Temple Mount Platform (Herodian enclosure)

Overview

The Temple Mount platform is the huge artificial esplanade Herod the Great built around the Jerusalem temple. His builders ran retaining walls down the slopes of the eastern ridge, filled and vaulted the space behind them, and levelled the top. The modern Haram al-Sharif keeps this outline on the west, south and east.

The Survey of Western Palestine's Jerusalem volume (1884, p. 119) measured the enclosure: south wall 922 ft, west wall 1,601 ft, east wall 1,530 ft, north wall 1,042 ft, about 35 acres. It is an irregular four-sided figure, not a square. Warren's shaft 90 ft east of the south-west angle exposed 24 courses, 87 ft 6 in of masonry, with the foundation course bedded on rock (SWP Jerusalem, p. 169–170).

Josephus describes the project (Whiston's translation, Ant. 15.11.3). Herod 'built a wall below, beginning at the bottom… and at the south side he laid rocks together, and bound them one to another with lead… and made it a level on the external upper surface'. He gives the circuit as four furlongs, 'each angle containing in length a furlong'. The excavated walls are longer than a furlong on the west and east. That is the difference between his figure and the measured outline. (Josephus quotations: W. Whiston, 1737, public domain.)

What the evidence shows

• Irregular quadrilateral: W 1,601 ft, E 1,530 ft, S 922 ft, N 1,042 ft; about 35 acres (SWP Jerusalem 1884, p. 119 and in the section on Arab measurements).
• At the south wall, 24 courses of 3 ft 6 in to 3 ft 9 in masonry, 87 ft 6 in in all, run down to bedrock 90 ft east of the south-west corner (SWP Jerusalem, pp. 169–170).
• Buried courses have drafted margins with rough, unfinished bosses that were never exposed to weather. The joints are so tight a knife blade can scarcely go in (SWP Jerusalem, p. 170).
• A pavement and drainage channel of the 1st century CE were found west of Warren's Gate, probably linked to a north-western Herodian gate (Onn & Weksler-Bdolah, 'Atiqot 106, 2025).
• Plastered channels cut only in the Herodian courses of the western and southern walls are dated before 70 CE and read as runoff collectors feeding water installations (Szanton & Weksler-Bdolah, 'Atiqot 119, 2025).
• In the Western Wall Tunnels, a Herodian dam wall (latter half of the 1st century BCE) was later topped by a paved triclinium building. A coin of Tiberius (17–25 CE) sealed under its fountain floor gives a terminus post quem of 17 CE for it ('Atiqot 119, 2025).

Open questions

• When was the enclosure finished? Josephus dates the start to Herod's 18th year (Ant. 15.380) and says the work was 'finished' only under Albinus, with 18,000 workmen then laid off (Ant. 20.219). Regev, Uziel et al. (PLOS ONE 2020) date Wilson's Arch as begun under Herod and enlarged under the Roman procurators, including Pilate, within about 70 years. Levy ('Atiqot 119, 2025) moves the triclinium building beside the wall from Herod's reign to after 17 CE. Together these show construction going on around the platform through the first half of the 1st century CE.
• The north edge: the SWP (1884, p. 119) records a 30 ft rock scarp forming 350 ft of the north boundary at the north-west. How far north the Herodian platform ran, and how it met the Antonia fortress, is not settled by the sources cited here. Patrich (The Jerusalem Temple and the Temple Mount, Mohr Siebeck 2024) re-evaluates the literary and archaeological evidence for the enclosure's development. Only the publisher's abstract is cited here, so his conclusions are not stated.

Since 2024

• 2025-01Onn & Weksler-Bdolah publish a 1st-century CE pavement and drain at Warren's Gate, probably the approach to a north-western Herodian gate. [6]
• 2025-12'Atiqot 119 publishes the 2018–2020 Western Wall Tunnels excavation (a Herodian dam wall and a triclinium building after 17 CE), its coins, and a new pre-70 CE date for the gutter-like channels on the Herodian walls. [3]
• 2024Patrich's collected study of the Temple and Temple Mount appears (Mohr Siebeck). [8]

Sources

1. C. Warren and C. R. Conder, The Survey of Western Palestine: Jerusalem (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1884), pp. 119, 169–170 link excavation report
2. Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 15.11.1–3 and 20.9.7, trans. W. Whiston (1737), Project Gutenberg eBook #2848 link translation
3. S. Weksler-Bdolah, 'Monumental Construction and Water Management at the Foot of the Temple Mount, Western Wall Tunnels Excavations, Jerusalem', 'Atiqot 119 (2025) link excavation report
4. Y. D. Levy, 'Coins from the Western Wall Tunnels, Jerusalem', 'Atiqot 119 (2025) link excavation report
5. N. Szanton and S. Weksler-Bdolah, 'The Date and Function of the Horizontal Gutter-Like Water Channels along the Walls of the Herodian Temple Mount', 'Atiqot 119 (2025) link study
6. A. Onn and S. Weksler-Bdolah, 'Herodian Pavement (Esplanade?) and Later Remains near Warren's Gate, West of the Temple Mount, Jerusalem', 'Atiqot 106, pp. 195–210 (posted 2025) link excavation report
7. E. Regev, J. Uziel, T. Lieberman, A. Solomon, Y. Gadot, D. Ben-Ami et al., 'Radiocarbon dating and microarchaeology untangle the history of Jerusalem's Temple Mount: A view from Wilson's Arch', PLOS ONE (3 June 2020), e0233307 link study
8. J. Patrich, The Jerusalem Temple and the Temple Mount (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2024) link study

Checked against new publications through 2026-09.