Zangwill, Israel, 332n, 382
Zealots, 123, 125
Zedekiah, King, 42–3
Zeinab, Madame, 457
Zenobia, 140
Zenon, 56n
Zerubbabel, Prince, 49–50, 85
Zikhron Zion, 444
Ziklag, 20
zinnor, 22
Zion Gate, 207, 307, 417, 479–80, 497
Zionism, xx, 191n, 279, 373–82, 394, 409–15, 421–5, 430–1, 433, 435–7, 445–6, 478, 513
America and, 412–14, 428, 460–1
Britain and, xxv, 380–1, 409–15, 423–4, 431, 443, 467
Christian, 301, 374
Churchill and, 410–14, 432, 459
Germany and, 413–14
Herzland, 373–82
military, 458, 501
Zionist Commission, 421
Zionist Congresses, 375, 380n, 382, 438
Zoroaster, 48n, 50n
The Temple Mount – Har haBayit in Hebrew, Haram al-Sharif in Arabic, known in the Bible as Mount Moriah – is the centrepiece of Jerusalem. The Western Wall, the holiest shrine of Judaism, is part of Herod’s western supporting wall of the esplanade, the setting for the Islamic shrines, the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque. To many, these 35 acres remain the centre of the world.
In 1994, archaeologists found this stele at Tel Dan on which Hazael, King of Aram-Syria, boasts of his victory over Judaea, the ‘house of David’, thereby confirming David’s existence.
The site of Solomon’s temple has been ravaged and rebuilt so often that little remains, except this ivory pomegranate inscribed ‘to the House of Holiness’. It was probably used as the head of a staff during religious processions in the First Temple.
In 701 BC, King Hezekiah fortified the city against the approaching Assyrian army. His so-called broad wall can be seen in today’s Jewish Quarter.
Meanwhile two teams of his engineers started digging the 533-metre-long Siloam Tunnel to provide water for the city: when they met in the middle, they celebrated with this inscription, which was discovered by a schoolboy in 1891.
Before he turned to Jerusalem, Sennacherib, master of the mighty, rapacious Assyrian empire, stormed Hezekiah’s second city Lachish. The bas-reliefs in his Nineveh palace depict the bloody siege and the punishments suffered by its citizens. Here Judaean families are led away by an Assyrian.
King Darius, seen here in a relief from his Persepolis palace, was the real creator of the Persian Empire that ruled Jerusalem for over two centuries. He allowed the Jewish priests to govern themselves, even issuing this Yehud (Judaea) coin.
After Alexander the Great’s early death, two Greek families vied to control his empire. Ptolemy I Soter hijacked Alexander’s corpse, founded a kingdom in Egypt and stormed Jerusalem. After a century under the Ptolemies, their Seleucid rivals grabbed Jerusalem. The effete, flamboyant King Antiochus IV polluted the Temple and tried to annihilate Judaism, provoking a revolt by Judah the Maccabee , whose family created the new Jewish kingdom that lasted until the arrival of the Romans.
The Roman strongman of the east, Mark Antony, backed a new ruler, Herod, but his mistress Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic queen, wanted Jerusalem for herself.
Ruthless, murderous and brilliant, Herod the Great, half-Jewish and half-Arab, conquered Jerusalem, rebuilt the Temple (shown here in a model reconstruction) and created the city at its most splendid.
This ossuary, marked ‘Simon the builder of the Sanctuary’, probably contained the bones of his architect. The inscription in Greek from the Temple warning gentiles not to enter the inner courts on pain of death.
Most of the southern and western walls of the Temple Mount, including the shrine, the Wall, are Herodian. The impregnable south-eastern corner was the Pinnacle where Jesus was tempted by Satan. A seam in the wall (just visible on the far right of this picture) seems to show Herod’s giant ashlars to the left and the older, smaller Maccabean stones to the right.
Jesus’ Crucifixion, depicted by van Eyck in this painting, was almost certainly a Roman measure, backed by the Temple elite, to destroy any messianic threat to the status quo.
Herod the Great’s son Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee, mocked Jesus but refused to judge him.
King Herod Agrippa was an urbane, happy-go-lucky adventurer and the most powerful Jew in Roman history. His friendship with the psychotic Emperor Caligula saved Jerusalem, and he later helped raise Claudius to the throne.
After four years of independence, Titus, the son of the new Roman Emperor Vespasian, arrived to besiege Jerusalem. The city and its Temple were destroyed in the savage fighting: archaeologists have discovered the skeletal arm of young girl trapped in a burned house and the heap of Herodian stones pushed off the Temple Mount by the Roman soldiers as they smashed Herod’s Royal Portico. The Arch of Titus in Rome celebrates his Triumph in which the candelbra, or menorah, symbol of the Maccabees, was displayed, and this coin, inscribed ‘Judaea Capta’, commemorates the victory.
Restless, petulant and talented, Emperor Hadrian banned Judaism and refounded Jerusalem as a Roman town, Aelia Capitolina, which provoked a Jewish rebellion led by Simon Bar Kochba (who issued this coin depicting the restored Temple.
This graffiti (Domine Ivimus ‘We go to the Lord’) was discovered by the Armenians beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1978. Possibly dating from around ad 300, does it show that Christian pilgrims prayed beneath Hadrian’s pagan temple?
Constantine the Great was no saint – he murdered his wife and son – but he embraced Christianity and transformed Jerusalem, ordering the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which he sent his mother Helena to supervise.
Emperor and philosopher Julian overturned Christianity, restored paganism and gave the Temple Mount back to the Jews, before he was killed fighting the Persians.
The Byzantine emperor Justinian I and his wife Theodora, once a promiscuous showgirl, promoted themselves as universal Christian monarchs and built the colossal Nea Church in Jerusalem.
The Madaba Map shows the magnificence of Byzantine Jerusalem and ignores the Temple Mount which was kept as the symbolic rubbish-heap of Judaism. After the East fell to the Persians, Emperor Heraclius entered the city in 630 through the Golden Gate, which Jews, Muslims and Christians believe to be the setting for the Apocalypse.
Arab conquest: This illustration from Nizami’s poem Khamza shows Muhammad’s Night Flight (Isra) to Jerusalem, riding Buraq, his steed with the human face, followed by his Ascension (Miraj) to converse with Jesus, Moses and Abraham.