The Riches of Ketef Hinnom

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I’ve lived in Jerusalem for more than 59 years. I sometimes feel I can put myself in the shoes (or minds) of ancient Jerusalemites. I think I can tell better than most where these ancient Jerusalemites would have located different facilities.

I came to Ketef Hinnom in the early 1970s looking for evidence of these ancients, such as quarries, farms, orchards, military encampments, burials, roads, forts—even cultic activity that took place outside the city.

Ketef Hinnom is located just opposite the Old City—to the southwest, across the Hinnom Valley from Mt. Zion. When I began collecting surface potsherds and looking for terrain features, I found evidence of human activity over thousands of years. In each period, the inhabitants had cleared away the remains and looted the treasures of their predecessors.

In 1975, we began a relatively small excavation that turned out to be extraordinary both in the quantity and 024the richness of the finds: an ancient church, cremation burials of the Tenth Roman Legion, burial caves from the time of the Judahite monarchy, jewelry, weapons and—the pièces de résistance—two inscribed silver amulets that contain the earliest texts ever discovered from the Hebrew Bible.

Ketef Hinnom (“the Shoulder of Hinnom”)¹ is an elevated hill adjacent to St. Andrew’s Scottish Church and Hospice, which was built in 1927 on a hill dominating a spectacular view of the Old City walls and Mt. Zion; it is now outside the walls but was once part of the Upper City of ancient Jerusalem. Beyond it to the east lie Silwan village, the Mount of Olives and the Judean wilderness. The hill rises more than 250 feet above the Hinnom Valley. To the north of the hill lies the 150-year-old Montefiore windmill that served the first modern settlers outside the Old City walls, and beyond that, the historic King David Hotel.

Ketef Hinnom also sits on the border between the Biblical tribal allotments of Judah and Benjamin: “Then the boundary goes up by the Valley of the son of Hinnom at the southern slope of the Jebusites—that is, Jerusalem” (Joshua 15:8). Ketef Hinnom is thus located on the road connecting David’s birthplace, Bethlehem, with his capital, Jerusalem.

During the Second Temple period, the Roman general 025Pompey most probably built his camp in this area, opposite the city, when he attacked Jerusalem in 63 B.C.E. Later, in 70 C.E. during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome, the Roman army built a section of its siege wall here.²

We excavated at the site intermittently between 1975 and 1996, for a total of seven seasons.³

Before the Scottish church was built in 1927, the slopes of Ketef Hinnom were covered with olive and mulberry trees. An 1852 map drawn by the Dutch geographer C.W.M. Van de Velde shows a fortified watchtower called Qasr el-Ghazal (“Fort of the Gazelle”) at Ketef Hinnom.⁴ Qasr el-Ghazal was probably built early in the Turkish-Ottoman period (1516–1917) and guarded the southern approach to Jerusalem.

Also from the Turkish-Ottoman period, we uncovered clay smoking pipes, coins and a Greek medallion depicting Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist.

One of the burial caves we discovered (Cave 20), originally hewn in the seventh century B.C.E., was reused by the Turkish army more than 2,500 years later (at the end of the 19th century) as an arms and ammunition depot, probably for troops stationed in the nearby fort of Qasr el-Ghazal. An explosion destroyed the roof of the burial cave. Under the collapse, we found not only coins that helped us date the explosion, but also the remains of dozens of rifles, including an American double-barreled Winchester. Along with the firearms, we uncovered fragments of porcelain coffee cups, smoking pipes, military insignia and buttons, decorative livery beads and a European pen with a gold nib.

On the northern part of the hill we excavated a previously unknown large basilical church from the Byzantine period (fifth–sixth centuries C.E.). The church had, in effect, been turned into a stone quarry during the Turkish-Ottoman period, when its handsome ashlars (rectangular stones) were reused for other purposes, probably the building of the nearby Qasr el-Ghazal.

