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Jerusalem as Textbook

Large excavations give way to smaller, more focused digs as archaeological parks and displays sprout up all over the city.

By Gideon Avni

The magnitude and extent of archaeological activity in Jerusalem since the city was reunited in 1967 are unparalleled in the city’s long history of research. Since then, we have seen two major waves of excavations. The first, during the late 1960s and 1970s, involved three large-scale excavations—at the southern wall of the Temple Mount, directed by Benjamin Mazar;1 in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, directed by Nahman Avigad;2 and in the oldest inhabited part of the city, on a ridge south of the Temple Mount known as the City of David, directed by Yigal Shiloh.3 The […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Dan Bahat, “Jerusalem Down Under: Tunneling Along Herod’s Temple Mount Wall,” BAR 21:06.

2.

See Hershel Shanks, “The Jerusalem Wall That Shouldn’t Be There,” BAR 13:03.

3.

A burial trough is a rectangular, coffin-shaped burial place hewn in the rock inside a burial chamber.

4.

See Zvi Greenhut, “Burial Cave of the Caiaphas Family,” BAR 18:05; and Ronny Reich, “God Knows Their Names,” BAR 22:02. For a discussion of Jerusalem’s Second Temple period tombs, see Gideon Avni and Zvi Greenhut, “Akeldama—Resting Place of the Rich and Famous,” BAR 20:06 and Kathleen and Leen Ritmeyer, “Akeldama—Potter’s Field or High Priest’s Tomb?” BAR 20:06.

5.

See Dan Gill, “How They Met—Geology Solves Longstanding Mystery of Hezekiah’s Tunnelers,” BAR 20:04.

Endnotes

1.

See Benjamin Mazar, “Excavations Near Temple Mount Reveal Splendors of Herodian Jerusalem,” BAR 06:04; Hershel Shanks, “Excavating in the Shadow of the Temple Mount,” BAR 12:06; and Meir Ben-Dov, In the Shadow of the Temple: The Discovery of Ancient Jerusalem, trans. Ina Friedman (New York: Harper & Row, 1982).

2.

See the following BAR articles: Nahman Avigad, “How the Wealthy Lived in Herodian Jerusalem,” BAR 02:04; Avigad, “Jerusalem Flourishing—A Craft Center for Stone, Pottery and Glass,” BAR 09:06; Avigad, “Jerusalem in Flames—The Burnt House Captures a Moment in Time,” BAR 09:06; and Nitza Rosovsky, “A Thousand Years of History in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter,” BAR 18:03. See also Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1983).

3.

See Yigal Shiloh and Mendel Kaplan, “Digging in the City of David,” BAR 05:04; Shiloh, “Jerusalem’s Water Supply During Siege—The Rediscovery of Warren’s Shaft,” BAR 07:04; and Shanks, “The City of David After Five Years of Digging,” BAR 11:06. See also Shiloh, Excavations at the City of David I, 1978–1982, Qedem 19 (Jerusalem: Hebrew Univ., 1984).

4.

See Rafa‘ Abu Raya and Lilly Gershoni, “Jerusalem, Street of the Chain,” Excavations and Surveys in Israel (ESI) 10 (1992), and Elena Kogan-Zehavi, “Jerusalem—The Gate of the Chain,” Hadashot Arkheologiot 104 (1995) (in Hebrew).

5.

Vassilios Tzaferis et al., “Excavations at the Third Wall, North of Jerusalem Old City,” in Hillel Geva, ed., Ancient Jerusalem Revealed (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994), pp. 287–292; David Amit and Samuel Wolff, “An Armenian Monastery in the Morasha Neighborhood, Jerusalem,” Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, pp. 293–298.

6.

Shimon Gibson and Gershon Edelstein, “Investigating Jerusalem’s Rural Landscape,” Levant 17 (1985).

7.

See Yitzhak Meitlis, “Jerusalem, Wadi Zimra,” ESI 10 (1992); Rina Avner et al., “Jerusalem, Pisgat Ze’ev (Deir Ghazala)” ESI 10 (1992); Jon Seligman, “Jerusalem, Pisgat Ze’ev (East A),” ESI 12 (1994); Yonatan Nadelman, “Jerusalem, Pisgat Ze’ev—H. Zimri,” ESI 12 (1994); Eli Shukrun and Alegre Savariego, “Jerusalem, Pisgat Ze’ev—Villa Quarter,” ESI 12 (1994); Seligman, “Jerusalem, Kh. Ka’kul,” ESI 13 (1995).