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86-635: Akra may refer to: Places [ edit ] Acra (fortress) , a Seleucid fortress in Jerusalem Akra, hamlet in Greene County (see Cairo, New York ) where Jack "Legs" Diamond is rumored to have had a home Akra, Bannu , an archaeological site south of Peshawar in Pakistan Akra, Maheshtala , South 24 Parganas , West Bengal, India Akra railway station Akra Peninsula ,

172-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

258-468: A Seleucid garrison in the city: Then they fortified the city of David with a great strong wall and strong towers, and it became their citadel. And they stationed there a sinful people, lawless men. These strengthened their position; they stored up arms and food, and collecting the spoils of Jerusalem they stored them there, and became a great snare. It became an ambush against the sanctuary, an evil adversary of Israel continually. The name Acra derived from

344-563: A charter affirming Jewish religious autonomy, including barring foreigners and impure animals from the Temple's precincts , and an allocation of official funds for the maintenance of certain religious rituals in the Temple. Despite being allowed religious freedom, many Jews were enticed by and adopted elements of the prestigious and influential Greek lifestyle. The imperial culture offered a route to political and material advancement, and this led to

430-556: A citadel [Greek: Acra] from which they used to sally forth and defile the environs of the sanctuary and do great damage to its purity. These suggest that, after the sacking of Jerusalem by Antiochus IV in 168 BCE, at least part of the City of David to the south of the Temple Mount was rebuilt as a fortified Hellenistic quarter of Jerusalem. More than a citadel, it was a Macedonian colony where Jewish renegades and supporters of

516-456: A citadel probably did stand at the northern tip of the City of David just south of the Temple Mount. Archaeologists have tried to use finds from excavations conducted in the area to pinpoint this citadel's precise location. Yoram Tsafrir has attempted to place the Acra underneath the southeastern corner of the later, Herodian Temple Mount enclosure. Tsafrir points to a straight vertical seam in

602-532: A distinct building but rather to an entire region of the city. Indeed, several clauses in 1 Maccabees may be read as making a similar point: About five hundred men of the army of Nicanor fell, and the rest fled into the city of David. And in his days things prospered in his hands, so that the Gentiles were put out of the country, as were also the men in the city of David in Jerusalem, who had built themselves

688-460: A fragmentary Greek inscription in the Old City of Jerusalem. The inscription is a fragment from the top of a sandstone stele and contains what may be an oath taken by soldiers stationed in the Acra, although the reading of the name "Acra" in the text has been contested. Ancient Greek Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of

774-409: A hill overlooking the Temple enclosure: ...and when he had overthrown the city walls, he built a citadel [Greek: Acra] in the lower part of the city, for the place was high, and overlooked the temple; on which account he fortified it with high walls and towers, and put into it a garrison of Macedonians. However, in that citadel dwelt the impious and wicked part of the multitude, from whom it proved that

860-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

946-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

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1032-479: A multitude of stamped Rhodian amphora handles. The Givati location has been doubted by Leen Ritmeyer due to its being too low on the hill to overlook the Temple Mount, as described in literary sources. The Acra was not the first Hellenistic stronghold in Jerusalem. Sources indicate that an earlier citadel, the Ptolemaic Baris, had also occupied a location overlooking the Temple's precincts. Although

1118-647: A peninsula in Antarctica Akra Township, Pembina County, North Dakota , a township in North Dakota, USA Akra Leuke , ancient city founded by Greeks, modern Alicante, Spain Akra, Crimea , a submerged ancient Greek city in Crimea People [ edit ] Yasser Akra (born 1985), Syrian footballer See also [ edit ] Aakra or Åkra (disambiguation) Accra ,

1204-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

1290-533: A residential area in Jerusalem during his time, the late Second Temple period , named after the stronghold. This area he also calls the "Lower City", and corresponds today with parts of Silwan including the City of David and is distinct from "the Upper Market" ( Hebrew : שוק העליון ), also known as the "Upper City", as well as from the newer suburb known as Bezetha ("New City"). Josephus tells us that

1376-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

1462-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

1548-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

1634-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

1720-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

1806-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

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1892-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

1978-421: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Acra (fortress) The exact location of Acra within Jerusalem, and even the meaning of the term—fortress, fortified compound inside the city, or compound with an associated fortress—is critical to understanding Hellenistic Jerusalem, but it remains a matter of ongoing discussion. The fact that Josephus has used

