The Temple
Mount in Jerusalem is
a site with a long history of ritual importance,
commencing with the Iron Age (10th cent. BCE)
when King
Solomon built a temple on this site.
Throughout the following periods, the mount
was used, almost continually, as the site
of three Jewish temples (Solomon,
Neherm'ah, Herod),
a pagan temple (Roman
Period), as the site of Islamic mosques
and holy place (from 8th cent. CE onwards),
and for a short period as a Christian site
(during the Crusader
period). For centuries, the site has
been of utmost religious importance, in
particular to the Jews and Moslems, and
to a lesser extent to the Christians. Both
the Temple Mount itself and its immediate
surroundings contain numerous finds of
great archaeological and historical importance.
Since the Roman period
(2nd CE), Jews did not have access to the
Temple Mount. In light of this, the Western
Wall, the closest spot to which they
could approach the original position of the
destroyed Jewish temples, became one of the
most important places of worship for the
Jews. The Western Wall is but one of the
four monumental enclosure walls surrounding
the Temple Mount, which were originally built
in the 1st BCE - 1st CE by Herod the Great,
King of Judea. At that time, Herod extensively
expanded the Temple Mount, turning it into
one of the most majestic religious sites
in the Roman East. Though the Temple Mount
underwent numerous destructions and rebuildings
since the Herodian period, the course of
the four enclosure walls (including the Western-Wall)
has basically gone unchanged.
The Western Wall Tunnels
project commenced following the Six-Day
War, as an effort to expose additional
portions of this wall, in order to learn
more about both the wall itself and the various
structures in its vicinity of various periods.
Till then, only a small portion of the wall
had been exposed.
Since most of the wall
was blocked by buildings which were in contemporary
use, the wall in its entirety could not be
exposed. Instead, a man-made tunnel was excavated
along the entire length of the west wall,
underneath these buildings. Care was taken
to insure structural support of the buildings
above. It should be stressed that throughout
all the work in this project, the tunnel
was excavated outside of the Temple Mount
itself. Needless to say, the tunnel was never
in the vicinity of the mosques on the Temple
Mount.
The tunnel enabled exposure
of a small, though continuous section of
the wall (a total length of ca. 500 m.),
revealing important facts regarding methods
of construction, the dating of various activities
in the vicinity of the Temple Mount, not
to mention various archaeological finds along
the way. In effect, this project offered
a manner to procure archaeological information
which would have been impossible to attain
through other methods. Noteworthy were finds
from the Herodian period (streets, monumental
masonry), sections of reconstruction of the
Western Wall dated most probably to the Umayyad
period and various structures dating to the
Ayyubid and Mamluke periods constructed to
support buildings in the vicinity of the
Temple Mount. Though in fact various explorers
had reached some of the remains that had
been exposed in the tunnel, none had achieved
quite such a comprehensive and robust picture
as attained in the present project.
At the very northern portion
of the Western Wall, an additional find was
uncovered. This was the remains of a water
channel which originally supplied water to
the Temple Mount, though it was canceled
out by the Herodian building. The exact source
of the channel is unknown, though it passes
through an underground pool known as the "Stroutioun
Pool". The water channel was tentatively
dated to the Hasmonean period
(2nd-1st cent. BCE), and was dubbed the "Hasmonean
Channel". The channel had already been
reported in the 19th cent. CE by the British
explorer Warren.
The current northern exit
was made by tunneling in the bedrock next
to the Stroutioun Pool, exiting on the Via
Dolorosa, a public street. Needless to say,
this tunneling as well was not conducted
under or on the Temple Mount itself, and
it is situated some 200-300 meters away from
the Mosques on the Temple Mount. In other
words, there was and is no archaeological
or structural damage to the various historic
Islamic edifices on or around the Temple
Mount.
In summary, the Western
Wall tunnels project has been an important
avenue for exposing information relating
to numerous periods in the history of the
city of Jerusalem, information which otherwise
would be near-impossible to attain. Close
attention was paid throughout the entire
project (in conjunction with a team of engineers,
architects and conservators) that these activities
would not damage buildings above and in the
immediate vicinity of the tunnels. It should
be stressed that none of these activities
were under the Temple Mount itself and they
did not in any manner endanger the various
religious, historical and archaeological
edifices on the Temple Mount.