The  Quarries of King Solomon


by John Worlein,

Just under the walls of the old city of
Jerusalem, between the Damascus Gate
and King Herod's Gate is a cavern
which leads the visitor to one of the few
areas in the Old City which has re-
mained largely untouched by the pas-
sage of two or more millennia. It is
known as Me'arat Tzedkiyahu or Cave
of Zedekiah, and as such will be famil-
iar to those with the Super Excellent
Degree. The more common name given
it, is King Solomon's Quarry.

Before being rediscovered in 1854, the
cavern remained hidden under debris
and centuries of refuse thrown over the
walls. Legend had not forgotten it, but
man had lost the location. The builders
of the walls which surround the old city
today must have known about it's exist-
ence, perhaps it was they who covered
over the entrance. Those architects of
Suleiman the Magnificent who con-
structed the walls in the 1500's knew
that those walls would not stand before
a determined enemy, even though Sulei-
man was undisputed master of the
Middle East and his holdings were
highly unlikely to be attacked. No, these
were not intended to be defensive
against a foe with cannon and destruc-
tive 1 6th century weapons . What the
walls did, was to maintain the integrity
of the old city and in a sense make it
easier to control and police from within.
It may have offended their military sen-
sibilities, however, to leave a tunnel en-
trance without the walls which under-
mined the city, and since it had not been
in use for centuries, simply filled it in.
On the other hand, it may have been
hidden long before that, little mention is
made of it even from the time of the
Crusades. As a side note to the con-
struction of the walls, Suleiman had
those same architects executed for neg-
lecting to also include the surrounds of
Mt. Sion within the enclosure, this area
directly outside the Sion (Zion) Gate is
best known for King David's Tomb and
the Upper Room of the Last Supper.

The visitor enters the cave or quarry
from an opening directly beneath the
walls of the Old City, pays a small fee,
and descends a gravel ramp to the floor
of the quarry. The way is indirectly
lighted, which gives the impression of
being in a place indifferent to the pas-
sage of time. Soot streaked, areas are
reminders that the ancients did not
enjoy so clean a convenience as electric-
ity. The atmosphere is noticeably very
humid, in the winter it seems warm and
sultry, while in the hot months the
drafts convey cold and clammy. The
cavern continues for some 200 meters in
a generally Southern direction under-
neath the Arab quarter of the city and
in the approximate direction of Mount
Moriah, the Temple Mount. The term
cave or cavern does not describe it well,
it is instead, a series of very large cham-
bers separated by pillars left to support
the ceiling, which in contrast to the vein
of brilliant white stone being quarried,
appears to be of the reddish-brown
streaked variety of stone common on
the surface. One of these chambers has
a sign which identifies it as "Freema-
sons Hall" in three languages. Al-
though hidden for those many centur-
ies, in 1868, within 14 years of the re-
discovery of the cavem, an American
Mason, MW Bro. Robert Morris, Past
Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of
Kentucky, gathered a few local Masons
and members of British military lodges,
and presented a degree of the Secret
Monitor one evening in the quarry.
With the exception of some of the war
years in the 1950's & 60"s, Masonic
degree work continued to be done
there, the quarry is closed to the public
once or twice a year for Masonic com-
munications by the Grand Lodge of
Israel or the Grand Royal Arch Chapter
of Israel. The degree most often worked
is that of Mark Master and is often pre-
sented in English for visiting brethren,
and is said to be a deeply moving Ma-
sonic experience. The acoustics in this
chamber are excellent, and even the
most determined sideliner will have
trouble finding a location where he can-
not hear well.
Although other varieties are present,
the stone most associated with these
quarries is called malake or melech, and
is a pure white, unstriated stone. While
it is softer that some other varieties of
limestone, the lack of defects means that
it can be quarried in very large ashlars,
as evident by some remaining examples
in the quarry, and it is prized for re-
sistance to weathering and erosion. A
structure constructed of malake would
be stunning in the purity of it's material
and dazzling in its whiteness. In many
areas of the cavern, the quarrying of
smaller pieces was also evident, as was
the technique the quarrymen utilized.
A deep cut was made in the cavern wall
around the desired size and shape of the
stone, those I observed appeared to be
about 12" x 12" x 40" (this was not
measured and may have been as much
as one cubit or 18" wide and thick),
wooden wedges were either driven into
this slot until the block broke out or
water was applied to cause the wood to
swell causing the same.

