György Spiró - Captivity

Blinking, he searched for where the palace of the high priest, where he had been imprisoned, might be, but he could not see through the rooftops, and in any case he would not have recognized it. The Upper City was heavily built up; only the highest buildings stood out. Uri could not see a single straight road; the alleyways meandered capriciously, with huts standing next to huge houses. Here it was as if Far Side and true Rome had been jumbled up together. It was strange to see into gardens from the top of the wall; in some he saw glinting mirrors, water basins. The wealthy had their own mikvehs.

The top of the long, wide colonnade that rested on the high ramparts of the Upper City was likewise flat, with an exit from the first floor of Herod’s palace opening directly onto it. There seemed to be people strolling about on top of the colonnade right now, just like the evening before: yes, mercenaries, each with a spear in his right hand. No doubt the famous “right-handers.” Perhaps they were keeping an eye on the Upper City market square to intervene if they spotted any cheating at the stalls of the traders. Yet it was not here that his fellow prisoner had overturned tables but in the Temple Square, in the women’s court, to the left.

Uri stopped to look back. It was possible to walk on the top of the city wall from Herod’s palace to the top of the colonnades ringing the Temple Mount and the Antonia Fortress, which also had an exit opening onto it — the one that had spat them out. Several divisions of soldiers would fit onto the top of the colonnade, which spanned three sides of the Temple Mount, and that was not counting the broad roof of the royal stoa’s lower level. It was quite certain that one could also walk there along the wall; Herod the Great would not have been driven solely by a desire for extravagance when he had the colonnades put up.

“They’re watching us,” Uri heard from the row.

A few of the prisoners looked right, toward Herod’s palace. Uri could see figures moving around the small structures in front of the palace. Stalls? Was that the Upper City market? Yesterday evening he had seen nothing. Could it be that it was a movable market and everyone covered his handcart and stall for the night?

Uri’s fellow accused lowered their heads, some even screening their face with a hand or arm; they had spotted that some were peeking up from down below, about a stadion away, at the procession as it marched along the top of the wall. Sharp eyes they had.

They dropped back to the level of the colonnade’s top and walked toward the next entrance to Temple Mount, at the corner of its southern wall. Far below them was a long, broad flight of steps, broken at intervals by rest areas, with little dwellings in the valley glued to the right of its wall.

They now reached a flight of steps going down on the left of the colonnade to Temple Square. It was narrow and steep, but it had a stone handrail; only one person at a time could use it. Uri grasped the stone and clambered down, held between two guards, until he finally felt himself on the ground. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief. He could see opposite him, held up by high columns, the inner, western side of the monumental royal stoa, but he was given no time to gaze, because the guards pushed him toward the Temple.

They tramped across a large, empty, rectangular square, with the shadow thrown by the royal stoa reaching as far as the middle. Under their feet was rough paving, not marble like in front of Herod’s palace; they then went up fourteen steps and proceeded between low, chest-high stone balusters. Sunk into the middle of the square were two broad stairs that led downward, the way being decorated with stone tracery; obviously it was possible to get out from under the royal stoa by way of an underground passage into the open air to the south. That way lay the Acra, and past it the Lower City, where the poor people lived.

Another five steps took them to the inner wall surrounding the Temple. The entrance facing them seemed surprisingly narrow; two by two they were just able to pass.

They found themselves in another rectangular square, with colonnades built onto the wall on the right with moving figures. The structure, flanked on two sides, looked like a tiny fortification, with guards standing sentry before its closed bronze gate; the gate was low and single-leafed. What could that be?

People, some of them women, were standing, bowing their heads in prayer, kneeling, walking about. All were nicely dressed, their faces serious and uplifted. They looked sternly at the prisoners. There were some conspicuous raggedly dressed beggars rummaging around, some with both legs missing. One of the latter sped his mutilated trunk over toward them in a bounding sprint, his highly muscular arms supported on enormous palms, until one of the guards growled at him, whereupon he departed just as hastily. Here it was adults who did the begging, not children as in Rome. Vendors vegetated by their handcarts. In one, living turtledoves, tethered to a cord by the legs, cowered motionless, unable to control only the trembling of their heads.

“The women’s chamber,” Uri heard from the line.

In other words, women could only come in this far if they were Jewish — and they were not sick or menstruating.

The text of a description of the women’s chamber was summoned up before Uri’s mind’s eye. The treasury ought to be somewhere around here, but where? Surely it was not that tiny building with the narrow entrance. All that untold wealth of money, jewels, and golden and silver dishes about which legends had been told would not fit in there. Could this be where Simon the Magus had brought his money? Or was that structure just the entrance that led down to the treasure chamber, which was actually hidden in the depths of the Temple Mount? It was said that natural caves and man-made tunnels lay under the Temple Mount and led outside to beyond the city wall.

A few steps in a semicircular arc led to the next, hefty gate. The wall must have been some forty cubits high, with a steep, narrow staircase leading up from the left-hand side to the top, and there Uri saw several women lingering. What could they be looking at, he wondered. As he saw wisps of smoke rising over the other side of the wall, he knew at once that the altar was in the Chamber of the Israelites; women were not permitted to enter there at all, but it seemed they were not forbidden from watching the cremation of offerings from the top of the wall.

They went up the semicircle of steps, fifteen in all. Uri looked up. He was standing in front of a vastly high and wide, two-winged bronze gate, decorated with studs of solid silver and gold. Each of the bronze handles set into each wing of the gate, with the united efforts of four guards being needed to pull them open.

And the sound! This was the famous Temple gate whose creaking could be heard as far away as Jericho!

He saw the altar.

A rectangular structure fifteen to twenty cubits high, and at its base some fifty cubits high but narrowing higher up, with a ramp on the left leading to its top. That was made from gigantic ashlar blocks, with the angles of the gates being twisted into the shape of ram’s horns. At the top a man was continually bending over, incinerating the meat: the duty priest. People stood around, praying.

The other accused burst out in tears.

Uri shuddered.

He was able to see it after all. A Jew who was able to get to the inner space of the Temple was privileged; unhappy millions died without ever getting the chance to see it.

They were escorted off to the left, to the southern side of the altar, where they had to stand. There was a silence, then the slow creaking again: the bronze gate was being closed. Uri gazed at the altar, just ten steps away from him. It was made of gigantic, undressed slabs of rock. No other materials were used; they must have spent ages selecting and fitting the stones.