting both the interpretation and its author.

I was of course well aware that, since the revival of Gothic art became a mania, the study of classical art and architecture had been sadly neglected in this country ; but I was not prepared for such complete ignorance as I found prevailing on the subject. Even if its details were unknown, I expected that the principles of architectural criticism had been so well established by the study of the mediaeval styles that all would admit and understand their application to all other phases of art. In this country, since the publication of Rickman's ‘ Attempt to discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England,’ published in 1817, the progress of the science has been so rapid that now any well educated school-girl, on entering one of our cathedrals, at once points to the round arches of the nave as fixing its date within the first century after the Conquest. She discriminates between the early lancet style and the geometric or decorative tracery of the Edwards, and makes no mistake in distinguishing between the early perpendicular and the Tudor styles that succeeded these. All this is so well known and so certainly fixed that, were all the books and records of the three kingdoms destroyed, there are hundreds, probably thousands, in this country who could by simple inspection fix the age of any part of any of our great churches within twenty or at the outside within fifty years with absolute certainty, and no one would dispute the conclusions so arrived at.

It was not so, however, in the last century, when the greater number of our great county histories were compiled. Then the industrious compiler, when he found in the chronicle of some lying monk, that the enemies of God had harried the convent, and burnt and destroyed the church — “ usque ad solum diruta ” —

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V noted it down as a fact, and equally believed that it had been rebuilt in the next few years by some abbot or prior without money or means of any sort. It never occurred to him to go to the church itself, and see whether the walls and vaults of the pious Norman founder might not yet be standing, and if he had gone, it is very probable he would not have been much the wiser. The existence of the certain gradation of styles was not then suspected, and is in fact the great discovery of this century in that class of literature. Now, however, any man who would state that Henry YII.’s Chapel was built by Edward the Confessor, though a considerable amount of documentary evidence could be brought forward to prove it, would be simply laughed at. Or if any one would assert that the chapel in the White Tower of the Tower of London and Henry VII. ’s Chapel were built by the same king — they are not dissimilar in plan — would not be laughed at, simply because the idea would be thought to be too absurd and stupid. This all will probably admit ; but the disappointing part of the matter is, that, while acknowledging the conquests of this science as regards English art, even the besteducated men fail to perceive its application to all other true styles.

The causes are, however, sufficiently obvious which prevent this mode of reasoning from being generally appreciated in this country. Any one who looks around him cannot fail to see buildings in the Grecian, Roman, and Italian styles rising simultaneously, mixed up with others in all the one hundred and one varieties of Mediaeval Architecture, and, unless he has seen and thought much on the subject, will have no reason for doubting that what happens everywhere at the present day may always have been the normal state of matters. He consequently brushes aside all reasoning based on data which he considers contradicted by his own daily experience, and smiles incredulously at the simplicity of those who, he thinks, rely on something they consider more important than the testimony of their own eyes ! Few, consequently, realise the fact that these imitative — or, as I used to call them, monkey — styles are wholly the invention of the centuries that have elapsed since the Reformation in Europe, and that absolutely no trace of them is found before that event in the West, nor to the present day in the East, wherever the example of Europe has not obliterated the true styles of the land. In all other countries and ages, the progressive evolution of forms in works of art is as certain as in the works of nature, and may be reasoned upon in the same manner and with the same certainty. So far as I know, there is absolutely no exception to this rule, and when once the distinction between the old and new systems is fairly grasped, a new domain is added to the realms of science of the utmost value to our knowledge of the past, and of especial importance towards obtaining a solution of problems such as those treated of in this volume.

From all this it follows, as an inevitable corollary, that wherever sufficient remains exist of the original architecture of any building to enable its affinities with others of the same class to be ascertained with accuracy, its age can always

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be determined with more ease and certainty from this than from any other class of evidence, either written or traditional, that can be applied to any such investigations. So, at least, I have found it in every part of the world where I have been, or regarding which I have any accurate knowledge ; and so I believe all will find who will follow up the study of architectural art, not only in its technical forms but through all the various historical and more scientific phases which form its real value for our present purpose.

So far, however, are these principles from being considered as applicable to buildings in Palestine that no one hesitates in asserting, and others from believing, that the Dome of the Rock and the mosque El Aksa are buildings of the same age, and erected by the same Khalif, though in reality the difference of age and style is about the same as that between the chapel in the White Tower and the Westminster tomb. They look steadily at the two woodcuts Nos. 55 and 56, and see no difference in styles ; nor do they detect any improbability in the two capitals, Nos. 78 and 79, being made at the same time and for the same building. They see nothing that is classical in the Dome of the Rock, and though they do not quite say so, they see nothing improbable in the assumption, that it was built by the Moslems in the seventh century, nor as a necessary consequence that the Golden Gateway must also be a Saracenic building of the same age. If Englishmen at the present day were as familiar with the architecture of the Byzantine empire during the four centuries that elapsed between the time of Constantine and that of Abd-el-Malek as they are with that of the four centuries that counted between the Conquest and the Reformation, the questions regarding the relative age of these two buildings would have been answered as soon as asked, and whether in the negative or affirmative, the decision would never have been questioned. Any doubts that still hang over the controversy are wholly owing to the fact that those with whom the decision rests fail to appreciate the evidence on which it must be based.