Despite the removal of so many of its stones, 026we were nevertheless able to determine the plan of the church. Parts of the walls and the apse of the central nave and even the stylobates that supported two rows of pillars survived the Turkish-Ottoman quarrying. We also discovered a large stone threshold from the church, a vaulted chamber that had served as a crypt, and pieces of the mosaic floor that had decorated the church. One particularly beautiful mosaic fragment depicts a partridge pecking at a bunch of grapes, surrounded by vine tendrils and vine leaves. The hindquarters of a ram can also be glimpsed. Also of special interest were dozens of marble stone tiles in different colors cut in various shapes and sizes: rectangles, triangles, circles, squares, floral designs and even tooth shapes. These pieces once formed part of luxurious decorated floors adorned with inlaid designs, a flooring technique called opus sectile. Colored glass tesserae, many of which were gilt, represented the remains of vibrant mosaics that had once decorated the walls of the church. And below the church’s narthex, the plastered walls of three graves were painted with depictions of metal crosses inlaid with colored, semiprecious stones.

East of the church we unearthed a group of structures that were apparently auxiliary buildings of the church complex. These included a large round silo. The small finds included molded oil lamps typical of the period, some decorated with crosses and one with a cruciform handle. We also found a fragment of a clay stamp that had been used to stamp impressions on loaves of Eucharistic bread.

Can we identify this Byzantine church? I believe we can. I think it is the church known as “The Church of St. George Outside the Walls” and in other sources as “St. George Outside the Tower of David.” In literary accounts of the Persian (Sassanian) invasion of Christian Jerusalem in 614 C.E., this church is mentioned: Christian clergy were massacred there.⁵

This was apparently one of a series of churches along the pilgrims’ road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Additional churches have been found along this road at Abu-Tor, just south of Ketef Hinnom, at Ramat Rah.el, and more recently the Kathisma church was discovered a little farther south, where Mary is said to have sat and rested on her way to Bethlehem.^{a 6}

While digging under the remains of the church, we discovered several concentrations of burnt soil and ash that appeared in the balks (sides) of the excavated squares. Later, we found some complete and intact ceramic cooking pots that had been put into the ground in an upright position, as though on purpose. These pots contained crushed and burnt bones and ash, as well 027as some small iron nails. This was no doubt a cemetery of cremation tombs. The concentrations of ash and burnt soil probably mark the place where the bodies were cremated. The cooking pots, typical of the Late Roman period, served as urns for the remains of the dead. Similar evidence for cremation has been found near Damascus Gate and along the northern wall of the Old City, as well as in Binyanei Ha’ūma, west of Jerusalem, and at Ramat Rah.el to the south of the city. At all these sites we have evidence for the presence of soldiers from the Tenth Roman Legion, mainly roof tiles stamped with that legion’s name. No other group in the history of ancient Jerusalem is known to have practiced cremation. The Tenth Roman Legion was stationed in Jerusalem from the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. until the reign of Emperor Diocletian in the late third century. This was confirmed by a clay roof tile stamped with the letters “LXF,” an abbreviation of Legio X [Decima] Fretensis, the official name of the Tenth Legion. The tile appears to date from the third century C.E.⁷

At a level below the cremation burials, we found a group of graves dating to the end of the Second Temple period (ending in 70 C.E.). They consisted of cists dug into the ground that were surrounded or lined with stones and covered by rough stone slabs. Several of the graves contained no skeletal remains, however, perhaps indicating that these had been Jewish burials from which the families of the deceased had later collected the bones and placed them in ossuaries (bone boxes), as was the custom at the time. The ossuaries would have then been placed in a family tomb. Coins from the first century confirm the date of these burials.

In two of the burial caves from the First Temple period (Caves 34 and 51) we found an abundance of Second Temple period finds—mostly made of silver and beads of different materials and colors but also a blue glass seal bearing a stylized animal design. We also found a cooking pot with a small hole perforating its side. Such perforated pots were also found in excavations next to the Temple Mount and in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and elsewhere in Jerusalem.⁸ It has been suggested that these pots were used by Temple priests for ritual purposes; the holes were intended to prevent the vessels from being used again.

One of our rock-cut burial caves originally hewn at the end of the First Temple period (Cave 34) evidenced continuous use through the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods. The later users of the cave simply buried their dead on top of the earlier remains. The Late Roman period (132–324 C.E.) was represented in this cave by pottery, coins and jewelry, including two golden earrings, one of which was inlaid with semiprecious stones. Next to one of the skulls, a coin dating to the reign of Emperor Maximus (286–310 C.E.) was found. This is most probably an example of the Roman custom of placing a coin in the mouth of the deceased in order to pay the fare to Charon for the ferry ride across the River Styx into the netherworld.

