The Broad Wall
Israel, Jerusalem, 3 March 2009

Overview

On 3 March 2009, Carol and John visited Jerusalem. We were part of a Grand Circle Tours group that visited, Israel, Egypt and Jordan.

The following photos were taken during that visit with a Canon G.10 “PowerShot” 14.7 megapixel camera. Behind the majority of the thumbnail photos shown below is a full-size (4,416 × 2,480 pixel) 16:9 HD formatted photo. A few of the photos had been straightened and cropped. Although copyrighted © by Skytamer Images, none of the photos contain messy copyright notices. They all look like they came straight out of your camera … Enjoy! These photos are for your personal use only, and are not to be used for commercial purposes without written permission from Skytamer Images.

Discovery

The Broad Wall is an ancient defensive city wall in Jerusalem dating from the reign of King Hezekiah (late eighth century BCE.) The wall was discovered by archaeologist Nahman Avigad in the 1970s. This is a massive defensive structure, seven meters thick. The unbroken length of wall uncovered by Avigad's dig runs 65 meters (71.1 yd) long and is preserved in places to a height of 3.3 meters (3.6 yd).

History

The wall and its discovery were part of a revision of the history of the city. It had long been believed that the city in this period was confined to the fortified, narrow hill running to the south of the Temple Mount known as the City of David. Avigad's dig demonstrated that by the late eighth century the city had expanded to include the hill to the west of the Temple Mount, the site of the modern "Old City" of Jerusalem inside the walls built by Suleiman the Magnificent. The motivation for building the walls was the expected invasion of Judea by Sennacherib. The wall is referred to in Nehemiah 3:8 and Isaiah 22:9-10.

Reconstruction work following the 1967 war allowed archaeologists to excavate various areas in the Jewish Quarter. One of the most significant finds from the OT period was the Broad Wall. Built by Hezekiah in the days before the 701 B.C. invasion by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, the Broad Wall enclosed the Western Hill and increased the walled area of Jerusalem five-fold.

As we continued on past the Broad Wall, we entered a “High-End” condo complex in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter. The playground was directly adjacent to the old Broad Wall.

This concludes our visit to The Broad Wall located in Jerusalem, Israel, we hope you enjoyed it. To learn more about “The Broad Wall ”, visit the Wikipedia site referenced below. Please remember that the photos used on this webpage are copyrighted © by Skytamer Images, and are for your personal use only. Commercial use of these images requires written permission from Skytamer Images.

References

1. Shupek, John, “Skytamer Images Photo Archive”
2. Google Earth, “Satellite Image”
3. Wikipedia, The Broad Wall, Jerusalem