BAR Interview: Yigal Shiloh—Last Thoughts, Part II

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Yigal Shiloh, director of the City of David Excavations in Jerusalem from 1978 to 1985, died last November at the age of 50. Less than five months before his death, Shiloh was interviewed by BAR editor Hershel Shanks. In Part I of the interview (“BAR Interview: Yigal Shiloh—Last Thoughts,” BAR 14:02), which appeared in our March/April 1988 issue, Shiloh revealed details of his courageous two-year battle against stomach cancer. He also discussed his excavation methods and the spectacular finds from his Jerusalem dig. Printed below is part II of this interview.—Ed.

HS: One area I’m very curious about is the bullae house where you found 51 inscribed bullae. But you had to stop without excavating the whole building. You couldn’t go farther down eastward, down the slope. I wonder what’s in the rest of that house.

YS: We had to stop for a simple reason. This was the border of our excavation. Forget about the conflicts with the religious authorities. This was the border of our excavation, between the land owned by the state and by the Moslem religious authorities. And I am a man of law. I really care.

HS: Wait a minute. Let’s clarify one thing. Did you stop on the eastern end of that building because the land was owned by the Waqf [the Moslem religious trust] or because the ultra-Orthodox Jews said there was a Jewish cemetery there?

YS: What the ultra-Orthodox Jews said wasn’t accepted by anyone.

HS: Well, the most famous thing about your dig in the popular imagination was the dispute with the ultra-Orthodox. Tell me about that.

YS: No, no. We don’t have time for that now. Let’s go back to your question. I don’t want to talk about it; it’s a moot subject. We stopped excavating at the time in the bullae house because that is exactly the line of the land owned by the state. It so happened that I compromised with the ultra-Orthodox that I wouldn’t excavate farther down from this line. They didn’t know that I had to stop here anyway. So we stopped here because this was the border of our excavations.

HS: I repeat my question: What’s farther east? What’s farther down the slope?

YS: [Off the record.]

HS: In many quarters, you were a hero 039because you faced anti-archaeology forces in Israel when the ultra-Orthodox tried to stop your excavation. Tell us the story of that.

YS: I don’t want to go over this whole story. I just want to make a few points.

One is that I was not a hero against anti-archaeology forces. It was a different issue. It’s true, I admire archaeology, I work for archaeology, it’s my profession. It’s my life, as a matter of fact. But I wouldn’t sacrifice my private life for archaeology, that’s for sure. But there was something more important involved here. The dispute with the ultra-Orthodox in the City of David involved a larger question connected with the state of Israel itself. We stood against the ultra-Orthodox and we fought against them, and one reason was because they interrupted archaeology. This was an important factor, but not the main one. The main reason for us—myself, my family, my colleagues, my staff, Hebrew University, and Israelis generally—was larger. Here we have a group of very fanatic Jews who believe that Zionism is the most dangerous thing in the world, that the creation of the state of Israel is a crime committed by the Zionists and they’re trying to do everything they can to destroy it. Unfortunately, the religious fanatics already enjoy taxpayers’ money. Let’s put it very simply. Since the establishment of the state, and especially in the last ten years, with the help of the right-wing parties who want to buy these religious fanatics [for their votes on non-religious matters], these religious fanatics have been trying to take over, not only financially to get money for their own causes, but also culturally and morally. They want to determine what it means to be an Israeli and what kind of a country Israel is to be. Is it to be a theocratic state or a state of law? This was the main issue in the City of David dispute with the ultra-Orthodox.

The allegation of theirs that we were desecrating a Jewish cemetery was found to be completely unfounded. Nothing. It was researched. A special committee was appointed by the attorney general. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. The answer was very clear. Nothing. Believe me, if they could just find something against us, they would. The government at that time would have been happy to stop us 040from working and to remove this burden from them of having to deal with the ultra-Orthodox. But they couldn’t; they couldn’t find a thing.