2064-412: Is separated from the Temple Mount and the City of David by the steep Tyropoeon Valley —a distinct tactical disadvantage for any force that may have been required to intervene in events within the temple precincts or heavily populated eastern sectors of Jerusalem. Additional evidence for the existence of the Acra may come from the chance discovery, published by Shimon Appelbaum  [ he ] , of

2150-693: Is the shortened-form of the Greek loanword akrópolis , adopted in Aramaic usage and having the connotation of "citadel" or "stronghold". Here are the events leading up to the Maccabean Revolt in which the Acra played an important role, based again mainly on Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews and the First and Second Book of Maccabees. Following Alexander the Great 's death in 323 BCE, Coele-Syria

2236-627: The City of David as most scholars agree, its location would have added very little to Jerusalem's defenses against external threats. It may have fallen out of use and been dismantled around the end of the 2nd century BCE following the construction of the Hasmonean Baris and Hasmonean Palace in Jerusalem's upper city. Bezalel Bar-Kochva offers a different theory: The Acra was still standing in 139 BCE when Antiochus VII Sidetes demanded it back from Simon, along with Jaffa and Gezer , two Hellenized cities Simon had captured. Simon

2322-484: The First Temple Period , as well as renewed Hasmonean and Herodian settlement, but scant evidence of Hellenistic occupation. Research into the dispersal of stamped Rhodian amphorae handles has revealed that over 95% of these handles found in Jerusalem were excavated from the City of David, indicating the city had not yet expanded to the western hill during Seleucid rule. Furthermore, the western hill

2408-711: The Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

2494-708: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

2580-659: The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced the possible discovery of the ancient site for the Acra. While excavating the Givati parking lot south-west of the Temple Mount and north-west of the City of David, the archaeologists Doron Ben-Ami , Yana Tchekhanovets and Salome Cohen claimed that a complex of rooms and fortified walls they had unearthed was to be identified with the Acra mentioned in literary sources. This identification would, however, place it slightly south of previously suggested locations for

2666-461: The Maccabees , and Maccabaeus was forced to withdraw. Spared from capitulation, the Acra persisted as a Seleucid stronghold for 20 more years during which it weathered several Hasmonean attempts to oust the Greek garrison. Judas was killed in 160 BCE and succeeded by his brother Jonathan , who attempted to build a barrier to cut off the Acra's supply line. Jonathan had already assembled

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2752-660: The Temple Mount and south of it, but there are alternative theories as well (see "Location" ). The ancient Greek term acra was used to describe other fortified structures during the Hellenistic period. The Acra is often called the Seleucid Acra to distinguish it from references to the Ptolemaic Baris as an acra and from the later city quarter of Jerusalem which inherited the name Acra. Acra

2838-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

2924-689: The "cold well". Meir Ben-Dov believed that the Acra stood just south of the Huldah Gates of the southern wall of the Herodian Temple Mount platform. Benjamin Mazar 's 1968 and 1978 excavations of the Ophel , the area adjoining the southern portion of the platform, have unearthed the foundations of a massive structure and a large cistern , both possibly dating to the Hellenistic period. These have been tentatively identified as remnants of

3010-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

3096-555: The Acra (1:35–38) is considered the most reliable. Josephus provides an unlikely account of the razing of a hill on which the Acra had stood, yet his description of the end of the Great Revolt (70 CE) provides additional evidence for it being located south of the Temple Mount: ...but on the next day they set fire to the repository of the archives, to Acra, to the council-house, and to the place called Ophlas ; at which time

3182-543: The Acra and its inhabitants held out. Maccabaeus besieged the fortress, whose inhabitants sent an appeal to the Seleucid king (now Antiochus V ) for assistance. A Seleucid army was dispatched to put down the revolt. When it laid siege to Beth-Zur , Maccabaeus was forced to abandon his siege of the Acra and face Antiochus in battle. In the subsequent Battle of Beth-Zechariah , the Seleucids won their first victory over

3268-468: The Acra away from Jerusalem's population center. Unlike its predecessor and successor citadels, it was not meant as a defence against external threat, but rather to oversee the inhabited Jewish parts of the city, a role incompatible with a proposed northern location. Several researchers have attempted to place the Acra in the Upper City on Jerusalem's western hill, within the area currently occupied by

3354-590: The Acra had been standing before the revolt and that only the Macedonian garrison was new. Koen Decoster proposes that Josephus wrote of "a citadel in the lower part of the city" to an audience that would have been familiar with the Jerusalem of the 1st century CE—a city that did feature two citadels: the Antonia Fortress and the Herodian palace. As Josephus' Roman Jerusalem had already expanded to

