Jerusalem, Israel

Western Wall

Late Second Temple (the largest block is the question)

In Jerusalem, a retaining wall of enormous limestone blocks holds up the platform of the Temple. One block in the buried stretch, the Western Stone, has a face about 13.6 metres long. Estimates of its weight run from about 250 tonnes to about 517, depending on how deep the hidden side goes.

Why this is extraordinary

The Western Wall is the western retaining wall of the raised platform in Jerusalem. Jews and Christians call that platform the Temple Mount, and Muslims call it the Haram al-Sharif. The prayer section is the famous stretch. North of it, the Western Wall Tunnels follow the same wall under the buildings of the Old City. In that covered stretch sits a single block, the Western Stone. Its face is about 13.6 metres long and about 3 to 3.5 metres high. The depth is hidden in the wall, and every weight you hear is a guess about that hidden side.

An estimate that assumed about 4.6 metres of depth gave about 517 tonnes. A ground-penetrating radar measurement in 2006 put the depth at about 1.8 to 2.5 metres, and the weight that follows is about 250 to 300 tonnes. A later heritage figure allows about 2 to 4.6 metres and says several hundred tons. This room keeps the whole range, and leaves the choice of one tonne for a depth that has been agreed.

The stone is local limestone, the Jerusalem meleke. Calcite, the mineral of limestone, is the reference at 3 on the Mohs scratch order, so a metal edge can cut it. Fresh meleke is the easier state of the same rock. Scratch hardness is the ordinary part. The hard part is a block of this face, set in a rising course, that still had to be cut, moved, and laid.

If the coins under the southern foundation date the giant course as well, the largest block belongs to the enlargement that began under Herod and continued after his death. If the giant course is older than those coins, the platform keeps an earlier masonry inside a later wall. Either reading leaves the place holy to more than one tradition. A title to the ground is a question these stones do not answer.

Why it matters

The wall is a place of Jewish prayer, because it is the nearest standing masonry of the platform where the Temple stood. On the platform are the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, holy in Islam. Christian tradition also locates the Temple here. The Arabic name of the wall is the Buraq Wall, and an older English name is the Wailing Wall. This room is about the stones: how they were cut, how heavy the largest one is, and which decade set it. A claim to sovereignty is not a finding about the masonry, and this room does not make one.

One reading is Herod's enlargement of the platform, begun late in the first century BCE and still underway in the first century CE. The large blocks with a flat margin around a raised centre are the dressing of that project. Coins sealed under a foundation near the southern end were struck in 17/18 CE, after Herod's death, so that stretch is later than the king who began the work. Another reading says the tallest course, and the Western Stone in it, could be older, with the coins dating only the southern foundation. Both can be true of different parts of the wall. The Iron Age temple plan compared with a biblical description is a different site, at Ain Dara.

Photo tour

6 photographs, unedited. On a phone, swipe the row. Choose one to look closely.

Huge limestone blocks underground, each with a flat border around a raised centre. — Underground courses. A flat margin is cut around a raised centre, and a crack runs along one joint.Bukvoed, CC BY 4.0

A narrow lit tunnel with massive stone blocks along the right wall and a person in the distance. — The tunnel along the buried face. The blocks on the right are taller than the person at the far end of the passage.Bukvoed, CC BY 4.0

What is still unexplained

These sit beside the consensus account, with the same visual weight. None of them is marked solved.

The length holds. The tonnes do not A face of 13.6 metres, and a depth nobody can see The Western Stone is one block in a tall course north of Wilson's Arch, seen from the tunnels. The published length is about 13.6 metres. Heights in print are about 3 metres and about 3.5 metres. Neighbours in the same course are published at about 2 metres, about 12 metres, and about 8 metres long, so this stone is the longest of a row, not a lone slab in a wall of small blocks. Depth was guessed before it was measured. At an assumed 4.6 metres, the weight comes out near 517 tonnes, which is about 570 short tons, the same estimate in another unit. Radar in 2006 read about 1.8 to 2.5 metres of depth, and the weight that matches is about 250 to 300 tonnes. A heritage statement since then allows a depth from about 2 to 4.6 metres and a weight of several hundred tons. Until one depth is agreed, every single tonne in circulation is a choice of depth. The face, which a visitor can see, is not the uncertain part.