It made me so angry to hear government leaders who came to visit me at the dig and who talked so bitterly and so angrily, using words I wouldn’t use against the ultra-religious parties, then to speak so differently in the Knesset [parliament] and vote for the ultra-Orthodox. What these politicians did had nothing to do with honesty.

It was just the opposite with us archaeologists. Okay, the ultra-Orthodox decided to make it a test case—the ultra-Orthodox against the state of Israel, against the government, against the [Jerusalem] municipality, against the [Hebrew] University, against science—all this through Area G, the famous Area G, charging us with finding Jewish bones that were not really found—okay, we’ll fight back. It was a sweet victory, I must say. When we got the decision of the Supreme Court, we almost cried, all of us. The court ruled that the government of Israel and the Ministry of Education should continue to give us a license to excavate, that we need not stop for one moment, because we were acting according to the law in Area G as in other parts of the City of David.

Is the fight over? No. Once it’s over in the City of David, the ultra-Orthodox will move to other places.

HS: Were you and your volunteers ever in physical danger?

YS: The volunteers were never in physical danger, but my family and I were. We had police in our house.

HS: Were you threatened?

YS: Not only were we threatened. Once they attacked me. I was in the hospital for a few hours and got some stitches above my eye. But we fought back, simply that. By “we” I mean the staff. I was less adamant than my staff. I had to hold my staff back, to let the police do the job. We were aggressive in only one way: We continued to do our work, going on with our scientific research.

This was important because once they stop archaeologists in the field, the next thing they will try to stop Biblical scholars in the library. Then they will try to stop Biblical criticism; they will try to suppress books that do not take their view of the Bible.

HS: Did they physically try to stop you?

YS: Yes, they attacked me, but I was stronger than they.

HS: You mean physically?

YS: Physically. I attacked back, yes.

HS: You fought back physically?

YS: Physically, I fought back, against a group of them. The work did not stop, except for one day when the government stopped us, the same day we were in the Supreme Court. Except for that day the work did not stop, in Area G or in other areas.

The principle involved was not simply of archaeology, but of freedom of research. The image of Israel had come to a point that the Supreme Court had to say that the state of Israel is a state of law and not a state of terrorists.

HS: Did they throw stones?

YS: Plenty of stones.

HS: Did they spit?

YS: They spit. They spit on my daughter. I remember a very tragic moment. One time they saw my daughter at the dig, and two of them spit on her and called her “Whore, whore!” She was so angry that she spit back; then she came to me and asked me “Did I do okay, father? Did I do the right thing?” I said, “We, the Shilohs, do not spit on people. But in this case—specifically in this case—you were right. If they raise a hand on you, raise a hand back. Put them in their place.”

Now, I always stress this is not typical of religious Jews. We don’t fight with religious Orthodox Jews; we fight with the ultra-Orthodox Jews. As a matter of fact at the demonstrations we had more Orthodox Jews with skull caps with us and against the ultra-Orthodox. Because the Orthodox Jews—not the ultra-Orthodox—understood the essence of the fight. The ultra-Orthodox were using us as a tool to fight against the Orthodox Jews. The ultra-Orthodox fanatics hate Orthodox Jews more than they hate me. And I use the word “hate,” if I have to, judging from what I have seen.

HS: Let’s talk about archaeology in general. As you know, there’s been a dispute about the propriety or the usefulness of the term “Biblical archaeology.” What is your view?

YS: It is a legitimate dispute—kind of. You have to live, as I have this past year, in North Carolina, in the Bible Belt, to understand what a different meaning the Bible has here than in Israel. My wife is in Biblical studies; I am in archaeology, Biblical archaeology. We teach, we do research in the Bible. For us, the Bible is a source of history. But our family is not religious, we are not observant. Still, we work with the Bible. We are proud of the Bible. We work with it. How could you not if you are to work on the history of Israel? We teach Bible in school, in secular schools, like you teach history. Now, you can teach Bible any way you want to; you can endorse the Bible any way you believe; you can take it as a holy script if you are religious. That’s what’s so nice about the Bible. It is special for everyone. That’s how we see it in that way. But in the States you find that the word of the Bible has a little different meaning. More, if I may, “PTL problems,” more of this kind of thing. So I understand why some of my American colleagues resent a little bit this terminology of Biblical archaeology—which is really so simple and correct. Biblical archaeology, the archaeology of the Bible or the archaeology of the period of the Bible, or the archaeology of the Land of the Bible is the same as Greek archaeology, Egyptian archaeology, Byzantine archaeology and so on.

