Jerusalem: The Biography

  * Darius raided Central Asia east of the Caspian, and probed India and Europe, attacking Ukraine and annexing Thrace. He built his sumptuous palace-capital of Persepolis (in southern Iran), promoted the religion of Zoroaster and Ahura Mazda, organized the first world currency (the Daric), raised a navy of Greeks, Egyptians and Phoenicians, and created the first real postal service, setting up inns every 15 miles along the 1,678 miles of the King’s Road from Susa to Sardis. The achievements of his thirty-year reign make him the Augustus of the Persian empire. But even Darius reached his limits. Shortly before his death in 490 BC, he tried to push into Greece, where he was defeated at the Battle of Marathon.

  * The Samaritans were already developing their separate semi-Jewish cult, based on a Judaism formed before the introduction of the new Babylonian rules. Under the Persians, Samaria was ruled by Sanballat’s dynasty of governors. Their exclusion from Jerusalem encouraged them to set up their own Temple at Mount Gerizim and they embarked on a feud with the Jews and Jerusalem. Like all family rivalries, it was based on the hatred of tiny differences. The Samaritans became second-class citizens, despised by the Jews as heathens, hence Jesus’ surprising revelation that there was such a thing as a ‘good Samaritan’. Around a thousand Samaritans still live in Israel: long after the destruction of the end of the Jewish cult of sacrifice, the Samaritans in the twenty-first century still annually sacrifice the Passover lamb on Mount Gerizim.

  * Tanakh was a Hebrew acronym for Law, Prophets and Writings, the books which the Christians later called The Old Testament.

  * Joseph’s family were Jews of mixed origin, perhaps descendants of a Tobiah the Ammonite who had opposed Nehemiah. His father Tobiah was a magnate close to Ptolemy II – the papyrus archive of a royal official named Zenon shows him trading with the king – and ruled huge estates in Amnon (today’s Jordan).

  * Antiochus was the heir of the other great dynasty descended from the generals who carved up Alexander the Great’s empire. When Ptolemy I secured his own kingdom in Egypt, he backed Antiochus’ ancestor Seleucos, one of Alexander’s officers, in his bid to seize Babylon. As gifted as Ptolemy, Seleucos reconquered most of Alexander’s Asian territories – hence the Seleucid title King of Asia. Seleucos ruled from Greece to the Indus – only to be assassinated at his apogee. The family had been promised Coele-Syria, but Ptolemy had refused to hand it over: the result was a century of Syrian wars.

  † This was the age of the war elephant. Ever since Alexander had returned from his Indian campaign with a corps of elephants, these armoured pachyderms had become the most prestigious (and expensive) weapons for any self-respecting Macedonian king – though they often trampled their own infantry instead of the enemy’s. Meanwhile in the west, the Carthaginians, descendants of Phoenicians from Tyre, and the Romans, were fighting for mastery of the Mediterranean. Hannibal, the brilliant Carthaginian general, invaded Italy, having marched his elephants over the Alps. Antiochus deployed Indian elephants, the Ptolemies had African elephants and Hannibal used the smaller, now extinct species from the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

  * Some historians believe Simon actually ruled under Ptolemy I. The sources are contradictory but he was, most likely, Antiochus the Great’s contemporary Simon II, who rebuilt the fortifications, repaired the Temple and added a giant cistern on the Temple Mount. His tomb stands north of the Old City in the Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. During the Ottoman centuries, a ‘Jewish picnic’ was held there annually which was celebrated by Muslims, Jews and Christians together, one of the festivals shared by all sects in the days before nationalism. Today, the tomb is a Jewish shrine at the centre of Israeli plans to build a nearby settlement. Yet the tomb, like so many sites in Jerusalem, is itself a myth: it is neither Jewish nor the resting-place of Simon the Just. Built 500 years later, it was the tomb of a Roman lady, Julia Sabina.

  * The chief Jewish festivals – Passover, Weeks and Tabernacles – were still developing. Passover was the spring festival that now combined the two old feasts of the Unleavened Bread and the story of the Exodus. Gradually Passover replaced Tabernacles as the main Jewish festival in Jerusalem. Tabernacles survives today as Sukkot, when Jewish children still build a harvest hut decorated with fruit. Temple duties were divided by rota between the Levites, descendants of the tribe of Levi, and the priests (descendants of Moses’ brother Aaron, themselves a sub-group of the Levites).

