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It Had to Happen

Scientists examine remains of ancient bathroom

By Jane M. Cahill, Karl Reinhard, David Tarler, Peter Warnock

After you finish this article—reading time approximately eight minutes—you will know a great deal about two somewhat esoteric disciplines: palynology and archaeoparasitology. But first a little practical in formation about ancient toilet seats, two of which were found in excavations in the City of David,a the oldest inhabited part of Jerusalem. The City of David is a small, 15-acre site located on a ridge just south of the Old City’s Temple Mount. It was on this site that the city of Jerusalem was founded. Although the city expanded under the Israelites, first onto the Temple Mount to the north […]

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Footnotes

1.

Directed by the late Yigal Shiloh of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the excavations were conducted from 1978 to 1985. Authors Tarler and Cahill served as area supervisors in Area G where one of the toilet seats that are the focus of this article were discovered, and are now responsible for publishing the results of the excavations in that area.

2.

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era) are the scholarly alternate designations corresponding to B.C. and A.D.

3.

See Hershel Shanks, “The City of David After Five Years of Digging,” BAR 11:06.

4.

See Neil Asher Silberman, “In Search of Solomon’s Lost Treasure,” BAR 06:04.

Endnotes

1.

Excavated under the direction of Eilat Mazar, who has kindly allowed the authors to publish information about the toilet seat.

2.

Louis-Hugues Vincent, Underground Jerusalem (London: Cox, 1911), p. 29.

3.

Kathleen M. Kenyon, “Excavations in Jerusalem, 1966,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 99 (1961), pp. 65–71, pl. XIIIB. Kenyon dated this room to the late Iron Age II, about eighth-to-seventh centuries B.C.E.

4.

Crystal M. Bennett, “Excavations at Buseirah, Southern Jordan 1972: Preliminary Report.” Levant 6 (1974), pp. 1–24, esp. pp. 8–9, fig. 6:XII.3, pl. IB.

5.

Personal communication to authors Cahill and Tarler.

6.

Egypt’s Golden Age: The Art of Living in the New Kingdom 1558–1085 B.C. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1982), p. 31, fig. 12.

7.

J. V. Kinner Wilson, “Organic Diseases of Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Diseases in Antiquity ed. T. A. Sandison and D. Brothwell (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1967), pp. 194–195.

8.

T. A. Sandison, “Parasitic Diseases,” in Diseases in Antiquity, pp. 178–179; R. Hoeppli, “The Knowledge of Parasites and Parasitic Infections from Ancient Times to the 17th Century,” Experimental Parasitology 5 (1956) p. 398.

9.

See also Michael Zohary, Plants of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), p. 100.