A few of my colleagues in the States are trying to find a new name. I 041remember when I first came to teach at Harvard in 1976, I placed my classes under the title Syro-Palestinian archaeology. I was very young then, and I thought this was the right thing to do, like my American colleagues. Today I would place it under the title Biblical archaeology.

Let me explain: I want people to know what I’m talking about when I speak about the Bible and archaeology. The Bible is an important book of literature, of history, of beliefs, of so many elements all together. We archaeologists, when we try to excavate the material culture of a civilization speak about Canaanites, Israelites, Judea, Israel, the Second Temple period, the Persian period, Ezra, Nehemiah and so on, we use the Bible to a very great extent—and correctly so. But if you are a fundamentalist or if you are a very religious Jew, you cannot criticize the Bible. If you are an historian, the Bible is a very important source of history, but you can criticize it, you can review it, and you can use it as you think it should be used on the particular occasion.

In recent years, there has been a great deal of controversy about the period of the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan, the period of the Judges. Working with the archaeological evidence and the information in the Bible, controversial as it is, you get beautiful results regarding the 13th, the 12th, the 11th centuries. Today, we get a completely different picture than the picture given to us by giants like [William Foxwell] Albright, [Yigael] Yadin, [Benjamin] Mazar and others 10 or 15 years ago. Their studies are now outdated. But just because the archaeologists today are working out the details, with a lot of new information, but correctly using the old material together with the new, this is still the Biblical period. What can you do about it? Do you want to change the name “Judges”? Or the name “settlement”? What we have to do is get the contents correctly, not change the name of Biblical archaeology. The problem is not with the name, the problem is with the contents. If you compare what we are doing today with what was done years ago, there is a difference. Archaeology today is a science, an independent science. Biblical archaeology today is not the same as it was 20 years ago.

HS: Isn’t that true of all fields, though? Don’t we progress?

YS: That is exactly what I’m trying to say. I think Bill Dever suggested calling Biblical archaeology today the “new Biblical archaeology.” I said to Bill, “It’s fine with me, but do they call chemistry the “new chemistry”; or physics the “new physics”; or history the “new history”? No! Science always progresses, and I am very pleased that we have progressed, too. We now get help from the applied sciences, from chemistry, physics and so on. Come to our Institute at the Hebrew University. You will see that we have a great deal to do with other departments.

HS: So you don’t see any need to reject the term?

YS: I would spend my energy and time with the contents more than with the name. Let’s forget about this issue and just do our job correctly. Bill Dever lectures about Gezer, Larry Stager lectures about Ashkelon, Yigal Shiloh lectures about Jerusalem—the content is the same. And that is what Biblical archaeology is.

HS: You were, I believe, one of the first scholars to use the term four-room house. What is the four-room house and what was your research in connection with it?

YS: I confess. I was the one who developed it as a term. I came to archaeology not from a regular high school, but from a technical high school. My father thought I should be able to earn a living; he wanted me to become an engineer. I was the only one in my class who loved the one hour of Bible class we were given each week. After the army, I went to the university and decided to study archaeology instead of engineering. But still engineering is in my blood. That’s why, when I studied archaeology, I wrote papers—and later books—on technical matters. For example, very early in my work I noticed that nobody’s doing anything on the proto-aeolic capital. That became my Ph.D. dissertation. Twelve years after that it became a book.

