Jerusalem
The crown jewel of archeological exploration in Israel, Jerusalem holds opulent treasures from centuries gone by. Archeological exploration in the Holy City never ceases, and discoveries are ongoing. Some of the key archaeological sites of Jerusalem include:
The Citadel -- Known as the "Tower of David," the citadel of Jerusalem has been a landmark of the city since ancient times. It is located on the western side of the Old City, just south of the Jaffa Gate -- this is the highest point of the southwestern hill of Jerusalem, higher than any other point in the ancient city, including the Temple Mount. A series of fortifications built here in the course of more than twenty centuries, protected Jerusalem from the west and also overlooked and controlled the entire city.
- A first archeological survey of the citadel, and excavations, were conducted between 1934 and 1947. Renewed excavations were undertaken after the reunification of the city, between the years 1968 and 1988, preparing the opening of the site to visitors.
- Every period has left its mark and has been identified in the assemblage of architectural remains. In the citadels foundations are buried the remains of Jerusalem's fortifications from the end of the monarchic period (8th to 6th centuries B.C.) through the early Arab period (seventh to eleventh centuries A.D).
- The outline of the citadel known today is from the Crusader period. The citadel itself was built in the mid-16th century by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and incorporates the remains of earlier citadels dating from Ayyubid and Mamluk times.
- The Citadel is protected by a high wall and large towers, and it is surrounded by a wide, deep moat. The entrance is from the east, via an outer gate, a bridge over the moat and a fortified inner gate house.
City of David -- The City of David, Jerusalem of ancient times, was located on a narrow ridge south of the present-day Old City. The archeological exploration of the City of David began in the middle of the 19th century and continues to this day. The latest excavations were carried out between 1978 and 1985 and there is an ongoing process of updating and revising previous interpretations.
- The earliest permanent settlement uncovered is represented by several rectangular buildings with benches along their interior walls dated to the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium B.C.) are typical of Canaanite urban settlements at that time.
- During the Middle Bronze Age, as early as the 18th century B.C., a massive wall was built around the city. Finds of the Late Bronze Age (1600 - 1200 B.C.) are few and disappointing. This is in marked contrast to the common view of Jerusalem as an important Canaanite urban center, based on mention of the king of the city of Jerusalem in the 14th century B.C. archive found at Tel el-Amarna in Egypt.
- A 10th century B.C. massive retaining structure for a monumental building, capping earlier Jebusite terraces, is assumed to be part of the fortress of Zion, residence of King David. (2 Samuel 5:7-9)
- In the 8th century B.C., Jerusalem expanded during the reign of King Hezekiah, and the hill to the west of the city of David was encompassed within its walls. The course of the strengthened eastern wall of the city was traced for approximately 120 meters. Remains of several structures dating to this time were also revealed outside the city walls, evidence that the city was densely populated.
- During the 8th and 7th centuries B.C., Jerusalem enjoyed a period of prosperity. Parts of prominent structures have been uncovered, attesting to this, as well as to the intensity of the Babylonian destruction in 587-6 B.C.
- The Bullae House, east of the House of Ahi'el, is so named for a collection of almost 50 clay sealings (bullae) with Hebrew lettering found there. The floor of this house, only partly excavated, was covered by a thick charred destruction layer containing the bullae as well as pottery vessels, arrowheads and limestone cult stands, all of which attest to the character of the house as a public building. The finds are typical of the final stage of the Iron Age and the bullae found in this context clearly date to the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem.
- The City of David was resettled by the Jews exiled to Babylon who returned during the Persian period (6th century B.C). The new wall built by Nehemiah did not follow the line of the old wall, but for the first time was built atop the northeastern slope of the City of David.
Western Wall and its Tunnels -- From the time of King Solomon to the return from the Babylonian exile and the Hasmonean period (tenth to first centuries B.C.), the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was a relatively small platform built on top of Mount Moriah. Its' highest point was the Stone of Foundation, the site of the Temple. King Herod's greatest building project was to double the area of the Temple Mount by incorporating part of the hill to the northwest, which had to be leveled and on which he built the Antonia Fortress, and by filling up parts of the surrounding valleys.
- A tunnel begins at the prayer plaza (Western Wall or Wailing Wall) turning northward into a medieval complex of subterranean vaulted spaces and a long corridor with rooms on either side. Incorporated into this complex is a Roman and medieval structure of vaults, built of large dressed limestone. It includes an earlier Herodian room, constructed of well-dressed stones, with double openings and walls decorated with protruding pilasters.
- The vaulted complex ends at Wilson's Arch, named after the explorer who discovered it in the middle of the 19th century. The arch, supported by the Western Wall, was 12.8 meters wide and stood high above the present-day ground level.