In like manner the historians of the holy places have benefited as little by our recently acquired scientific processes as the archaeologists. They look into their written histories, and find that the Persian king Cliosroes not only plundered, but burnt and destroyed — levelled with the ground — the churches of Constantine and Justinian, and that a monk, Modestus, without money or means, in a time of the deepest depression of the Church of Jerusalem, rebuilt and restored to their original splendour, in a very short time, what it had taken all the power and all the wealth of these great Emperors to accomplish during many years of continuous prosperity. It never seems to occur to any of them that before giving credence to this apocryphal tale, resting only on the slightest evidence, it is first necessary to ascertain whether the architecture of any of the buildings so said to have been destroyed is of an age anterior to the Persian conquest. If this indispensable examination were really made, it would be found that the Dome of the Rock still retains much of the architecture of the age of

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Constantine still perfect and unaltered. There are mosaics there, some of which, at least, are parts of the original decoration of a building of that age, which would certainly have peeled off if ever exposed to fire. Numerous columns will be found there of precious marbles which would have calcined to dust in the heat of a conflagration, but which retain their original polish. What may have happened to the Basilica of Constantine, we cannot tell, for a worse tyrant than Chosroes, four centuries afterwards, did utterly destroy that noble building, and the church of Justinian has also perished ; but we can confidently assert that he left no trace of his violence on the structure of the Dome of the Rock, or on the Golden Gateway, which remain to the present day, very nearly as Constantine left them. In any other place than Jerusalem this would be considered final, and, so far as I am capable of forming an opinion, is so, notwithstanding all that has been urged against it during the last thirty years.

Had the Haram been situated in England, or in any part of Western Europe, the age of its buildings would have been ascertained long ago, by the same processes, and with the same certainty, as those of any mediaeval building that exists, and no one would have disputed the determination so arrived at. If indeed there had been even a dozen persons in this country who were sufficiently familiar with the Romano-Byzantine style, to be capable of formulating an opinion regarding it, and had leisure to look at the evidence, this controversy never could have arisen. Either they would have agreed in the correctness of my views, and the general public would have followed their lead, or, if they had decided against them, and given their reasons for so doing, which they could easily have done, the matter would have been settled long ago, and I would have been too happy to withdraw from a controversy in which, even if right, neither fame nor profit is to be obtained.

During the many years that have elapsed since the publication of my work, I have known only one person in this country — the late Professor Willis, of Cambridge — who was qualified both by his knowledge of architecture and of the authorities to give a decided opinion on the subject. He, however, had committed himself publicly to the authenticity of the Sepulchre in the town, before my theory was published, and it would be demanding a little too much from human nature to ask any one in his position to confess the error of his ways and to admit the success of a rival. The late Mr. Lewin was another formidable opponent. He, however, knew nothing of architecture, and was familiar only with the classical branch of the literature of the subject; so that it is hardly to be wondered at that he missed the point of the argument. On the other hand, Count de Vogue knows both the art and the literature of the subject; and if it be not that his opinions are biassed by sincere devotion to his infallible church, his reasoning on the subject is to me a mystery I cannot pretend to fathom.1 Besides