  * Jason fled again, taking refuge with his backer, Hyrcanus the Tobiad prince. Hyrcanus had ruled much of Jordan for forty years, remaining an ally of the Ptolemies even when they lost Jerusalem. He fought campaigns against the Arabians and built a luxurious fortress at Araq e-Emir with beautiful carvings and ornamental gardens. When Antiochus conquered Egypt and retook Jerusalem, Hyrcanus ran out of options: the last of the Tobiads committed suicide. The ruins of his palace are now a tourist site in Jordan.

  * The Book of Daniel is a collection of stories, some from the Babylonian Exile, others from the persecutions of Antiochus: the fiery furnace may describe his tortures. Daniel’s new vision of an enigmatic ‘Son of Man’ inspired Jesus. The cult of martyrdom would be replayed in the early centuries of Christianity.

  * His family is correctly known as the Hasmonean dynasty, but for simplicity they are identified in this book as the Maccabeans. The Maccabee became the medieval prototype for Christian chivalry alongside King Arthur and Charlemagne. Charles ‘Martel’ – the Hammer – who defeated the Arabs at the Battle of Tours in 732; Richard the Lionheart in the twelfth century and Edward I (1272–1303) promoted themselves as latterday Maccabees. Later, Rubens painted Judah the Maccabee; Handel wrote an oratorio dedicated to him. The Maccabees have especially inspired Israel, where many of the football teams are named after them. As the heroes of Hanukkah, Jews traditionally regard them as freedom-fighters against a genocidal tyrant, a precursor of Hitler. But some have suggested another view, inspired by today’s struggle between American democracy and jihadist terrorism, in which the Greeks are the civilized ones fighting Maccabee religious fanatics who resemble a Jewish Taleban.

  * This new high priest was not even a member of the Zadokite House of Onias. Its rightful heir was Onias IV, who now fled with his followers to Egypt where he was welcomed by King Ptolemy VI Philometer. Philometer allowed him to build a Jewish temple on the site of a disused Egyptian shrine at Leontopolis in the Nile Delta, and there he created his own Jerusalem, still known as Tell al-Jahudiya – Hill of the Jews. These Jewish princes became powerful military commanders in Egypt. Onias’ temple lasted until Titus ordered its destruction in AD 70.

  * Philometer’s successor was hostile to the Jews because Onias and the Alexandrian Jews had supported Philometer. Even by the family’s vicious standards, Ptolemy VIII Euergetes, nicknamed Fatso (Physkon) by the Alexandrian mob, was a monster. Fatso took revenge on the Jews in Egypt, massing his elephants to trample them, but, perhaps in a divine miracle, the elephants trampled the king’s entourage instead. The climax of his cruelties was the murder of his own fourteen-year-old son who totally trusted his father: Fatso had the boy’s head, legs and hands cut off and sent to his own mother, Cleopatra II. When another of the family, Cleopatra Thea who married the Syrian king Demetrius II, decided to murder her own son, she offered him a cup of poison. But the son forced the mother to drink it. Such was family life among the Ptolemies.

  † No trace has been found of the Acra. Some scholars believe it stood just south of Temple Mount. Herod the Great was to extend the Temple Mount, so probably the razed hill of the Acra is now beneath the Temple platform where al-Aqsa Mosque stands. For those who question why so little survives from the reign of, say, King David, this demonstrates that enormous constructions can leave no archaeological trace.

  * And with a new nickname, Hyrcanus, surely the result of his Parthian adventures, even though he never reached Hyrcania on the Caspian. He consolidated his power abroad with a new Roman alliance and in Jerusalem through the backing of the rich Temple elite, the Sadduc
ees, descendants of the house of Zadok – hence their name.