- Josephus Flavius mentions a bridge that connected the Temple Mount with the Upper City to the west during the Second Temple period. This bridge once carried water via a conduit from Solomon's Pools. It was destroyed during the Jewish Revolt against Rome (66-70 A.D.) and rebuilt during the early Islamic period.
- Beyond Wilson's Arch, a large cruciform hall, part of a Mamluk period construction, was cleared of debris and a large water cistern was removed, revealing the Herodian Western Wall in its full glory.
- From this point, along the outer face of the Herodian western wall of the Temple Mount, a long narrow tunnel was dug slowly and with much care under the supervision of archeologists. As work progressed under the buildings of the present Old City, the tunnel was systematically reinforced with concrete supports. A stretch of the Western Wall - 300 meters long - was revealed in pristine condition, exactly as constructed by Herod.
- The Temple Mount, the buildings and the Temple itself were completely destroyed by the Roman legions in 70 A.D. The lower part of the Temple Mount wall was preserved and its remains are still standing.
Church of the Holy Sepulcher -- Constantine the Great was the first Roman emperor to adopt Christianity and he made it the official religion of the Roman Empire. The emperor's mother, Queen Helena, who had converted to Christianity, left to visit the Holy Land with her son's blessing, authority, and funds. In Jerusalem she identified the place of crucifixion (the rock held to be Golgotha) and the nearby tomb known as Anastasis (Greek for resurrection). The emperor decided to build an appropriate shrine on the site, the magnificent Church of the Holy Sepulcher, described in detail by Eusebius, a contemporary historian and biographer.
The church was destroyed by the Persians in 614 A. D. and soon afterwards partly reconstructed. In 1010 it was destroyed by the Caliph Hakim of Egypt and rebuilt in 1048 by Byzantine emperor Constantine Monomachus. In 1144, the Crusaders rebuilt the entire church, put it under a single roof, and made many alterations and additions. Over the following centuries the church fell into disrepair.
In the 1960s, as part of the proposed restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, a comprehensive survey, including excavations beneath the foundations of the present-day church, which largely follows the plan of the Crusader church, was undertaken. The renovation of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is still in progress, but after generations of neglect, the building has already regained most of its former beauty.
Herodian Street -- Excavations were begun during the 1970s along the southwestern corner of the Herodian Temple Mount enclosure. Remains of structures from many periods, covering 2,000 years of history, were uncovered above the destruction layer from the Second Temple period.
From 1993 to 1997, new excavations were conducted between the Western Wall and the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount. After removing the debris of later periods, the Herodian street running along the Western Wall of the Temple Mount was exposed in its full length. It followed the course of the Tyropoeon Valley between the Temple Mount and the western hill, where the Upper City, the quarter of the well-to-do in the Herodian period, was located (today's Jewish and Armenian quarters within the Old City wall and Mt. Zion south of the wall).
The street was uncovered for a total length of 70 meters. It is about 10 meters wide, paved with thick stones, carefully trimmed and joined together for comfortable walking. On both sides the street is bounded with elevated curbstones and beneath it is an impressive network of drains, the lowest of them covered with stone vaults, high enough to walk in. Between the street and the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, a row of small shops opened onto the street. Evidence of the commerce that once took place here is provided by the many stone weights of different sizes that were found in this area.
Burial Sites -- The large number of burial sites and tombs in Jerusalem dating from the Second Temple period (second century B.C. to the first century A.D.) have been under intensive and continued investigation. Hundreds of tombs, elaborate and simple, were hewn into the slopes of the hills surrounding the city, mainly on the Mount of Olives and Mount Scopus. The burial caves were in continuous use for several generations by members of the same family.
Some of the important tombs include:
- Yad Avshalom -- The monument to Absalom, traditionally ascribed to the rebellious son of King David, is the most complete funerary monument dating to the Second Temple period.
- The Tomb of Zechariah -- By tradition the Prophet Zechariah or, by another tradition, the father of John the Baptist.
- The Tomb of Benei Hezir -- The name appears in the priestly roster of the First Temple: ...the seventeenth to Hezir (1 Chronicles 24:15) and again among the priests serving in the Second Temple (Nehemiah 10:20).
- The Tomb of Queen Helene of Adiabene -- The largest tomb in Jerusalem, is located north of the Old City. The tomb is ascribed to Helene, Queen of Adiabene (in the north of modern Iraq), who converted to Judaism in the first century A.D. and built a palace in Jerusalem.
- The Tombs of the Sanhedrin -- These are located northwest of the Old City, in the neighborhood still called Sanhedria.