3440-472: The Acra, although their accounts are contradictory in places. According to Josephus, Simon razed the Acra after ousting its inhabitants, and then quarried the hill on which it had stood to render it lower than the temple, purge the city of its evil memory and deny it to any future occupier of Jerusalem. The account appearing in 1 Maccabees paints a different picture: And Simon decreed that every year they should celebrate this day with rejoicing. He strengthened

3526-663: The Acra, and suggest several alternate locations. Since 1841, when Edward Robinson proposed the area near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as the site of the Acra, at least nine different locations in and around the Old City of Jerusalem have been put forward. The available sources do indicate the Acra stood south of the temple, and because 1 Maccabees is a contemporaneous account of the Maccabean revolt, its account of

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3612-519: The Acra, with the structure, featuring rows of small interconnected rooms, believed to be the remains of a barracks. These had been demolished and built over during the Hasmonean period, matching the descriptions in Josephus. The Hasmonean constructions were, in turn, flattened to create a public square fronting the main gates to the Temple platform during the Herodian renovations. In November 2015

3698-493: The Adiabene Queen Helena , the proselytess to Judaism, was formerly situated in the middle of Acra. The location of the original fortified structure known as Acra is important for understanding how events unfolded in Jerusalem during the struggle between Maccabean and Seleucid forces. This has been the subject of debate among modern scholars. Since the mid-1970s, the search has focused on three areas south of

3784-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

3870-481: The Baris was itself called an acra , have led some to suggest that the Baris and the Acra were in fact the same structure. Although both 1 Maccabees and Josephus seem to describe the Acra as a new construction, this may not have been the case. Antiquities of the Jews 12:253 may be translated to give the sense that the "impious or wicked" had "remained" rather than "dwelt" in the citadel, which could be taken to mean that

3956-420: The Greek acropolis and signified a lofty fortified place overlooking a town. In Jerusalem, the word came to symbolize anti-Jewish paganism: a fortress of the "impious and wicked". Dominating both the city and the surrounding countryside, it was occupied not only by a Greek garrison but by their Jewish confederates as well. The Seleucid suppression of Jewish religious life met with considerable resistance among

4042-735: The Lower City, including the Ophel and the Kidron Valley , and the other led by Simon bar Giora who controlled all of the "Upper City" where he made his place of residence in the Phasael tower before abandoning it, and part of the "Lower City" (Acra) as far as the great wall in the Kidron Valley and the fountain of Siloam . Eventually, when the Roman army took the Lower City (Acra), they set fire to all its houses. The palace of

4128-513: The Mount is approximately 30 metres (98 ft) above the ground level at the southern retaining wall of the later Herodian-era expansion of the Temple enclosure. The elevation decreases to the south of this point. Josephus, a native of Jerusalem, would have been well aware of this discrepancy, yet is nevertheless able to explain it away by describing how Simon had razed both the Acra and the hill on which it had stood. Archaeological research south of

4214-456: The Old City's Jewish Quarter . These propositions seek to locate the Acra within Antiochia , the Hellenistic polis established in Jerusalem according to 2 Maccabees . This conjectural new city would have been hippodamic in plan and therefore would have required a flat expanse of land which only the western hill could have provided. Furthermore, the eastern edge of the hill is adjacent to

4300-655: The Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms alarmed the rapidly expanding Roman state , which demanded that he withdraw his forces from Egypt. With Antiochus engaged in Egypt, a false rumor spread in Jerusalem that he had been killed. In the ensuing uncertainty, Jason gathered a force of 1,000 followers and attempted to take Jerusalem by storm. Although the attack was repulsed, when word of the fighting reached Antiochus in Egypt, he suspected his Judean subjects of exploiting his setback as an opportunity to revolt. In 168 BCE, Antiochus IV Epiphanes marched on and sacked Jerusalem, looting

4386-529: The Seleucid citadel. These include a 700,000- imperial-gallon (3,200,000 L; 840,000 US gal) cistern shaped like an E, the northern edge of which is adjacent to the proposed southern line of the Temple Mount precinct before its Herodian expansion. This has been identified as the "be'er haqar" or "bor heqer" mentioned in the Mishnah , Erubin Tract 10.14, and commonly translated, perhaps incorrectly, as

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4472-559: The Seleucid city of Perga in Asia Minor . 1 Maccabees 1:30 attributes construction of the Acra to Apollonius, Antiochus III's "chief collector" ( Hebrew : שר-המיסים , Sar Hamissim ), which appears to be an ancient mistranslation or his original title as chief ( Hebrew : שר , Sar ) of the Mysians , a people of Asia Minor. Several cisterns under the Herodian Temple Mount extension have also been proposed as possible remnants of

