The Missing Millennium in Jerusalem’s Archaeology - The BAS Library
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Jerusalem Update

The Missing Millennium in Jerusalem’s Archaeology

By Hershel Shanks

What happened to tenth-century B.C. Jerusalem? This has been the focus of much recent scholarly attention and has engaged BAR readers as well.a The tenth century was the time of the United Monarchy of Israel, the glory days of King David and his son King Solomon. For Biblical minimalists, however, who deny any historicity to the events described in the Bible,b tenth-century Jerusalem is Exhibit A. Jerusalem is surely one of the most excavated cities in the world—yet it has yielded almost no remains that date to the tenth century. David and Solomon and their supposed kingdom are mere […]

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Footnotes

1.

See “David’s Jerusalem—Fiction or Reality?”: Margreet Steiner, “It’s Not There: Archaeology Proves a Negative,” BAR 24:04, Jane Cahill, “It Is There: The Archaeological Evidence Proves It,” BAR 24:04, and Nadav Na’aman, “It Is There: Ancient Texts Prove It,” BAR 24:04.

2.

See “Face to Face: Biblical Minimalists Meet Their Challengers,” BAR 23:04; and “The Search for History in the Bible,” a three-article section in BAR 26:02.

3.

Nadav Na’aman, “Cow Town or Royal Capital? Evidence for Iron Age Jerusalem,” BAR 23:04; “It Is There: Ancient Texts Prove It,” BAR 24:04.

4.

Gabriel Barkay, “What’s an Egyptian Temple Doing in Jerusalem?” BAR 26:03.

5.

Jane Cahill, “It Is There: The Archaeological Evidence Proves It,” BAR 24:04.

6.

See Hershel Shanks, “Everything You Ever Knew About Jerusalem Is Wrong (Well, Almost),” BAR 25:06.

Endnotes

1.

See, for example, Benjamin Maisler (Mazar), “Cypriote Pottery at a Tomb in the Vicinity of Jerusalem,” American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature 49 (1932–1933), pp. 248–253; D.C. Baramki, “An Ancient Cistern in the Grounds of Government House, Jerusalem,” Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine 4 (1936), pp. 165–167 (identified by Gabriel Barkay as a tomb); and Ruth Amiran, “A Late Bronze Age II Pottery Group from a Tomb in Jerusalem,” Eretz Israel 6 (1960), pp. 25–37.

2.

See Henk J. Franken and Margreet L. Steiner, Excavations in Jerusalem 1961–1967, vol. 2, The Iron Age Extramural Quarter on the South-East Hill (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 6–7, fig. 2–2.

3.

Yigal Shiloh, Excavations at the City of David I, 1978–1982, Qedem 19 (1984), chart on p. 4.

4.

Eilat Mazar and Benjamin Mazar, Excavations in the South of the Temple Mount: The Ophel of Biblical Jerusalem, Qedem 29 (1989), esp. p. 31, photo 61 and plate 13.1.

5.

Shiloh, Excavations, p. 28.

6.

I am grateful to Jane Cahill for her help on this article. She caught several errors and provided me with much of the documentation.