A Thousand Years of History in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter
A walking tour reveals Jerusalem flourishing, destroyed and splendidly rebuilt.
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.
Already a library member? Log in here.
Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username
Footnotes
C.E. (Common Era) and B.C.E. (Before the Common Era), used by this author, are the alternate designations corresponding to A.D. and B.C. often used in scholarly literature.
The archaeological work was entrusted to the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Department of Antiquities and Museums (now the Israel Antiquities Authority) of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Israel Exploration Society. Benjamin Mazar was in charge of the Temple Mount excavations, Nahman Avigad worked in the Jewish Quarter and Yigal Shiloh headed the City of David excavations.
For earlier BAR articles on the Jerusalem excavations, see Nahman Avigad, “Jerusalem in Flames—The Burnt House Captures a Moment in Time,” BAR 09:06, and “Jerusalem Flourishing—A Craft Center for Stone, Pottery and Glass,” BAR 09:06.
For more on this model, see Rivka Gonen, “Visualizing First Temple Jerusalem,” BAR 15:03.
See Kathleen and Leen Ritmeyer, “Reconstructing Herod’s Temple Mount in Jerusalem,” BAR 15:06; Leen Ritmeyer, “Locating the Original Temple Mount,” BAR 18:02; and Joseph Patrich, “Reconstructing the Magnificent Temple Herod Built,” BR 04:05.
Dan Cole, “How Water Tunnels Worked,” BAR 06:02.
Magen Broshi, “Estimating the Population of Ancient Jerusalem,” BAR 04:02.
Maurice and Vivienne Wohl were the benefactors whose gift helped make possible the restoration of the Herodian Quarter and its display within a museum.
The Mishnah is the earliest codification of oral Jewish law, compiled in about 200 C.E., and is the basis of the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds.
See “Is the Jerusalem Cardo Roman After All?” BAR 03:04; see also Nahman Avigad, letter, “The Jerusalem Cardo—Roman and Byzantine,” Queries & Comments, BAR 09:04.
Endnotes
Archaeologists were aware of their responsibilities from the very first days of the war. In The Battle for Jerusalem (New York: Popular Library, 1974), then General Motta Gur describes his astonishment when three civilians showed up early one morning at the brigade command, just as the troops were approaching the Rockefeller Museum. They were archaeologists Nahman Avigad, Joseph Aviram and Avraham Biran, concerned with the safety of the ancient artifacts at the museum. The three were allowed to accompany the soldiers into battle.
Crowded alleys where pedestrians and beasts of burden clashed were already a problem in 1890, when the Turkish municipal authorities banned camels from the Old City. Those large animals—and organic polluters—were allowed to “park” just outside the Citadel, and the goods they carried were transferred to the backs of small donkeys. To this day most goods are brought into the Old City by donkeys.
Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. James B. Pritchard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), p. 288.