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The four-room house was also the subject of a paper I did—for my master’s degree. I said to myself, “My God, here we have a type of house that can be defined.” I found that here in Palestine in a certain period in the Iron Age I could find about 100 samples of a house with the same type of architecture.

HS: What was that type?

YS: It was called the four-room house by Albright and by others. That’s why I used the name. I have recently come back to the subject. About 95 percent of them, we now know, appear in Israelite settlements and therefore I prefer to call it an Israelite-type house. I am always astonished when people say to me “Why do you call it an Israelite-type house? I have seen an example of it somewhere else.” I say very nice, but 95 percent, statistically, are in Israelite settlements.

HS: How does the four-room house fit into town planning?

YS: It is connected with another development, the casemate wall. The casemate wall appears in Palestine some time in the 10th century, maybe a little bit earlier. The usual explanation of my colleagues, which I completely resent, is that it came from Anatolia or from Greece or from somewhere else, as if nothing was invented here. But I can now prove that the first Israelite settlement was a combination of the four-room house with the broad room at the back becoming part of what would later become a casemate wall. When you move from the 13th, to the 12th, to the 11th century B.C., to the 10th century, when finally we have a need for royal cities, which are not simply settlements that developed, but were built according to a particular plan, you have in these royal cities a casemate wall by itself, not connected to the house, completely separate. Near the casemate wall you have four-room houses, an administrative center, a citadel, a royal center. But the casemate wall developed historically in Palestine from a circle of four-room houses with the broad rooms forming a kind of casemate wall.

HS: Just to put on the record what a four-room house is, it’s a rectangular structure with one broad room and three long rooms extending from it that may be sub-divided.

YS: You are a better journalist than I am. It must be a rectangular house with a broad room, with one, two or three rooms or spaces adjacent to it. This same type of plan—sometimes with a four-room plan and sometimes with a three-room plan with only two rooms stemming from the broad room—was used for citadels, for public buildings, for simple houses and for fancy houses. You see it starting sometime in the 12th century, at places like Tel Masos, you have them at Ai, the one that was published in BAR.^a And it goes all the way to the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel [in 722 B.C.] and the southern kingdom of Judah [in 586 B.C.]. Now, this house can be used by non-Israelites, too, no question about it. You may have three or four examples of a non-Israelite four-room house at Tel Qasile from the Philistine level. Let’s say we have 10 examples all together from non-Israelite sites, compared with 150 or 160 that can be found in typical Israelite settlements. And still people ask me, “Why do you call it Israelite?” You can call it whatever you want to, but you have to give it a name.

HS: What are the functions of the different rooms in the four-room house?

YS: In the main courtyard, in the middle long room, we have all the installations—cooking pots, ovens and so on. To the left and right you have small rooms or cells with cobbled floors divided from the center courtyard by rows of pillars. This indicates that these side rooms were where the animals were kept. The back room—the broad room—many times is a kind of sitting room for the men. The private living quarters and sleeping rooms were, I believe, on the second floor. In many cases we find steps outside the house leading up to the second floor, just as in our houses today. We found in our Jerusalem excavation beautiful examples of the four-room house, for instance, Ahiel’s house. You can see it today, in the archaeological garden, with the steps taking you up to what was the second floor.

HS: You believe the sleeping quarters were on the second floor?

YS: Yes, I believe so, judging from primitive Arab houses in villages today.

HS: You use an analogy with primitive Arab houses. That’s done more and more today using sophisticated studies of Arab culture, especially Arab culture of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Yet Albright did this long ago in a less sophisticated, more impressionistic way. Today, however, it’s called 043ethnoarchaeology. He didn’t have a fancy name for it.

YS: Nice name, don’t you think? [Laughter.] But I don’t want to joke about it. We are using ethnoarchaeology today. But this just underlines the fact that Albright could do everything by himself.