1 See Appendix V.

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these three, I could name some four or five persons whose knowledge of art is sufficient to enable them to judge if they would take the trouble of looking into the special evidence bearing on the question. They have not, however, so far as I know, done so, and, wisely perhaps, decline to mix themselves up with a controversy where matters of faith are allowed at times to supersede the processes of pure reason. In so far as my own personal experience goes, I have met no one during these thirty years able or willing to discuss the matter, while if there is any one in this country, who has taken the trouble to master the subject, in all its bearings, I can only express my regret that I am not acquainted with his name. Such controversies as have taken place in periodicals have generally hinged on some collateral points. No one, so far as I know, has, in print at least grasped the really vital points at issue and tried to argue either for or against them. If the Dome of the Rock and the Golden Gateway were not built by Constantine, they were built by some one else, and if it can be shown who that person was, and at what age, it is no use going further ; no ingenuity, nor any special pleading, can get over that fact. It is a mere waste of time to attempt to carry the argument further. If, on the contrary, it is determined that Constantine did erect these two buildings, it is of the least possible consequence what Eusebius, or the Bordeaux Pilgrim, or any one, wrote or said about the matter. If anything in their works seems to contradict this ascertained fact, all that need be said is, that the author was ignorant, or the passage corrupt, or that he had been misunderstood or mistranslated. So confident did I feel that this was the case that, when I wrote my first work on the 4 Ancient Topography of Jerusalem,’ I was perhaps too careless in meeting objections by anticipation. I knew that, if I were correct in my architectural determinations, all difficulties in accepting Constantine as the builder of the Dome of the Rock must disappear as a matter of course when fairly grappled with. It was a mere question of time, and so it has turned out. Professor Willis’ fatal objection, so fiercely endorsed by Dr. Robinson, to the effect that it was impossible the Golden Gateway could be centred on a broad agora, has been proved by Captain Warren’s discoveries to be a delusion. Mr. Lewin’s fatal objection, that the Basilica was due east of the Sepulchre, turns out to be a mistranslation, and the Count de Yoglie’s famous inscription, which proved that the Dome of the Rock was erected by Abd-el-Malek, is now shown to be a forgery. As I expected, one by one, all these objections have disappeared ; and if there is any difficulty remaining unanswered, it must be very insignificant, for it has escaped my attention, and, when brought forward, will, I have no doubt, be as easily answered as the others. If the architectural determination is right, it cannot long survive.

Even without the architecture, I believe that, if any one would carefully go through the whole of the written evidence, he could almost settle the controversy from that alone ; I do not, however, know any man in this country who has attempted this, except Mr. Alexander M‘Grigor, of Glasgow. He has

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IX not only examined the whole, but has printed references to all the passages bearing on the subject in an alphabetical form, in a quarto volume of ninety closely printed pages, at present only for private circulation. If it were published together with the work for which it was intended, this compilation should serve as a substructure ; few, I believe, could resist arriving at the same conclusion as the author, who, I believe, without any special knowledge of the architecture, is quite convinced that the Dome of the Rock was erected by Constantine the Great.

Just before my attention was first turned to the topography of Jerusalem, the celebrated Dr. Robinson of New York had, in the second volume of his ‘ Biblical Researches,’ carefully summed up the evidence regarding the authenticity of the present Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and after a most exhaustive enquiry decided that it could not be on or near the spot where the scenes of the Passion were enacted. In stating this, he was only following up conclusions that Korte had arrived at in the early part of the last century, and what, in fact, all travellers who trust to reason, and reason only, must agree to, for it has been found impossible to reconcile the position in the middle of the town with the narratives of events as recorded by the Evangelists. Those who oppose this view rely on tradition, and on that only. They assume, in the first place, that Constantine must have known where the place of Crucifixion really was, which he probably did, and to that no one will object ; but their second assumption, that the church in the town must be the true one, because it is the one which he built, rests on a totally different basis ; they plead, however, that, at all events, it is a tradition with a respectable antiquity of fifteen centuries, and is, in consequence, worth more than the negative void left by the logic of the American doctor. Under these circumstances, I believed that he, at least, and all those who doubted the authenticity of the present church, must hail with enthusiasm the news that an alternative had been found, which, at all events, had the merit of reconciling the narratives of the Bible with the localities of Jerusalem in their minutest peculiarities. As in everything else connected with the reception of my publication, I found myself entirely mistaken. Dr. Robinson was the first to turn upon me, and so far was the Protestant feeling of my countrymen, especially north of the Tweed, from sympathising with my vindication of the Bible, that they remained silent in the midst of the clamour raised by the High Church party in defence of the traditions invalidated by these new discoveries.

Under these circumstances, I would willingly have waited till the completion of Captain Warren’s great discovery of the rock-cut foundations of the Basilica, or till some other tangible proof of the correctness or falsity of my views had been brought forward in a manner that admitted of no dispute. In what I am about to say in the following pages, I cannot but feel that I am appealing to those who fail to understand the language in which they are addressed ; and I

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have, therefore, very little hope of carrying conviction to their minds ; and if I were younger, and could afford to wait, I would do so, but at my time of life, if anything is to be said, it were well it were done quickly, or it may be that there may be no opportunity of saying it at all.

Feeling all this strongly, I have desired to put on record the fact that, so far as I am capable of judging, every difficulty that met the reception of my views when 1 first wrote on the subject has been cleared away by the new facts acquired by subsequent researches, in the manner explained in the following pages. The one point on which no new light has been thrown is that of the transference of the Sepulchre from the eastern to the western hill, though this, in fact, never was a difficulty that deserved a moment’s notice if the main facts of the argument were correct. It was, moreover, a point regarding which I scarcely expected any new discoveries to be made. It is hardly likely that any of those who were concerned in it would have left a record of a transaction which, according to the feelings of that age, was perfectly legitimate if successful, but which would have thrown doubt and dismay into the bosoms of all the faithful of Christendom if found out. It may be, however, that a more careful examination of the diplomatic correspondence between the East and West, from the time of Charlemagne to that of the Crusades, may reveal what is now mysterious ; but this can only be done by those who have access to documents not yet printed or in the hands of the public.

