The Millo: Jerusalem’s Lost Monument

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Have archaeologists been looking in the wrong place for the Millo, one of Jerusalem’s most important and ancient biblical monuments? We believe the Millo—a structure that the Bible lists alongside the Temple of Yahweh and the royal palaces of David and Solomon (1 Kings 9:15)—was not a constructed foundation or massive retaining wall, as many scholars have argued, but rather a monumental fortification that guarded the city’s most precious resource: water. Indeed, the biblical writers credit some of Judah’s most famous kings, including David, Solomon, and Hezekiah, with building and renovating the Millo. It was also the setting for the […]

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Footnotes

1. Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron, “Light at the End of the Tunnel,” BAR, January/February 1999.

2. Hershel Shanks, “The Siloam Pool,” BAR, September/October 2005.

Endnotes

1. Kathleen M. Kenyon, Digging Up Jerusalem (New York: Praeger, 1974), pp. 94–103.

2. Lawrence E. Stager, “The Archaeology of the East Slope of Jerusalem and the Terraces of the Kidron,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 41.2 (1982), pp. 111–121.

3. For further discussion, see Chris McKinny et al., “The Setting of the Assassination of King Joash of Judah: Biblical and Archaeological Evidence for Identifying the House of Millo,” Journal of Biblical Literature 140.4 (2021), pp. 643–662.

4. For detailed discussions of the dating evidence, see Johanna Regev et al., “Absolute Dating of the Gihon Spring Fortifications, Jerusalem,” Radiocarbon 59.4 (2017), pp. 1171–1193; Johanna Regev et al., “Middle Bronze Age Jerusalem: Recalculating Its Character and Chronology,” Radiocarbon 63.3 (2021), pp. 853–883.