In the northern and eastern areas of Ketef Hinnom, we excavated parts of a large quarry from the Second Temple period. Further large areas of this quarry were excavated more recently by the Israel Antiquities Authority prior to the construction of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center built on the site in 2004.⁹ Potsherds in the quarry 028bed, which in some cases were found more than 13 feet below the surface, dated the quarry to the Herodian dynasty (first century B.C.E. and first century C.E.). The large ashlar blocks that were quarried here left their marks in the quarry bed: clear channels where the sides of the blocks had been carved and seperated from the bedrock. We also found two iron axes used for cutting stone and a large iron wedge-shaped tool weighing about 25 pounds. Once the chiseling had separated the stone on all adjacent sides from its surrounding bedrock, workmen inserted such wedges to break the stone free from beneath.

The most prominent archaeological feature on Ketef Hinnom is the remains of seven rock-cut burial caves of the late First Temple period (seventh century B.C.E.). All of these caves were damaged in varying degrees by later quarrying. The ceilings and façades were no doubt quarried away for the construction of the Byzantine church. Other parts of the caves were probably destroyed when a Turkish-Ottoman road was constructed on the terrace situated above the burial caves. Although most of the ceilings have been destroyed, the remaining fragments are sufficient to reconstruct the height of the chambers, about 7 feet.

All the caves follow well-known patterns of rock-cut burial caves from late Iron Age Judah and Jerusalem that served several generations of wealthy families.^b A step leads down from a small courtyard into a central passage of a square burial chamber. Most of these burial chambers are fairly small and square (about 10 feet by 10 feet), although two of the caves (Caves 20 and 24) are somewhat larger and have several burial chambers connected to the main hall. Around three sides of the burial chambers are rock-cut burial benches.

On the burial benches in two of the chambers of Cave 24 (Chambers 13 and 25) are slightly raised stone burial pillows with a scooped-out area for the neck and head, thus forming an elegant head rest for the deceased. One of the burial benches (in Chamber 13) could accommodate four bodies side by side as indicated by four headrests, two at each end. A burial bench with 030headrests from Chamber 25 was wide enough for six bodies. Although more than 80 carved headrests have been discovered in burial caves from First Temple Jerusalem, only Ketef Hinnom has burial benches with multiple headrests.

In five of the seven burial caves, a repository for the bones of the deceased was carved out beneath the burial bench. Perhaps a year after the initial burial, the bones of the deceased were placed in the repository to make room for the next generation of the family. Along with the bones, whatever burial gifts had been laid on the bench with the deceased were also placed in the repository.

The repositories are of different shapes: sometimes a small round space, sometimes oval, sometimes square, and in one case L-shaped. In several of the caves, a small step was hewn into the rock to allow for easier access to the repository.

The burial caves are badly damaged, but a fragment of an elegant cornice survived near the ceiling of one of the caves (Cave 20). Such cornices are known from other Jerusalem cave-tombs and were likely intended to imitate architectural elements of houses from the time.¹⁰

Although the burial caves had been destroyed and looted in ancient times, we did find some funerary offerings that were overlooked by the looters. For example, in Cave 34 we found a blue and yellow glass pendant that appears to show the distorted face of an oddly featured man.

Then in Chamber 25 of Cave 24, we found what can only be described as an archaeologist’s dream—an untouched repository with all of its original contents intact! Interestingly enough, the hitherto-unopened repository was under the burial bench with six headrests mentioned earlier.

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The repository remained undiscovered apparently because a rock layer had collapsed from the cave ceiling, thereby concealing its contents from looters. This is the only repository from First Temple period Jerusalem ever discovered with its contents intact.

The repository contained more than a thousand different artifacts. According to Professor Patricia Smith of the Hebrew University, who studied the repository’s human remains, at least 95 individuals are represented.¹¹

One of the more intriguing finds from the repository was a small brown limestone seal inscribed with the name “Palta” in ancient Hebrew script that dates to the seventh or early sixth century B.C.E. The name appears on the seal in mirror writing so that it would appear correctly when impressed into a lump of clay that sealed a document. Separating the seal into two fields is a lotus bud design, common in this period. The name appears in the upper field; a palm branch is depicted in the lower field.

