Zev Radovan

End of the road. The Herodian street comes to an abrupt end here, in bedrock. This area served as the quarry for the blocks that made up the western wall of Herod’s Temple Mount enclosure (the grooves appear at 4-foot intervals—the average height of the typical course along the wall). Herod had not completed his reconstruction of the Temple Mount by the time of his death in 4 B.C.E. and though the Gospel of John (John 2:20) tells us that the entire project took 46 years, this area shows that it was never fully completed.