I’m jealous when I sit with my old teacher and now colleague Professor Mazar. He could master everything in our field. Unfortunately, we [younger archaeologists] are sometimes mere technicians today. We try to be expert in one area. Today, you cannot be an expert in so many areas. Each area requires so much work and study and research. Today, we need a team with many members. Each one works in a particular period and on a certain subject. You cannot be a philologist and an ethnoarchaeologist. You cannot be a prehistorian and a Greek historian. That’s a fact today.

HS: Can you give me some recollections of what Yigael Yadin was like as a human being, as an archaeologist?

YS: One thing we can say—all of us who worked with him—he was great. I was fortunate enough to work with [Nahman] Avigad at the Ein Gedi caves. We had a beautiful time together. Then later I worked with [Yohanan] Aharoni at Ramat Rahel, then at Arad for a few years with Ruth Amiran, a great archaeologist. I worked some time with Munya Dunayevsky, with [Benjamin] Mazar and then with Yadin. I tried not to identify myself with any one of them, but to be myself. But later, I must say, I identified myself with Yadin. The man knew how to think, how to analyze. Ask any member of his staff from Megiddo or Hazor or Masada and they’ll remember evenings when we would sit together analyzing the material. At Masada—it was my third or fourth year in archaeology—I was in charge of the excavation of one of the houses—and I would prepare my case, working for days cleaning sections, doing what I had to do. I tried to describe the thing to Yadin when he came on one of his tours of the site. On the day he came to see my results he sat next to me. We looked and he said to me “What do you see here?” As I started to say something he interrupted and said, “Ah, you see this” and so on and on. And I was jealous and angry at the same time, to see how he could read things, and feel things correctly.

He didn’t like to deal with details too much. Sometimes, though, he would catch hold of a certain detail and never leave it. But usually he tried to reconstruct the overall picture, based on the details. Sometimes I’ve seen Mazar get a very new idea in the field, and immediately he can analyze it correctly and see the contribution of this new evidence to the overall picture. Some of us have to wait to digest the evidence. I do believe that the time between getting the idea, digesting it and analyzing it correctly makes a difference. Yadin knew how to digest things. On the other hand, he was very stubborn.

HS: Once he had an idea, he wouldn’t give it up.

YS: He was stubborn. But I was stubborn, too. [Laughter.] He knew how to delegate authority, once he trusted you.

HS: He was very inspiring, wasn’t he?

YS: He was very inspiring. He knew how to talk about things. He could make it vivid. I dug at Megiddo with him and then worked on the material for years. I did all the technical work. He wrote a book about Megiddo and Hazor. And even I would take it home and read it like a detective novel, the same night. This just gives you an idea about his talent. He was very human in many ways. But he was very secluded; he didn’t have many friends. He liked to be by himself, with a few friends. But I know he always kept an eye on us and our families, saying a good word here and there for us when we had some problem. He was, as we say in Hebrew, a big man.

HS: How about [Yohanan] Aharoni? Was he of the same stature?

YS: No, he was a different type of person. Completely different, Aharoni was more down to earth. I really enjoyed working with him. I learned from him. I can say that I learned technical archaeology from two people 044who are really good in the field—Yohanan Aharoni and Ruth Amiran. I worked with Yohanan for two seasons at Ramat Rahel. He did everything, really. He didn’t leave himself time to think. We had a lot of discussions together in the field, about stratigraphy, problems of loci, and so on. But he was very light in this way; he would let things go. Maybe I don’t express myself correctly in English. He was coming from a different direction. From him, I could learn more about geographical history. When you ask me to compare Aharoni with Yadin, it’s like asking me to compare children. Each one has his own points. I tried to benefit from all of them.

HS: Can you identify the difference between Aharoni and Yadin that produced their bitter personal antagonism?

YS: Shakespeare wrote about it—jealousy! Only here it was not jealousy in love or for women, it was science, success. I was very sorry about it. Sometimes, if one is a poor man, then it’s understandable. But here both were rich. Each was very rich in archaeology. They had their success—the research, the publications, they were prominent archaeologists. And somehow—we were all very sorry about it.

