41 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL JERUSALEM western corner of the Temple Mount and the Valley Gate in the western side of the Ophel. A buttress is mentioned two times in the eastern side of Nehemiah’s wall (Neh 3,19-20.24-25), and we may safely assume that the tower was built on top of the buttress, lo- cated south of the Stepped Stone Structure, in the highest place of the City of David (vv. 24-25). The Chronicler described the reality of his own time, when three towers were built in strategic locations along the walls of Jerusalem. * * * A remarkable characteristic of the pre-exilic biblical historiogra- phy is the attribution of extensive building operations in Jerusalem and elsewhere to David and Solomon, avoiding attribution of simi- lar construction works to other kings of the dynasty. The attribution was probably an extension of the oral tradition that connected specific kings to certain buildings and walls in the City of David and the Tem- ple Mount. The magnifying presentations of the kings of the United Monarchy in the early works of the history of David’s rise and the ‘Book of the acts of Solomon’ were adopted and greatly expanded by the author of the Book of Kings. He developed the ideology of a great United Monarchy, according to which the kingdom reached its height in the early monarchical period. Moreover, to magnify the achieve- ments of the two early kings, he avoided attributing new building works, including the construction of the “Broad Wall”, to later Ju- dahite kings. This attribution created the artificial picture, according to which all major building projects in Jerusalem took place shortly after the foundation of the monarchy and the city did not develop in later periods. The term “Ophel” for a fortified quarter of the city appears for the first time in post-exilic texts. Judahite authors of that era relate that the area south of the Temple Mount was divided into two parts: the fortified quarter of Ophel in the north and the more desolated quarter of the City of David in the south. The Chronicler anachro- nistically attributed the fortification of the Ophel to pre-exilic kings, but in reality, his descriptions reflect the situation in the Second Tem- ple period. The quarter was already fortified when Nehemiah carried out his repairing project; its population and fortification formed the first stage in the recovery of the city in the early Persian period. The