The Israelite kingdom split shortly after Solomon's death in 933 ВСЕ. The tribes
of the northern Kingdom of Israel created their own capital, while those of the
south retained Jerusalem as the center of the Kingdom of Judah. Over three pros-
perous centuries, Judah's citizens developed Judaism and the Jewish identity,
until a Babylonian army led by King Nebuchadnezzar besieged the city and forced
its capitulation in 596 ВСЕ. The Babylonians kidnapped the aristocracy and kept
Jerusalem disarmed and powerless. When Zedekiah instigated a rebellion 10 years
later, a wrathful King Nebuchadnezzar ordered the exile of the Jews to Babylon
and the burning of Jerusalem's finest buildings, including the Temple. In 539 ВСЕ,
however, the Babylonians succumbed to Cyrus of Persia who permitted the Jews
to return from exile (2 Chronicles 36). Reconstruction commenced soon thereaf-
ter, and in 515 ВСЕ the Second Temple was rededicated (Ezra 6:15-18).
Jerusalem enjoyed more than a century of undisturbed revival under the Persians
until Alexander the Great swept through the city in 332 ВСЕ (see Greeks and Nabate-
ans, ). Hellenization was soon embraced by much of the educated population.
After a century and a half of Hellenic rule and a brief spell of Egyptian Ptolemaic
control, the Seleucid Empire took Jerusalem (198 ВСЕ). King Antiochus IV forbade
all Jewish practices, including Shabbat observance, circumcision, and the reading
of the Torah. When he installed the cult of Zeus in the Temple, non-Hellenized Jews
revolted. The rebels, led by Judas Maccabeus, were successful. In 164 ВСЕ, the
temple was resanctified and the priestly hierarchy assumed control of the city. The
resulting Hasmonean dynasty zealously ruled the area's Jews for the next century.
The Roman general Pompey seized control of Jerusalem in 64 ВСЕ, ushering in
six and a half centuries of Roman rale (see Romans, ). The Romans installed
Herod the Great, the child of a Jewish father and Samaritan mother, to reign over
what they called the Kingdom of Judea. While occupying the throne (37-4 ВСЕ),
Herod commanded the reconstruction of the temple and the creation of the well-
known and partially extant Western Wall to better support the enlarged Temple
Mount. In 6 CE the Romans bequeathed the governance of the province to a series
of procurators, the most famous of whom was Pontius Pilate. Sixty years later, the
Jews revolted against Rome. The Roman commander Titus crashed the revolt
after four years, destroying the temple, razing the city, and casting many Jews into
slavery or exile; life in the diaspora had begun. After the Bar Kokhba Revolt (a sec-
ond Jewish revolt named for its leader) ended in 135 CE, the city was further
destroyed by Emperor Hadrian and declared off-limits to the Jews.
That very year Hadrian built a new city over Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina, to
serve as a Roman colony. The pattern of the present-day Old City corresponds to
that of Hadrian's city; it is divided into quarters by two major roads (the Cardo and
Decumanus) and oriented north to south. You can see the remains of the Cardo in
the Old City's Jewish Quarter. After Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Chris-
tianity in 312 CE, his mother Eleni visited the Holy Land around 331 CE in order to
identify and consecrate Christian sites (see The Byzantines, ). Subsequent Byz-
antine rulers devoted their energies to the construction of basilicas and churches
for the glorification and celebration of the city's Christian heritage.