The hardness is ordinary. The setting is not Limestone a chisel can scratch, set high in a wall Meleke is the local limestone of Jerusalem. Calcite is step 3 of the scratch order. Copper and iron both sit at or above that step, so a metal edge can mark the rock, unlike the quartz in the Egyptian colossi. The stone is also described as easier to cut when it is freshly quarried, and harder once it has dried. The drafted margin, a flat border around a boss, is the visible dressing, and it is cut with that ordinary kit. What the kit does not show is the move. The limestone is local, so this is not a haul the length of a river. It is a block whose face is already the size of a room, lifted into a course above other courses. No text used here names the sled, the ramp, or the crew for the Western Stone. Rollers and a short pull from a nearby quarry are the usual inference. They are an inference.

The southern foundation is after 17 CE. The northern block is the open step Coins under the foundation, and which stones they date Under the paved street near the southern end of the western wall, a ritual bath of an earlier house lay on the line of the foundation. The builders filled it, set flat stones on the fill, and built the first course above that plug. In the soil were oil lamps of a first-century kind and seventeen identifiable bronze coins. The latest of them, four coins, were struck by the Roman governor of Judea in 17/18 CE. Herod died in 4 BCE. That foundation, and the arch it carries, were still being set at least twenty years after him. A Greek historian of the same century says the enlargement began in Herod's eighteenth year and was a project the king did not live to finish. The coins agree with a long work. They date the stretch that seals the bath. The Western Stone is further north, in the same family of large drafted blocks. A coin from directly under that stone is not this group. The older-builder reading uses that gap: the giant course could already have been standing, and the coins could date a southern addition. The shared dressing is the reply. It is evidence of one craft. It is not a year stamped on the north end of the wall.

Location and dating

Location: Jerusalem, on the western side of the raised platform in the Old City. The prayer plaza is the exposed wall. The tunnels continue north under the street, and the Western Stone is in that covered length.
Period label: Current consensus — open to revision The span most often published, and still open to revision, is the late Second Temple enlargement, from the late first century BCE into the first century CE. Upper courses of smaller stone are later, including work of the early Islamic centuries and repairs after that. The giant course is the part still in dispute.
How this dating was done: The date is stratigraphy, the order of layers: a foundation that seals a filled bath, the coins in that fill, and the historian's account of the project. The dressing is typology, dating by the shape of the work, here the margin-and-boss that marks this masonry. Radiocarbon, the carbon-decay clock, has no result on the limestone of the Western Stone.
What could change it: A coin or a pot sealed under the Western Stone's own course. A dressing on that course that the southern foundation, the one with the 17/18 CE coins, does not share.

Published ranges, drawn as bars. A bar is a claim about a span, not a point.

The enlargement

An earlier giant courseContested

1000 BCE500 BCE64 CE

The enlargement. From the eighteenth year of Herod, as the historian gives it, to a finish in the next century. The 17/18 CE coins sit inside this span and after the king's death.
An earlier giant course. A reading that the largest blocks predate Herod. Not a layer under the stone. Contested by the dressing and by the foundation trench of the enlargement.

What is actually there

The Western Stone's face is about 13.6 metres long. Published weights run from about 250–300 tonnes to about 517 tonnes, with the depth.
The stone is local limestone. Calcite is the scratch reference at 3. The mass, not the hardness, is the open engineering.
Coins of 17/18 CE were sealed under the foundation near the southern arch. Herod died in 4 BCE.
The platform above the wall is sacred in Jewish, Muslim, and Christian tradition. The room does not rank those claims.

Open questions

Question	Status
How deep is the Western Stone, and which weight follows?	Open. Radar and the older assumption do not agree. The face length does.
Was the giant course set in the same decades as the foundation that seals the 17/18 CE coins?	Open for the northern block. The southern foundation is after those coins.
What crew and what ramp laid a block of this face above the course beneath it?	Open. The stone is local. The lift is not described.

The current narrative

Where publication stands today. It is the best-supported reading, and it is open to revision. It is not a verdict.

The current narrative — open to revision

Herod's enlargement, finished after him

The great ashlars, including the Western Stone, belong to the enlargement of the platform that Herod began and that his successors were still building in the first century CE. The weight is uncertain because the depth is uncertain. The date of the project is not.

