THE
WATER GATE AND THE HORSE GATE

The Water Gate 
     It’s funny how things in the archaeology world get turned upside down so often. Eilat
Mazar and her grandfather, Benjamin, discovered the Horse Gate, but she calls it
the Water Gate. Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron have discovered the eastern end of
the real Water Gate but they don’t realize it yet. 
The names of the ancient gates are not difficult to know. They
are given twice in consecutive order in of the book Nehemiah. If we start in chapter 3, verse
13, we find the Valley Gate in the south end of the city. We then find the Dung
Gate at the southeast corner. As you head northeast you come to the Fountain
Gate at the Siloam Pool. The Water Gate comes next in the mid-slope wall just
above the Gihon Spring and Spring Tower (“the
tower that lieth out” of verse 26). The Horse Gate comes next where the
Mazars discovered the four chambered gate and the Solomonic stones. We then come
to the East Gate at the Temple Mount.
 This same order of the gates is given in chapter 12 of Nehemiah
where he describes the route (Valley Gate, Dung Gate, Fountain Gate, Water Gate)
taken by the celebrants on top of the wall at the completion of the project. It
was at this very Water Gate (chapter 8:1,3) where the people of Jerusalem
experienced a great revival. After Ezra read the Law to the people it says: “And all the people went their way to eat,
and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had
understood the words that were declared unto
them.”  
Even though Eilat Mazar calls the Horse Gate the Water Gate, her
grandfather, Benjamin, never did. He identified the gate above the Gihon Spring
as the Water Gate:
 “In any case, there are traces in the Gihon spring area of the
line of wall belonging to various periods in the second millennium and the first
half of the first millennium B.C. It is in this area, too, that we should
locate the Water Gate, an important gate in the eastern wall since
earliest times. The name shows that it must have led to the Gihon
spring in the Kidron valley." There are other important references to the Water Gate. It was probably through
this gate that Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet and their followers led 
Solomon from the City of David down to the Gihon spring, there to
anoint him king over all Israel…
 “This gate is mentioned by Nehemiah as the gate in the
eastern wall which led to the Gihon spring…It was also in this area that
Ezra read the Law before the assembled people, i.e. in the square in front of
the Water Gate, and this is where they erected their tabernacles. 
    A most interesting event is about to take place. Ronny Reich and
Eli Shukron have been excavating a massive Canaanite passageway between the
Spring Tower and the remnants of Hezekiah’s mid-slope wall. In Reich’s latest
book, Excavating the City of David,
he proudly proclaims that he is a “minimalist.” He and Eli have, therefore,
refused to recognize their passageway as the eastern part of the Water Gate
connected to “Hezekiah’s Wall.”
 Whether they recognize it or not, the passage leads to
Hezekiah’s Wall. We know because one of us (Arthur Bud Chrysler) as a volunteer
with Dr. Yigal Shiloh in 1984 personally excavated a long section of the wall
leading directly to the Water Gate. When you hear their announcement of the
discovery of a gate in a wall at the end of their Canaanite passageway, remember
that you heard it here first!
 The Horse Gate
 Having proven that this gate by the Gihon Spring is the Water
Gate, we must return to Eilat Mazar and find the correct name for the gate that
she and her grandfather discovered. 
Returning to the passage above found in Nehemiah chapter 3 we find the
gate between the Water Gate (v. 26) and the East Gate (v.29) is the Horse
Gate (v. 28). That is the proper name for the four-chambered gate discovered
by the Mazars. The location of the Horse Gate is mentioned three times in the
Bible:
 (1)
About the year 835 BC the Horse Gate became a murder scene. The wicked Queen,
Athaliah, was taken from the Temple (II Chron. 23:15), past King Solomon’s
Palace, and slain at the entrance of the Horse Gate (which Benjamin and
Eilat Mazar recently discovered).        
The
Mountain of the Lord, Benjamin
Mazar pages 174, 195
 (2)
In about 606 BC, the prophet Jeremiah predicted that a “New
  Covenant” would be given to Israel and Judah in a future millennial
  kingdom. In that kingdom the blessings on Jerusalem will extend “from
the Tower of Hananeel…unto the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east”
(Jer. 31:31-40).
 (3)
The Horse Gate is also found in the passages in the book of Nehemiah as seen
above. *
 We
want to assure both the Mazars and Reich and Shukron of our great appreciation
for their exhaustive work in excavating the Temple Mount and City of David
areas. We just hope that they will give the proper names to their
discoveries.


 
* See
our book, Jerusalem’s Stones are Crying
Out in our“Books” section.