Ophel

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The Ophel, העופל, perhaps meaning "fortified hill," (City of David) is the name of the narrow promontory beyond the southern edge of Jerusalem's Temple Mount and Old City, with the Tyropoeon Valley (valley of the cheesemakers) on its west, the Hinnom valley to the south, and the Kidron Valley on the east. The previously deep valley (the Tyropoeon) separating the Ophel from what is now referred to as the Old City of Jerusalem currently lies hidden beneath the debris of centuries. Despite the name, the Old City of Jerusalem dates from a much later time than the settlement in the Ophel, which is generally considered to have been the original Jerusalem.

The Ophel lies outside the current Old City walls, but it was once surrounded by a city wall. This wall was discovered by the engineers of the Palestine Exploration Fund at the south-eastern angle of the temple area, 4 feet below the present surface level. Since the Books of Samuel credit David as the first Israelite ruler of the city on Ophel, the archaeological remains of the city are usually referred to as the City of David.

The Ophel was considered part of Jerusalem until the 12th century CE, but after that point became regarded as a separate village (and was mentioned as such by al-Muqaddasi). In 1882, a Yemenite Jewish community settled on a vacant stretch of land there. They were attacked in the 1929 Palestine riots, and forced to flee during 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. In 1961 the village was absorbed into the Jordanian municipality of Jerusalem.

The modern settlement in the Ophel is known as Silwan, an Arab corruption of the word Siloam, which is itself a Greek corruption of the Hebrew Shiloah.

The area includes several sites of archaeological interest, notably Hezekiah's tunnel (a water supply system, where the Siloam inscription was found), Warren's shaft (an earlier water supply system), and the Pools of Siloam (the presently extant Byzantine-era pool, and the recently discovered Second Temple-period pool). All these water supply systems drew their water from the Gihon Spring which lies on the Ophel's eastern slope, and is generally considered the original reason that the City was built at this location. In the 1999 book The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot Dr. Ernest L. Martin claims that the Ophel was the location of the original Jewish temple, though this opinion is disputed by most archaeologists and conflicts with the long-standing tradition that the Temple was located on the site of the Dome of the Rock, which symbolically loomed over the ancient city on the Ophel.

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Last updated on Wednesday March 12, 2008 at 10:03:30 PDT (GMT -0700)
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