What supports this

The historian of the period describes the enlargement as beginning in Herod's eighteenth year and finishing long after his death.
Coins of 17/18 CE were sealed in a bath under the southern foundation, so that part of the wall is after those coins.
The margin-and-boss dressing runs through the large courses, above ground and in the tunnels.
The limestone is local, which fits a vast project supplied from nearby quarries rather than a haul from far away.

What pushes back

The 17/18 CE coins are under the southern foundation, not published from under the Western Stone.
The radar depth and the older depth do not agree, so a single weight is not yet a fact.
No text describes the lift of this one block.

What would settle it

It grows stronger if a deposit under the Western Stone matches the southern coins. It weakens if that deposit is older than Herod and is sealed by the giant course itself.

Emerging narratives

Other published readings. Each may be right. None is adopted here unless the evidence carries it.

An emerging narrative

The giant course is older than Herod

The largest blocks were set by an earlier builder. Herod's project, and the coins, belong to the southern foundation and the upper work. The Western Stone is a survival inside a wall that later kings repaired.

What supports this

The face, about 13.6 metres, is exceptional even among the large ashlars, and its depth is still argued.
The dating coins are at the south end. A northern block is not automatically the same year.
Traditions attach an earlier temple to this platform. A retaining course could, in principle, be older than the king who expanded it.

What pushes back

The drafted margin on the giant blocks is the same dressing as the masonry the coins sit under.
The historian's account is of one enlargement, not of a wall already standing in giant courses that Herod only patched.
No inscription, and no sealed deposit older than Herod, is published from under the Western Stone.

What would settle it

One pot or coin under that stone, older than the enlargement and sealed by it, would carry the reading. A shared dressing without that deposit does not.

Should the current view be reevaluated?

Consensus holds well

The enlargement in the late Second Temple period is the reading that fits the historian, the coins, and the dressing. The exact tonne of the Western Stone is open, because the depth is open. An older course is possibly correct and is waiting on a deposit the southern coins are not. The holiness of the platform is not in dispute, and it is not a date.

What drives this

Coins of 17/18 CE lie sealed under the southern foundation.
The Western Stone's published weights disagree because the hidden depth disagrees.
The limestone is local and soft enough to cut. The setting of the block is the undescribed step.

This is the museum’s own weighing of the evidence. It is not a visitor vote, and it is separate from the slider.

Weigh it yourself

Anonymous. Nothing here is stored except on this browser. Your lean does not change the assessment beside it.

Herod's enlargement, finished after him Unsure The giant course is older than Herod

If the contested reading is right

What would follow if a reading that is not the consensus turned out to be true, and what could settle it. This explains the stakes. It does not adopt the reading.

The giant course was set before Herod

The platform's lower western masonry would be an earlier work, kept and extended by the Herodian project. The coins would date the south end and not the tall course. The Temple traditions that speak of an older building would have a course to point at, still without a name cut in the stone.

Why it is still worth a test

A sealed deposit directly under the Western Stone, published with the year of the latest object in it.

Even the lower radar weight is beyond the ramps and rollers usually inferred

Local limestone and a short haul would still leave the lift undescribed. The date would not move. The engineering of the course would.

Why it is still worth a test

A published move of a block in the 250-tonne class, with the tools and the crew counted.

Sources

Coins of 17/18 CE sealed under the Western Wall foundation Israel Antiquities Authority
Western Stone, the face and the two depth estimates Wikipedia
Western Wall, the courses and the later rebuilds above them Wikipedia
Mohs scale of mineral hardness Wikipedia

Image credits

The western retaining wall beside its plaza. A golden dome stands on the platform the wall holds up.. Someone35, CC BY-SA 3.0. Shown unedited.
The prayer section. People stand against dressed limestone courses, some of the blocks much larger than the others.. Godot13, CC BY-SA 4.0. Shown unedited.
The southern end of the western wall. Lower courses are large blocks, smaller stones sit above, and the broken springing of an arch projects from the face. A person stands among the fallen stones.. Brian Jeffery Beggerly, CC BY 2.0. Shown unedited.
The same corner from closer in. The size of the blocks changes up the wall, and the broken springing of the arch is the projecting ledge.. Deror avi, CC BY-SA 3.0. Shown unedited.
Underground courses. A flat margin is cut around a raised centre, and a crack runs along one joint.. Bukvoed, CC BY 4.0. Shown unedited.
The tunnel along the buried face. The blocks on the right are taller than the person at the far end of the passage.. Bukvoed, CC BY 4.0. Shown unedited.

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