HS: You mentioned that one of the very difficult things in archaeology is attributing cultural remains to a particular ethnic group. This is especially difficult in the period of Israel’s emergence, isn’t it?

YS: Right.

HS: How do you tell whether something is Israelite? As a matter of fact, what does it mean to be Israelite in the settlement period?

YS: When I teach this I always use as an example the Philistines, because with the Philistines, you can do it.

HS: It’s easier because of their pottery?

YS: Sure. But why is it easier? Why from their pottery? Because we have the literary sources about the Sea Peoples [the Philistines were one of the Sea Peoples] in Egypt, for example, which gives us a basis for chronology.

Now we also have the references in the Bible. So why shouldn’t we also consider the Biblical sources? We have the chronological framework and we know from the Bible where to look for them. We know the area—Philistia. We also have an idea about their connections with the peoples to the west. Now you come to the excavations, to the mounds, and you look for them. If you find a certain phase on top of a Canaanite destruction of the 12th century with new pottery that can be connected with the west, with a new culture, if you put all of this together, it’s—not 100 percent—it’s Philistine. I can then speak about the culture, I can speak about the sites, I can look in Gath, Ashdod, Ashkelon and so forth.

Now let’s turn to the Israelites. Let’s use the same method we just used with the Philistines. Let’s try to do the same thing with the Israelites.

I know there are people who say they are very happy to do it with the Philistines—and very literally reach conclusions—but they are afraid to do it with the Israelites.

HS: Why?

YS: I don’t know.

HS: Is it an anti-Bible bias?

YS: Not with everyone, but in certain cases, yes.

HS: Would you identify anybody who has this anti-Bible bias?

YS: Only in court [laughter]. Now, to the Israelites, which I approach without bias. I can show you two examples, one that works and one that doesn’t work as well. I already told you about the four-room house, which is typically Israelite. Now take the collar-rimmed 045jar. We used to say that collar-rimmed jars are typically Israelite. But you have to be very careful because we know today that the picture of the settlement period is not so simple. It’s very complex. There was a century or two [12th–11th centuries B.C.] where we have Israelites, Canaanites, Philistines, all in one area trying to settle. This makes for difficult territorial problems. And there are many other problems. So we find collar-rimmed jars at the site of Shiloh, an Israelite site. But it’s not like the four-room house, where 90 percent are from Israelite sites; with collar-rimmed jars it’s 50–50. They can be found in the mountains, in the Shephelah, in the Galilee, in Megiddo, in Canaanite cities, from the 13th century on. We can trace a typological development of the collar-rimmed jar to date them. Certainly it was used in Israel. But one must be very careful about identifying it as Israelite. When I come out the other way with respect to the four-room house, I don’t hesistate to conclude “Yes, although it could be used by others, nevertheless 90 percent of them, 95 percent of them, were used by the Israelites.” Therefore I’m ready to call it an Israelite-type house. This is how we do research today. And I think we’ve improved our methods and our knowledge of the Settlement period very much. If you follow the work of my colleagues, Ami Mazar, Israel Finkelstein, Adam Zertal and others, you will see that the picture is becoming clear. I believe that we need another ten years with all the details, maybe computerize them, and then we will have a clear picture, just as we do now in the later periods.

HS: What pattern do you see emerging for the settlement period?

YS: In my view, the pattern, the overall picture, without going into details, is very complicated. But from the evidence of archaeology, from the historical literature including the Bible, the evidence of ethnoarchaeology and so on, we are beginning to get a picture. At the end of the 13th century, Canaanite culture was quite poor. People like David Ussishkin have shown that the Egyptians ruled Canaan then, and continued to do so on into the 12th century, too. If you were to fix the end of the Late Bronze Age today, surely you would go down to 1160 or 1150 [B.C.]. But for convenience let’s use the standard date of 1200. After the end of the Late Bronze Age, there is a continuation of Canaanite culture, but not so fine as it was before. We have this Canaanite culture at Beth Shean, at Megiddo, and at other sites in Palestine. At the same time, the Sea Peoples—the Philistines—are settling in the area of the Shephelah. On the coast we find them about 1200 B.C. Twenty-five years later, we have them in the Shephelah. Mixed in are the Canaanites. In the mountains in Galilee, Transjordan, we have the Israelites—you may call these people whatever you want. Perhaps only later were they Israelite, according to the new sociological analysis, but they were there.