  * The city wall extended from the Temple Mount to the Siloam Pool and thence to the Citadel, where the foundations of his towers remain today, and where one can see little residential houses of Maccabean Jerusalem. Sections of his wall survive at various places: on the south slope of Mount Zion, just west of the Catholic Cemetery, there is a place where John’s wall still stands next to the bigger stones of Hezekiah’s and the much later ones of the Byzantine empress Eudocia. In 1985, Israeli archaeologists discovered a subterranean aqueduct and large pool built by John and the Maccabees. British, German and French archaeologists in the nineteenth century had uncovered this Struthion Pool underground in 1870 when the Sisters of Zion convent was built on the Via Dolorosa. The aqueduct reveals how the Struthion Pool was supplied and, beneath the Convent, close to the Via Dolorosa, visitors can walk along this aqueduct, now part of the Temple Tunnel. The Maccabees also built a bridge across the deepvalley between the Temple Mount and the Upper City. John himself resided in his Baris stronghold, north of the Temple, but he also probably started to build a palace in the expanding Upper City.

  * When he attacked the Greek city Ptolemais, Ptolemy IX Soter, then ruling in Cyprus, intervened and defeated Alexander. But he was rescued by Jewish connections: Soter was at war with his mother Cleopatra III, Queen of Egypt, who feared her son’s power in Judaea. Cleopatra’s commander was the Jewish Ananias, the son of the ex-high priest Onias, who rescued the Maccabean king. Cleopatra considered annexing Judaea, but her Jewish general advised against this, and she was in no position to take on her own army.

  * The Idumeans, the Biblical Edomites, tough pagan warriors based to the south of the Jerusalem, had been converted en masse to Judaism by John Hyrcanus. Antipater was the son of a convert to Judaism who had been appointed Governor of Edom by King Alexander, though the family originated from the Phoenician coastal cities.

  * Pacorus was the son and heir-apparent of the Arsacid King of Kings, Orad II, who had defeated Crassus. The Parthians had expanded from their homeland east of the Caspian, breaking away from the Seleucids around 250 BC, to create a new empire that challenged Roman power. Pacorus’ army was spearheaded by his Pahlavan knights, who wore heavy armour and loose trousers and wielded 12-foot lances, axes and maces. Charging at full tilt, these cataphracts had smashed the Roman legions at Carrhae. They were supported by mounted archers famous for the speed and accuracy of their over-the-shoulder marks-manship–the ‘Parthian shot’. But Parthia had a feudal flaw: its kings were often at the mercy of its overmighty, insubordinate nobles.

  † Antigonos, son of the late king Aristobulos II, used Greek and Hebrew names. His coins show the Temple menorah – the candelabra, his family’s symbol – with ‘King Antigonos’ in Greek; the reverse has the Temple shewbread table with ‘Mattathias the High Priest’ in Hebrew.

  * The murdered counsellors were probably buried in the ornate Sanhedrin tomb that still stands north of the Old City, decorated with pomegranates and acanthus leaves. As for his mountain strongholds, the most famous are: Masada, where the last Jewish fighters against Rome committed mass suicide in AD 73; Machaerus, where John the Baptist was beheaded by one of Herod’s sons; and the man-made mountain of Herodium, where Herod and his sons were buried.

  † These were some of the most valuable luxury brands of the ancient Mediterranean: Jericho palms produced date wine; the balsam groves produced Balsam of Gilead, prized for its cures for headaches and cataracts but also for its most expensive scent. Cleopatra also annexed most of the coast including Joppa (Jaffa), leaving Herod with Gaza as his only port.

  * This Syrian Greek scholar became Herod’s confidant as well as Augustus’ personal friend. He must have been a supple courtier indeed to survive the murderous courts of both Cleopatra and Herod. He later wrote biographies of both Augustus and Herod, for which his chief source was Herod himself. Nikolaus’ Herodian biography has vanished but it provided Josephus’ main source and it is hard to imagine a better one. As for Nikolaus’ former royal pupils, Augustus had Caesarion, the son of Caesar and Cleopatra, murdered. But the other three children were brought upin Rome by the emperor’s sister, Antony’s ex-wife Octavia. The eventual fate of the boys is unknown but the girl, Cleopatra Selene, married Juba II, King of Mauretania. Her son King Ptolemy of Mauretania was executed by Caligula. There ended the Ptolemaic dynasty 363 years after Alexander the Great.