Be this as it may, for the present it must suffice to know that there is not a shadow of architectural evidence in favour of the Sepulchre in the city being built by Constantine, to set against the overwhelming mass of proofs that the Dome of the Rock and the Golden Gateway were built by that Emperor. At the same time, it may safely be asserted that there is not one word in any work that may not be applied to a Sepulchre on the eastern hill as correctly as to one on the western hill, and a great many, I believe, that can only apply to the former.

I myself have very little hope of any great success being attained in elucidating the history of this transaction ; but, at the same time, it appears of the least possible consequence whether it is obtained or not. If Constantine built the Dome of the Rock, the fact of the transference is certain, and the motive is only too clear. It was done because it had become absolutely necessary from the position of the Christians in Jerusalem in the eleventh century. They were forcibly dispossessed of their own church on the eastern hill, and they of necessity erected one on the only available site on the western hill, and there, in consequence, we now find it. It may be unfortunate that this should be so, but I can see no reason why the fact should not be acknowledged if it can be proved.

When, from the subjects bearing more or less directly on the authenticity of the Holy Sepulchre of the Christians, we turn to the Temple of the Jews, we find ourselves standing on safer and surer ground. No dogma or matters of faith are

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XI mixed lip with questions connected with the situation or dimensions of the Temple, and, however divergent opinions may be on the subject, all reasoning is based either on an examination of authorities or on local indications, viewed by the light of the ordinary and accepted principles generally employed in such investigations. Where this is the case, truth is sure to be arrived at when sufficient industry has been applied, to make it certain that all the circumstances bearing on the subject have been sufficiently examined.

When I wrote my ‘Ancient Topography of Jerusalem,’ I did not consider it necessary for the design of that work to examine the internal arrangements of the Temple with any great care. It was sufficient for all topographical purposes to know, first, that the Temple was, practically, a square measuring 600 feet on each side; secondly, that there was sufficient space for a building of these dimensions in the south-west angle of the Haram area ; and, thirdly, that there was ample room and to spare within the precincts of a Temple so circumscribed for all the buildings described by Josephus and by the Rabbis. Being satisfied on these three points, I plotted the Temple roughly on my plans to a very small scale, and there left it for future elaboration. When, however, the Ordnance Survey, made under the direction of Major Wilson, was published, I found myself in a position to carry the process a step further, and, after spoiling a good many copies of the sheets containing the plan of the Haram area, have at last satisfied myself that very little more remains to be done in so far as the plan is concerned. There are one or two minor details on which a little more study might be profitably employed, but they are comparatively of so little importance that they may very well be left for future consideration.

On turning, however, from the plan to the elevation, the case is somewhat different. The result is very unlike what I expected when I first took the investigation in hand, and, to others, will no doubt appear even more strange and improbable than it did to me when it gradually developed itself as I became more familiar with the subject. I am consequently quite prepared to hear it called “absurd,” “improbable,” “impossible,” and characterised by even stronger terms than these. Adjectives, however, are of little importance in a controversy of this sort. The only criticism I can accept will be when some one goes through the whole evidence as carefully as I have done, and produces an elevation more justified by the authorities, and more in accordance with the style of architecture prevalent in Syria at the time when it was erected. When this is done, I will most gladly withdraw my illustrations, and hail with delight a better solution of the problem than I have been able to afford.

When I first undertook this renewed study of the form of the Temple, I was anxious to obtain the assistance of some scholar who, by his knowledge of Hebrew, might enable me to understand the architectural terms employed in the Bible and the Talmud, and whose familiarity with Jewish literature might have

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added interest to my dry descriptions. In this I have not been successful, and, after all, it would have been hardly fair to have asked anyone to bestow the requisite time and labour on the work of another from which he could only at best get a dim reflection of credit. As the investigation proceeded, I found less and less cause to regret this disappointment. The points which my ignorance of Hebrew forced me to pass over were much fewer than I anticipated, and I felt it was much better I should put them aside than to attempt to explain at second hand what I could not master myself. The work, too, is quite extensive enough as it stands, and I now feel that it is far better that it should be considered only as an Architect’s contribution to the elucidation of the subject, and that it should be left to scholars at their leisure to rectify any errors my want of knowledge of the language may have led me into, and that they should clothe in any form of flesh they think best, the skeleton I have attempted to prepare for them. The points regarding which a competent knowledge of Hebrew would have enabled me to give a clearer or better definition are, I feel convinced, few and insignificant when compared with those which are discussed in this work, and decided on totally different grounds, and it is consequently with little regret that I leave them to those who may come after me in this investigation.