HS: Did you say proto-Israelite?

YS: You can call them whatever you want—proto-Israelite, Israelite, to-be-Israelite-later. This population element that we call Hebrew, Israelite, is already settled. The picture in the Galilee, where we find so many new settlements at this time is typical of what is called the settlement period.

Now if I could have a satellite map like they have for the weather on TV, I’d have one map showing Canaanite, Israelite, Philistine, Egyptian areas. Then the areas start to move like on TV. The Canaanite area diminishes. Their settlements, like Megiddo for example, become smaller, not so rich, not so urbanized. The Philistines flourish. The Israelite settlements become bigger and bigger. The main conflict is not between the Canaanites who are retracting, but between the Israelites and the Sea Peoples, the Philistines.

To create this picture I use archaeology and historical sources at the same time.

This conflict comes to a head as described in the Bible for sure because the Sea Peoples practically took over Canaan. And so to the next satellite map. At the end of 200 years of struggle the Philistines have become restricted. The Israelites have become stronger, and we have the period of David and Solomon.

Now, I surely don’t believe that 600,000 people crossed the desert as the Bible says, but on the other hand, I’m not ready to disregard the Bible altogether. I’ve dealt with the Bible 046enough, as a secular person, to understand that it’s not just a bunch of legends of the elders to explain what happened. There is something in it. But you have to understand it.

HS: You have restored and preserved a great deal in the City of David. How about restoring the Middle Bronze gateway to Jerusalem that Kathleen Kenyon excavated?

YS: If you give me the budget I’ll gladly do it.

HS: There’s a budget for other restoration, isn’t there?

YS: We have, first of all, our own excavation. We have to restore it, we have to preserve it. Because the City of David is such a big project, there are a lot of finds. So you don’t do some other projects. But as I told you, if we get a budget for Kenyon’s gate, surely. I even tried to do it with my own money. I couldn’t.

HS: Why not? Too big a job?

YS: Yes. You have ten dollars, and you have to spend it one way or another.

HS: You agree it would be important to restore it?

YS: No question about it. And it can be done very nicely.

HS: How much money would it take?

YS: I don’t know, but it can be done.

HS: Somebody who reads this might be willing to donate the money.

YS: We have to go step by step. The City of David Society [which sponsored my excavation] would like to take over the area of Kenyon’s gate, too. It can be done, it can be easily done because we are in the area. But we spent our money on another part of the site. The Society must give priority to what we excavated. But Kenyon’s excavation has to be incorporated within the City of David Archaeological Park. We cannot restore the whole tower [of Kenyon’s gate], but surely we can do something with the remains that Kenyon excavated, to preserve it, restore it, so it will not be a garbage area. And I would say we can even go down to the road where you begin to climb up—this is a publicly owned area—and excavate a small area there, so you will walk into the city through the ancient gate. It can be done.

HS: Thank you very much, Yigal.

Yigal Shiloh, director of the City of David Excavations in Jerusalem from 1978 to 1985, died last November at the age of 50. Less than five months before his death, Shiloh was interviewed by BAR editor Hershel Shanks. In Part I of the interview (“BAR Interview: Yigal Shiloh—Last Thoughts,” BAR 14:02), which appeared in our March/April 1988 issue, Shiloh revealed details of his courageous two-year battle against stomach cancer. He also discussed his excavation methods and the spectacular finds from his Jerusalem dig. Printed below is part II of this interview.—Ed. HS: One area I’m very curious about is […]