4558-470: The Temple Mount and higher in altitude—two characteristics attributed to the Seleucid citadel. Opponents of this proposed location point out that there is very little archaeological or historical evidence supporting the establishment of a Hellenistic polis within Jerusalem, let alone sited on the western hill which appears to have been only sparsely populated during the Hellenistic period. Excavations in today's Jewish Quarter display evidence of habitation from

4644-512: The Temple Mount, however, has failed to locate any evidence for such large-scale quarrying. On the contrary, excavations in the region have uncovered substantial evidence of habitation from the beginning of the first millennium BCE down to Roman times, casting doubt on the suggestion that during Hellenistic times the area was significantly higher than it was at the time of Josephus or that a large hill had been cleared away. This had led many researchers to disregard Josephus' account and his placing of

4730-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

4816-536: The area known as Acra ( Ancient Greek : Ἄκρα ) was built on a hill in the shape of a horned moon. The "Valley of the Cheesemakers" (the Tyropoeon) separated its hill from the adjacent area known to Josephus as the Upper City. The most detailed ancient description of the nature and location of the Acra is found in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews , where it is described as residing in the Lower City, upon

4902-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

4988-649: The capital of Ghana Acra (disambiguation) Acre (disambiguation) Akre (disambiguation) Aqra (disambiguation) Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Akra . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Akra&oldid=1011909383 " Categories : Disambiguation pages Disambiguation pages with surname-holder lists Place name disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

5074-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

5160-426: The citizens suffered many and sore calamities. The location of the "lower part of the city", elsewhere referred to as the "Lower City", at the time of Josephus (1st century CE) is accepted to be Jerusalem's south-eastern hill, the original urban center traditionally known as the City of David. Lying to the south of the Temple Mount, however, the area exposed today is significantly lower than the Mount itself. The top of

5246-563: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

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5332-426: The enclosure's eastern masonry wall as evidence of different periods of construction. North of the seam is an early section of the wall built of large ashlar blocks. These blocks have faces with drafted margins around a prominent boss and are laid in homogeneous header and stretcher courses, one above the other. This style of construction is Hellenistic and distinct from the Herodian construction apparent south of

5418-571: The exact location of the Baris is still debated, it is generally accepted to have stood north of the Temple Mount on the site later occupied by the Antonia Fortress . The Baris fell to Antiochus III at the turn of the 2nd century BCE and is absent from all accounts of the Maccabean Revolt. Despite the narratives which have the Acra constructed within a very short time-span, it was nevertheless formidable enough to weather long periods of siege. These factors, coupled with references in which

5504-422: The fire proceeded as far as the palace of queen Helena , which was in the middle of Acra; As the other buildings mentioned in the account all stood to the south in the Lower City, this also places the Acra there. This account attests to the persistence of the name "Acra" in this part of Jerusalem many years after Hellenistic rule ended and its citadels had been overthrown, and it can also be seen as referring not to

5590-546: The formation of Hellenistic elites among the Jewish population. Hellenization produced tensions between observant Jews and their brethren who had assimilated Greek culture. Antiochus IV Epiphanes ascended the Seleucid throne in 175 BCE. Shortly afterward, Epiphanes was petitioned by Jason for appointment to the position of High Priest of Israel —an office occupied by his brother Onias III . Jason, himself thoroughly Hellenized, furthermore promised to increase

5676-419: The fortifications of the temple hill alongside the citadel [Greek: Acra ], and he and his men dwelt there. Thus in this version, Simon did not immediately demolish the Acra, but instead had it occupied and may even have resided within it himself. 1 Maccabees does not mention its ultimate fate. The fortress had been built as an internal checkpoint to monitor and control Jerusalem and its population. If situated in

5762-561: The higher western hill, "a citadel in the lower city" could have referred to anything located east of the Tyropoeon Valley, including the Antonia which stood north of the Temple and did indeed rise above and dominate it. In his view, this is the place Josephus must have had in mind when he wrote of the Acra. Opponents of a northern location counter that this site is not supported by the historical sources, and that this would place

5848-561: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

5934-476: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

6020-414: The manpower required for the task when he was forced to confront the invading army of Seleucid general Diodotus Tryphon at Beth Shan (Scythopolis) . Having invited Jonathan to a friendly conference, Tryphon had him seized and murdered. Jonathan was succeeded by another brother, Simon, who besieged and finally captured the Acra in 141 BCE. Two sources provide information about the ultimate fate of