The name is of more than passing interest. Like so many names of this kind, it is an abbreviation. The full name included a so-called theophoric element—the name of a deity. In this case the full Hebrew name would have been Pelatyah or Pelatyahu, the deity being Yahweh, the personal name of the Israelite God. Usually names on seals would include the name of the father. That this seal does not may suggest it is a family name, perhaps the family that owned the burial cave. The prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 11:1, 13) mentions a high governmental official (in the early sixth century B.C.E.) named Pelatiah son of Beniah (in English; Pelatyahu ben Benayahu in Hebrew). Is this his seal? Was he so well known that he didn’t need the name of his father included on his seal? Or is this a family name? Or some other Palta? We are unlikely ever to know for sure.

Among the other finds in the repository were about 45 iron arrowheads and one bronze arrowhead. The bronze arrowhead is of the type known as Scytho-Iranian, used by the Babylonian 032army in 586 B.C.E. when the Babylonians attacked and conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple that had stood on the Temple Mount for about 400 years since Solomon built it in the tenth century B.C.E. One cannot help wondering whether this bronze arrowhead killed a Judahite warrior who died defending the city (see “Ten Top Discoveries: Babylonian Siege Tower and Arrowheads”).

Other metal objects in the repository included needles, cosmetic kohl sticks and bronze buttons, as well as a knife and an iron chisel. We also found a small alabaster cosmetic dish, four dome-shaped stone spindle whorls, as well as an array of bone and ivory inlays incised with concentric circles that probably once decorated wooden boxes.

An unusual find that at first puzzled us was a series of bone objects that looked like grooved cylinders with two holes drilled at each end. We finally figured out what they were: They were the bone handles from large bronze cooking pots and cauldrons. The bone handles allowed the metal vessels to be lifted when hot. The two holes were for rivets that attached the handles to the pots. Presumably the metal pots themselves were removed from the repository for remelting and so only the handles remained. This type of 033handle has not been found before in Israel, but a large group of them was found in excavations at the Temple of Hera on the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea. There the handles were found still attached with rivets to the bronze cauldrons.

Another interesting find from the repository was a small cream-colored glass amphoriskos (a small two-handled bottle) decorated with yellow and blue bands. The vessel was formed on a sand core and dates to the sixth–fifth centuries B.C.E. Glass vessels of this kind are quite rare in excavations in Israel. Glass-blowing was not invented until the first century B.C.E.

The large amount of pottery from the repository included more than 250 complete vessels. These consisted mainly of wine decanters, juglets, perfume bottles and oil lamps—no store jars or cooking pots. The pottery fell into two general assemblages—one from the late First Temple period (seventh–early sixth centuries B.C.E.) and the other from the Babylonian and early Persian periods (sixth–fifth centuries B.C.E.)—in short, from both before and after the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E.

Some types persisted in both periods, whereas others are distinctive to one period or the other. Among the complete vessels is a group dating to the Babylonian period (586–538 B.C.E.). These 035include carrot-shaped bottles, oil lamps with flat bottoms, decanters with sack-shaped bodies and clay alabastra (pottery imitations of small alabaster perfume bottles) with two degenerated handles. Only a few of these vessels have previously been found in excavations in Judah. This is an important pottery assemblage because it shows that even after the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem, life in the city continued. Some of the Jerusalemites who remained during the Babylonian Exile were quite wealthy, despite the notice in Jeremiah 39:10 that only the “vinedressers and plowmen” remained in the land. This group of wealthy families continued to live—and bury their dead—in Jerusalem during the Babylonian and Persian periods.

I have not yet mentioned the jewelry found in the undisturbed repository. That deserves special notice. The treasure trove of jewelry from this repository is unequalled in Jerusalem excavations. It gives us our first glimpse of the jewelry worn by women (and perhaps also by men) in Jerusalem at the end of the First Temple period. The repository yielded more than a hundred silver items and six gold items, including simple crescent-shaped earrings, 15 silver earrings, four silver finger rings, about 50 silver beads, a silver pendant and a scarab mounted in silver. The most common decoration on the earrings was a granulation technique, that is, the attachment of tiny silver balls to the body of the earrings. A large number of beads were made of semiprecious stones—agate, carnelian and rock-crystal—as well as more common materials like glass, faience and shell. Another especially fine piece is a silver signet ring bearing the figure of a galloping griffin with a feline body, the head and wings of an eagle and a coiled tail.