  * This might have been named after a later wife, also called Mariamme. But it must have reminded him and everyone else of the Maccabean princess. Today’s Tower of David, which has nothing to do with David, is based on Herod’s Hippicus Tower. After Titus’ destruction of the city, it remained until Ottoman times the chief stronghold of Jerusalem. No other building in Jerusalem so reveals the embroidered nature of the city’s development as the Citadel, where archaeologists have uncovered Judaean, Maccabean, Herodian, Roman, Arab, Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman ruins.

  † Herod’s wealth came from his landholdings all over the Middle East. These produced sheep, cattle (raised in Jordan and Judaea), wheat and barley from Galilee and Judaea, fish, olive oil, wine and fruit, lilies and onions from Ashkelon (hence shallots are Ashkelon onions), pomegranates from Geba, north of Jerusalem, figs from Joppa, date palms and balsam from Jericho. Herod owned a half to two-thirds of his kingdom; he taxed and exported Nabataean spices; and he was also a mining magnate, paying Augustus 300 talents for rights to half the copper mines of Cyprus. While he exported his local wines, he himself drank the Italian vintages. Even on his death, after a lifetime of building and giving Rome huge sums, he still left over 1,000 talents or a million drachmas to Augustus, and there was much more than that for his family.

  * Herod would have used the latest technology. The Egyptians had known how to move vast stones to build the pyramids as early as 4000 BC. The Roman engineer Vitruvius had created enormous devices – wheels, sledges and cranes – to transport such stones. Large wheels over 13 feet in diameter served as axles pulled by teams of oxen. Then there were winches – horizontal rotating beams with attached poles and cranks which enabled teams of ten men or fewer to use them. This way, eight men could lift 1½ tons.

  * ‘Speak unto the children of Israel,’ said God to Moses and Aaron in Numbers 19, ‘that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish.’ The heifer would be sacrificed on a pyre of cedar and hyssop overlaid with a strand of scarlet thread and its ashes mixed with holy water. According to the Mishnah, this had only happened nine times, and on the tenth, the Messiah would come. Since the millennial excitement of the Israeli conquest of Jerusalem in 1967, fundamentalist Christian evangelists and Jewish redemptionists believe that two of the three essential preconditions for the Apocalypse and coming of the Messiah (or the Second Coming for the Christians) have been met: Israel has been restored and Jerusalem is Jewish. The third precondition is the restoration of the Temple. Some Christian fundamentalists and the tiny factions of redemptionist Orthodox Jews, such as those of the Temple Institute, believe that this is possible only when the Temple Mount is purified with the sacrifice of the red heifer. Therefore even today a Pentecostal preacher from Mississippi named Clyde Lott is, in alliance with Rabbi Richman of the Temple Institute, trying to breed the red heifer from a herd of 500 Red Angus imported from Nebraska to a farm in the Jordan Valley. They believe they will breed the ‘heifer that will change the world’.

  * Herod’s family tree is complicated because the family were so endogamous, repeatedly intermarrying and remarrying within the Herodian and Maccabee clans trying to reconcile them: he married his brother Pheroras to Mariamme’s sister and his eldest son Antipater to the daughter of the last King Antigonos (beheaded at his request by Antony). But the marriages were interspersed with executions: Salome’s first two husbands were killed by Herod. Herodians also married into the royal families of Cappadocia, Emesa, Pontus, Nabataea and Cilicia, all Roman allies. At least two marriages were cancelled beca
use the husband would not convert to Judaism and be circumcised.

  * Doctors have debated his symptoms ever since. The most likely diagnosis is that Herod suffered hypertension and arteriosclerosis complicated by progressive dementia and by congestive heart and kidney failure. The arteriosclerosis led to venous congestion, aggravated by gravity, so that fluid collected in his feet and genitals, becoming so severe that the fluid bubbled through the skin; the blood flow became so poor that necrosis of the flesh – gangrene – developed. The bad breath and itching were caused by kidney failure. The penile/scrotal gangrene provided ideal material for the laying of eggs by flies that hatched as maggots. It is possible that the genital worms were hostile propaganda, symbolizing divine vengeance on an evil king: Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Herod’s grandson, Agrippa I, and many other sinners including Judas Iscariot, were assigned similar worm-infested, bowel- and scrotum-exploding exits.