Tyropoeon Valley (Greek: i.e., "Valley of the

Cheese Cheese is a type of dairy product produced in a range of flavors, textures, and forms by coagulation of the milk protein casein. It comprises proteins and fat from milk (usually the milk of cows, buffalo, goats or sheep). During prod ...

makers" or "Cheesemongers"), is the name given by the first-century Jewish-Roman historian

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

Wars 5.140
to the

valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between hills or mountains and typically containing a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers or streams over ...

or rugged

ravine A ravine is a landform that is narrower than a canyon and is often the product of streambank erosion. Ravines are typically classified as larger in scale than gullies, although smaller than valleys. Ravines may also be called a cleuch, dell, ...

, which in his times separated

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

Temple Mount The Temple Mount (), also known as the Noble Sanctuary (Arabic: الحرم الشريف, 'Haram al-Sharif'), and sometimes as Jerusalem's holy esplanade, is a hill in the Old City of Jerusalem, Old City of Jerusalem that has been venerated as a ...

(Mount Moriah) from the Western Hill or

Mount Zion Mount Zion (, ''Har Ṣīyyōn''; , ''Jabal Sahyoun'') is a hill in Jerusalem, located just outside the walls of the Old City (Jerusalem), Old City to the south. The term Mount Zion has been used in the Hebrew Bible first for the City of David ( ...

, and emptied into the valley of Hinnom. In modern scholarly terms it is also known as the central valley/Central Valley of Jerusalem.Lipnick, Jonathan (May 31, 2018)
What's So Special About The Cheesemakers?
Israel Institute of Biblical Studies. Accessed 5 January 2024.

Names, etymology

In the ancient

Copper Scroll The Copper Scroll ( 3Q15) is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Cave 3 near Khirbet Qumran, but differs significantly from the others. Whereas the other scrolls are written on parchment or papyrus, this scroll is written on metal: copper mixed ...

this valley is called in Hebrew the Outer Valley (3Q15 col.8, line 4). The name used by Josephus, (), possibly arose as an ancient mistranslation from

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

to the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

of Josephus's book;

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...

use the same

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

for ''outer'' and ''congeal''.

Description, history

The Tyropoeon, filled over the centuries with a vast accumulation of debris, and almost a plain, was spanned by bridges, the most noted of which was

Zion Zion (; ) is a placename in the Tanakh, often used as a synonym for Jerusalem as well as for the Land of Israel as a whole. The name is found in 2 Samuel (), one of the books of the Tanakh dated to approximately the mid-6th century BCE. It o ...

Bridge, which was probably the ordinary means of communication between the royal palace on Zion and the

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

. The

Western Wall The Western Wall (; ; Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: ''HaKosel HaMa'arovi'') is an ancient retaining wall of the built-up hill known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount of Jerusalem. Its most famous section, known by the same name ...

of the

rose up from the bottom of this valley to the height of 84 feet, where it was on a level with the area, and above this, and as a continuance of it, the wall of

Solomon Solomon (), also called Jedidiah, was the fourth monarch of the Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy), Kingdom of Israel and Judah, according to the Hebrew Bible. The successor of his father David, he is described as having been the penultimate ...

's cloister rose to the height of about 50 feet, "so that this section of the wall would originally present to view a stupendous mass of masonry scarcely to be surpassed by any mural masonry in the world."Easton's (1897)

References

* Ancient Israel and Judah Geography of Jerusalem Hebrew Bible valleys {{Israel-geo-stub

Names, etymology

Description, history

See also

References