By tradition and as written in I Kings
6, verse 7 "When the house was built, it
was with stone prepared at the quarry;
so that neither hammer nor axe nor any
tool of iron was heard in the temple,
while it was being built." This means
that the building blocks of the Temple
could have been quarried and dressed
very close to the site (beneath it)
without the sound of tools. The materi-
als from these quarries are also con-
spicuous in their absence. Almost all of
modern Jerusalem is built of the iron
bearing tan to brown veined limestone,
the best grades coming from gigantic,
hill consuming quarries near Nazareth
with lesser grades from Bethlehem. At
only a few locations was the more gray
variety used, and the pure white
(malake) limestone I found (by appear-
ance identification) only at ruins,
mostly from Herod the Greats time. If it
is unknown with certainty that specifi-
cally the type of limestone from this un-
derground quarry was used in the con-
struction of King Solomon's Temple, it
is certain that at some time in ancient
history, quarrymen plied their trade
deep under Jerusalem and the blocks
which they excavated had to have been
used somewhere. An amazing amount
of material was removed from here,
with more difficulty than surface quar-
rying and therefore must have been
used for some specialized purpose.
Tradition has it used in the construction
of a temple on the Temple Mount, the
great one being from King Solomon's
time, although possibly it was quarried
for the Second Temple or even Harod's.

It is often said that no building materi-
als exist from King Solomon's Temple, I
think that this fits under the natural law
that states that matter can be altered
but not destroyed. Suitable stone would
be reused in subsequent reconstruc-
tion's until finally reduced to rubble,
that rubble from Jerusalem's many de-
structions (scholarly estimates range
from 16 to 27 separate occasions) is in
some places 12 or more meters deep.
The softer white malake from the un-
derground stant to erosion, but blocks
of it also would have been much more
seriously damaged when the building
was demolished. In terms of recycling,
the visitor will be very surprised to see
mismatched pairs of columns used in
and around what is undoubtedly the
premiere structure in the city, the
Muslim mosque, "Dome of the Rock."
Obviously many sets were reused from
former structures when this mosque
was built some 1300 years ago, and
possibly a considerable number of the
building stones in it were reused or re-
cut ones which have had many "lives. "
I have heard that the Israeli passion for
archeology extends within the Temple
Mount, behind what we refer to as the
West Wall, and that amazing things are
being found. To most scholars, it seems
agreeable that the West Wall is probably
a retaining wall built in Herod's time
(lst century BCE) to enlarge the Temple
Mount for his grand temple. Certainly
the southern end of the mount is filled
since earthquakes shake the daylights
out of the El Aksa Mosque on that end
and affect the Dome of the Rock (on
bedrock) not at all. This West Wall with
its gigantic ashlars continues down for
at least another 10 meters below current
grade, as shafts bored next to it reveal.
This is far more than would be needed
for a foundation, and with that much
more elevation to the mount must have
been very impressive. With analysis of
the materials found behind The Wall,
many questions regarding the construc-
tion of the temples may be answered.

The face of Freemasonry would
change not one iota regardless of the
finds made at Jerusalem. The building
of the Temple gives us the opportunity
for an allegory of brotherhood and sanc-
tions that personal project which needs
to be completed within the heart of
every Mason. But even if we need no
physical temple of antiquity and reality
as a basis for our fraternity, it is fascinat-
ing to know that the skilled hands of an
ancient fraternity of craftsman created
stunning works, erected to God, from
the simple stone of the Judean hills.
