Acra (fortress) - Location

Location

The location of the Acra is important for understanding how events unfolded in Jerusalem during the struggle between Maccabean and Seleucid forces. This has been the subject of debate among modern scholars. The most detailed ancient description of the nature and location of the Acra is found in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, where it is described as residing in the Lower City, upon a hill overlooking the Temple enclosure:

...and when he had overthrown the city walls, he built a citadel in the lower part of the city, for the place was high, and overlooked the temple; on which account he fortified it with high walls and towers, and put into it a garrison of Macedonians. However, in that citadel dwelt the impious and wicked part of the multitude, from whom it proved that the citizens suffered many and sore calamities. —Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 12:252–253

The location of the "lower part of the city", elsewhere referred to as the "Lower City", at the time of Josephus (1st century CE) is accepted to be Jerusalem's south-eastern hill, the original urban center traditionally known as the City of David. Lying to the south of the Temple Mount, however, the area exposed today is significantly lower than the Mount itself. The top of the Mount is approximately 30 metres (98 ft) above the ground level at the southern retaining wall of the later Herodian-era expansion of the Temple enclosure. The elevation decreases to the south of this point. Josephus, a native of Jerusalem, would have been well aware of this discrepancy, yet is nevertheless able to explain it away by describing how Simon had razed both the Acra and the hill on which it had stood. Archaeological research south of the Temple Mount, however, has failed to locate any evidence for such large scale quarrying. On the contrary, excavations in the region have uncovered substantial evidence of habitation from the beginning of the first millennium BCE down to Roman times, casting doubt on the suggestion that during Hellenistic times the area was significantly higher than it was at the time of Josephus or that a large hill had been cleared away. This had led many researchers to disregard Josephus' account and his placing of the Acra, and suggest several alternate locations. Since 1841, when Edward Robinson proposed the area near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as the site of the Acra, at least nine different locations in and around the Old City of Jerusalem have been put forward.