MELLO. – A magnificent monumental work (Heb. Millò), which appears in the list of Solomon’s constructions (I Reg. 9:15–24) and occasioned the rebellion against the king (ibid. 11:27). The mention in II Sam. 5:9 appears to be an anticipation intended to determine the starting point “of the M.” in the repairs carried out by King David on the Canaanite city. The etymology of the name (= “filling”) and the monarch’s purpose “to close the breach of the city of David” (I Reg. 11:27) suggest a bastion or earthwork, whose exact nature nevertheless remains unknown, intended to protect some weak point between the “city of David” and the Temple buildings and the adjacent palaces.
The excavations have so far not made it possible to determine the precise site of the construction. Macalister identified the M. with the northern breach of the city of David, opened by David and subsequently closed and repaired with fortifications and towers by Solomon. Weil, on the other hand, thinks of a vast esplanade that would have united the city of David (de-Jahurah) with the new quarter of Ophel. H. Vincent, more probably, maintains instead that the M. was the great bastion created between the royal palaces and the city of David to fill the depression extending between the present Double Gate and the Gate of the Maghrebins, or in the area now called Hakurat el-Katunijjeh, an ancient filling on the eastern edge of the Tyropoeon.
The work was again restored, with some fortifications, by Hezekiah, hence the name Beth M. (I Par. 11:8; II Par. 32:5).
the hill Ophel (Palest. explor. fund. annual, 4), London 1926, pp. 79–87; id., in Revue biblique, 56 (1948), p. 615. Donato Baldi