During the Second Temple period, the main settlement in Jerusalem was in the western hill, which is located west of the Temple Mount, and in the City of David located south of the Temple Mount. Very few entered the city from the east, from Mount of Olives and its surroundings.
The Mishnah which is a written collection of the Jewish oral traditions, describes the five gates of the Temple Mount as follows: “The two Huldah gates are at the south, used for entry and exit. Kyponus in the west, used for entry and exit. Taddi at the north, not used. The eastern gate, on it Shushan capital shape through which the high priest takes the cow and all required to burn it on Mount of Olives.”
The eastern gate of the Temple Mount, located in the eastern wall, is called Shushan Gate or the Eastern Gate. There are several explanations for the name Shushan: The first is following the shape of the city of Shushan, which was the capital city of the Persian kingdom, that is, either its shape or engraved style decorations on the city gate, whether it was on the walls of the gate, its ceiling, or its pillars. Another option is that the gate was named so by order of the Persian empire, as a gratitude to king Cyrus on his declaration in 538 BC. This declaration made it possible for the Jews to return to their land, to the land of Israel, a process known as the return to Zion, and to build the Second Temple in their capital – Jerusalem.
Last option I will mention, is that the decorations of the city of Shushan on the gate are an expression of gratitude to the community of Shushan who contributed their money to its construction. There are examples as early as the Second Temple period of naming a gate in the donor’s name.
The Shushan Gate had two main roles: The 1st: the gate was used to take the red heiferalso known as the red cow, to the Mount of Olives, and to burn the cow so to collect its ashes.
A red cow is a cow whose hair is reddish-brown in color, and according to the Halacha (ancient Jewish laws), its ashes can be used to purify the impurity of a dead person. Without those ashes, there is actually no possibility for the people of Israel to cleanse themselves from the impurity of the dead, and without using a little of the previous ashes, there is no possibility of making new ashes of a red cow.
In the Torah, in the book of Numbers chapter 19, the process is described in detail, and it includes among other things, scattering its ashes on spring water, then the water is sprinkled in a certain manner on the impure person who needs to dip in the spring and wait to be purified.
Second role: taking out through the gate the scapegoat, which is a goat that was sent into the desert during the Yom Kippur service in the Temple. A scapegoat is actually one of a pair of kid goats, where one is sent to the desert taking with it all sins and impurities, while the other is sacrificed in the temple. Who is sent to the desert and who is sacrificed is determined by the high priest.
Last point on the red heifer – the Mishnah specified only seven cows from the days of Moses onwards. This means that most of the time the Shushan Gate was closed.
Regarding the location of the gate there are some question marks on its location. The reason for the importance of identifying the location of Shushan Gate in the Eastern Wall, stems from the fact that it is parallel on an east-west axis, to the Holy of Holies which is a term in the Bible that refers to the inner temple, where God’s presence appeared. So that a correct identification of the gate leads to the identification of the location of the Foundation Stone in the Holy of Holies on a north-south axis. This is crucial in identifying the location of the forbidden area for those need to cleanse themselves from the impurity of the dead. In today’s situation, we are a dead impure due to the impossibility of being cleansed of this impurity without the ashes of a red cow.
Today, only the Gate of Mercy also called the Golden Gate is visible, yet the visible part is from a later period.
In the maps depicting Jerusalem during the Second Temple period, it appears that the eastern wall of the city is the same in its northern part as the eastern wall of the Temple Mount. I am walking along the eastern wall towards the south. The cemetery along the wall is one of three Muslim cemeteries that already existed in the Mamluk period, more than 2,000 years after King David’s period.
We are on our way to the southeast corner. Originally, the wall extended south on the slopes of the Kidron valley as described by Yosef ben Matthew, who noted that the city wall in the east damaged the appearance of the southern part on the Temple Mount. It seems puzzling since the front of the Temple Mount is the southern wall, and it was precisely this wall that was hidden by a wall that covered it and damaged its appearance.
We are tens of meters from the southeast corner of the Temple Mount and there are two important things to see here. The first – see the difference of the wall stones on both sides of the line separating the two areas, named the “seam”. From the “seam” to the north, the stone carvings are simple and coarse compared to the carvings in the other walls. From the “seam” to the south, the stones are similar to the other stones of the other walls, both in the carvings and by their edges.
The length of the section from the “seam” to the southern corner is 32 meters out of 460 meters – the total length of the Eastern Wall. Before Herod’s time, the “Seam” was the end of the Eastern Wall, here the Southern Wall began. Apparently, Herod found that the eastern wall of the Temple Mount, built during the Hasmonean days or their predecessors, was built in a high-quality and was stable enough such that it was good enough to be integrated into the structure he planned. The strength of this part of the Eastern Wall compared to the other walls from the Hasmonean era, was a very important element in Herod’s decision to expand the Temple Mount into the city, that is to the west and south, and not towards the east, not towards the areas that were outside the city, even though if he would have carried out the expansion to the east, he would have made the construction process easier because then there was no need to evacuate residents and purchase land as was eventually done. The Hasmoneans, whose resources were limited compared to Herod, invested in the quality and strength of the Eastern Wall, because in their time the Eastern Wall served both as a supporting wall of the Temple Mount and as a wall of the city itself.
Near the “seam”, there are remains of an arch similar to that of Robinson’s arch. These remains show that there was an interchange here that included an upper bridge, which allowed for movement in the street at the same time enabling the public the ascent over it. That is, under the arch was a paved street, and if that is the case, then our location was then inside the city, and the wall is east of here. The archaeologist Meir Ben-Dov refers to this street as the “Eastern Street”. He also claims that the interchange did not reach the level of the Temple Mount and the public buildings, but the level of the vaults below the Temple Mount Plaza. These vaults were used as warehouses and storage rooms that mainly contained the donations and tithes brought by the pilgrims to the Temple, especially during the three pilgrimages. This included sheep, grain, fruit, and many other types of donations.
And to conclude, as usual I have a question for you. In which book in the Hebrew Bible, the term “Return to Zion” is mentioned. The answer will appear at the end of the video.