- The Funerary Inscription of King Uzziah -- The Aramaic inscription dates to the latter part of the Second Temple period and tells of the reburial of the remains of Uzziah, King of Judah (769 733 B.C.):
Hither were brought
the bones of Uzziah
King of Judah
and do not open
The Bible recounts King Uzziahs deeds and conquests and also describes his burial: Uzziah rested with his fathers in the burial field of the kings, because, they said, he is a leper. (2 Chronicles 26:3)
- The Cave of Jehosef Son of Caiphas -- This is a small tomb located south of Jerusalem. The most elaborate of the ossuaries in it bears the Hebrew inscription, "Jehosef bar [son of] Caifa [Caiphas]." The name Caifa appears here for the first time in Hebrew and in an archeological context. It is also the name of the High Priest mentioned in the New Testament (Matthew 26: 3, 57) from whose house in Jerusalem Jesus was delivered to the Romans.
Nea Church and Cardo
-- During the Byzantine period (4th-7th centuries) Jerusalem was a Christian city with many churches. One of the most important churches was the impressive Nea Church, built by the emperor Justinian at the height of the Christian era of Jerusalem in the mid-sixth century. Thousands of Christian pilgrims came to Jerusalem to worship and they left many written descriptions of the city and its holy places. But the most important testimony of Byzantine Jerusalem is the famed Madaba map, made of colored mosaic, part of the floor of a church (in present-day Jordan) which was built at the end of the 6th century.
The remains of an elaborate north-south colonnaded street, the Cardo, were found in the center of the Jewish Quarter, exactly as depicted in the Madaba map. A 200-meter-long section of the street, four meters below present-day street level, was exposed. The Cardo was 22.5 meters wide, divided by two rows of stone columns into a broad street flanked on either side by five-meter-wide covered passageways. A wooden beam construction supported the roofing, probably of ceramic tiles. Bordering the street on its eastern side was an arcade of large arches. Shops lined the street along its southwestern part and behind the arcade of arches.
Pomegranate from Solomonic Temple -- The Israel Museum recently acquired a thumb-sized ivory pomegranate, 43 millimeters high. Its body is vase-shaped and it has a long neck with six elongated petals. The body is solid with a small, deep hole in the base, probably for the insertion of a rod. Around the shoulder of the pomegranate is an incised inscription in paleo-Hebrew script, part of which is missing. It was, however, possible to reconstruct the missing word based on the surviving text and biblical evidence.
The inscription reads: sacred donation for the priests of the house of [Yahwe]h.
This pomegranate is the only known relic associated with the Temple built by King Solomon on Mt. Moriah in Jerusalem. According to its paleographic style, the inscription dates to the mid-8th century B.C. The small pomegranate was probably a gift to the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem the only such temple in the Kingdom of Judah.
Water Systems of Biblical Times --
In times of war and siege, the City of David's water supply was vulnerable, since the Gihon spring in the Kidron Valley was outside the city walls.
- The "Warren's Shaft" System is the earliest subterranean water system and, filled with accumulated debris, it was discovered by C. Warren in 1867 and named after him. Investigation and documentation were conducted by H. Vincent (1909-1911). In the early 1980s, the Warren's Shaft System was cleared and reinvestigated by Y. Shilo and, since 1995, new research included excavation of the eastern extremity of the shaft.
- The Siloam Channel, cut at the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C., emerges from the Gihon Spring and extends approximately 400 meters southward along the low, eastern slope of the City of David, around the city's southern end and empties into a reservoir in the Tyropoeon Valley. The channel's northern part is 2.75 meters deep and is covered by large stones; the southern part is open, but becomes a rock-cut tunnel towards the end. Openings along the channel allowed water to flow out and irrigate the terraces on the eastern slope of the City of David.
- Hezekiah's tunnel is the latest and most impressive of the water systems built in the City of David. Although its existence was known hundreds of years ago, its systematic investigation was undertaken only in the last century. Clearance of the tunnel, thorough study and mapping were carried out by H. Vincent between 1909 and 1911.
- The Siloam Inscription, discovered in the tunnel at the end of the 19th century, was removed and is today in the Archeological Museum of Istanbul. The tunnel was cut into the rock beneath the City of David, finely carved, with chisel marks still visible. The downward slope from beginning to end is very gentle, approximately 2 meters altogether, with an average decline of 0.4%. The tunnel was cut during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah (end of 8th century B.C.) and described in detail in a six-line inscription, in paleo-Hebrew script, cut into the rock near the exit.
Learn more about archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem
View the Jerusalem Archaeological Park Timeline
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