6106-408: The name "Acra" were applied to an entire Hellenistic quarter rather than to just a fortress, it is likely that a citadel would have stood within that compound to billet the Macedonian garrison which occupied it. It was normal for a Hellenistic city to have a fortified stronghold at or near the highest point of its walled area. Thus, whether a part of a larger enclave or independent of its surroundings,

6192-543: The name interchangeably with 'the lower city' certainly does not help. Historians and archaeologists have proposed various sites around Jerusalem, relying initially mainly on conclusions drawn from literary evidence. This approach began to change in the light of excavations which commenced in the late 1960s. New discoveries have prompted reassessments of the ancient literary sources, Jerusalem's geography, and previously discovered artifacts. The more recent theories combine archaeological and textual evidence and favour locations near

6278-404: The native population. While Antiochus was occupied in the east during 167 BCE, a rural priest, Mattathias of Modiin , raised a rebellion against the empire. Both the Seleucid administration and the local Hellenized faction failed to grasp the magnitude of the revolt. In 164 BCE Judas Maccabaeus liberated Jerusalem and reconsecrated the Temple. Although the surrounding city had fallen,

6364-450: The new regime lived. This is also supported by archaeological evidence, including Rhodian amphorae handles and 18 box graves found on the eastern slope of the City of David. The latter are dated to the early 2nd century CE, and are uncharacteristic of Second Temple era Jewish burial practices, yet similar to other known Hellenistic graveyards such as the one in Acre (Ptolemais) . Even if

6450-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

6536-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

6622-640: The presumed location of the Second Temple, now marked by the Dome of the Rock . These are, from north to south, the area later covered by the Herodian extension of the Temple esplanade; the Ophel; and the entire southeast hill known as the City of David, with a fortress at its northern end. Complicating things is the fact that Josephus' Acra can be understood both as the name of a fortified structure and as that of

6708-418: The seam. Although the exact dating of this construction in uncertain, Tsafrir believes it is a remnant of the Acra's foundations which were later incorporated into Herod the Great 's extension of the Temple platform. As further proof, Tzafrir also points to a significant similarity between construction methods evident north of the seam, including the use of trapezoid-shaped stones, with the methods employed in

6794-450: The structure on the Ophel. Finds include fortification walls, a watchtower measuring 4 by 20 meters, and a glacis . Bronze arrowheads, lead sling-stones and ballista stones were unearthed at the site, stamped with a trident, the emblem of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. These are indicative of the military nature of the site and the efforts to take it. The excavation also yielded coins from the reigns of Antiochus IV through Antiochus VII, as well as

6880-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

6966-505: The temple treasury and killing thousands of its residents. Reversing his father's policy, Antiochus IV issued decrees outlawing traditional Jewish rites and persecuting observant Jews. Temple rituals were discontinued, Jewish observance of Sabbath prohibited, and circumcision outlawed. To consolidate his hold on the city, monitor events on the Temple Mount and safeguard the Hellenized faction in Jerusalem, Antiochus stationed

7052-527: The tribute paid by the city and to establish within it the infrastructure of a Greek polis , including a gymnasium and an ephebion . Jason's petition was granted, yet after a 42-month rule he was ousted by Antiochus and forced to flee to Ammon . In the meantime, Antiochus IV had launched two invasions of Egypt, in 170 BCE and again in 169 BCE, and routed the Ptolemaic armies. Antiochus' victories were short-lived. His intent to unify

7138-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

7224-652: Was contested between the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt, and the Seleucid Empire based in Syria and Mesopotamia. Seleucid emperor Antiochus III 's victory over Egypt in the Battle of Panium brought Coele-Syria under Seleucid control. The Jewish population of Jerusalem had aided Antiochus during his siege of the Baris, the fortified base of Jerusalem's Egyptian garrison. Their support was rewarded with

7310-477: Was nowhere to billet the garrison, as the Acra would no longer have been standing. This explanation places the razing of the Acra somewhere in the 130s BCE. Josephus describes Acra, or the "Lower City", during the outbreak of the First Jewish–Roman War . He makes known the internecine struggle between two Jewish factions, the one led by John of Gischala who controlled the Temple Mount and part of

7396-481: Was willing to discuss the two cities but made no mention of the Acra. It was at this point that he must have sealed its fate, as a way to deny the Seleucids any future claim or hold on Jerusalem. Thus, when Antiochus VII subdued the city during Hyrcanus I 's reign, each and every one of his demands were met—except the one demanding the stationing of a Seleucid garrison in the city. Hyrcanus may have been able to reject, and Antiochus to drop, this demand because there

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