The Bible describes, somewhat hyperbolically, the wealth of Jerusalem during the monarchy: “[Solomon] made silver in Jerusalem as common as stones” (1 Kings 10:27). On numerous occasions Jerusalem’s treasures were pillaged by invaders (e.g., 1 Kings 14:26; 2 Kings 25:15). The ladies of Jerusalem are castigated because of their ostentatious jewelry and luxurious attire: “In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents, the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarves, the headdresses, the armlets and the sashes, the perfume boxes and the amulets, the signet rings and the nose rings” (Isaiah 3:18–21). The jewelry from Ketef Hinnom gives a startling reality to these passages and indicates that this same situation prevailed even after the Babylonian invasion among those who remained in the city.

The stars of the repository, however, were two tiny silver amulets. When we found them, they were rolled up like small scrolls with a hole down the middle through which a necklace or string could be threaded.

I vividly remember when the first one was found in 1979, our second season at the site. Area supervisor Gordon Franz (of the Institute of Holy Land Studies, now the Jerusalem University College) and excavator Judith Hadley (now of Villanova University) called me into the repository and pointed toward a purplish object that looked like a cigarette butt lying in the soil. The second amulet was found only during our sifting operation—when all the soil from the repository was sifted through a fine mesh screen.

We immediately suspected the two rolled-up objects contained writing, but to find out, and to learn what they said, we would need to unroll them—no easy task. Fortunately, expert conservationists Marina Rosovsky, Joseph (Dodo) Shenhav and David Bigelajzen of the Israel Museum developed a unique method to unroll the objects.¹² A special acrylic glue was applied to the rolls that allowed the silver sheet to be gradually separated from the rest of the roll as the adhesive dried. After the amulets were unrolled, they were then covered with polyester Mylar film and placed between two thin layers of glass for protection. Finally, we were able to see that the sheets did indeed contain writing.

Both plaques are very thin and made of almost pure silver (99 percent silver, 1 percent copper). Both are damaged, mainly on their outer edges; they are very corroded and cracked. The larger plaque (Ketef Hinnom I) has traces of 18 lines of writing (though there were probably 19 originally), each line containing from five to seven letters. The smaller plaque (Ketef Hinnom II) probably originally had 18 lines of writing, of which the main parts of 12 are preserved. The decipherment of the second plaque has proved more difficult than the first.

The larger plaque is 97 millimeters long and 27 millimeters wide (less than 4 in. long and 1 in. 122wide). The second one, found in the sifting, is even smaller. When I was first called to the museum to look at them unrolled, I could immediately see that they were densely covered with writing in ancient Hebrew script. The first word I saw was YHWH, the tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of the Hebrew God, usually written “Yahweh” in Latin letters.

The task of deciphering the text was long and laborious. The letters themselves are almost microscopic—between 1.7 and 5 millimeters. They can barely be seen; they were scratched very shallowly with a sharp instrument, recalling the description in Jeremiah 17:1 of the message that was inscribed “with an iron pen with a diamond point.” The individual letter strokes are approximately the width of a hair. The plaques themselves are thin sheets of beaten silver reminiscent of “the beaten silver brought from Tarshish” cited by the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 10:9). It was not until 1989 that I felt confident enough to publish the texts in Hebrew.¹³ (An English version was published in 1992.¹⁴) With the passage of time, new methods of examining the inscriptions using fiber-optic light and computer imaging, as well as advanced photography methods, were developed. Using these new methods, a revised version of the texts was published jointly with Andrew G. Vaughn, Marilyn J. Lundberg and Bruce Zuckerman in 2004.¹⁵

The texts of the two inscriptions are printed in the sidebar. Each contains slight variations of parts of the three blessings that appear in the famous priestly blessing from Numbers 6:24–26:

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

These are the words with which observant Jews still bless their children before the Sabbath meal on Friday night and that are also used in prayers in synagogues.

In the first amulet from Ketef Hinnom we have traces of the first two blessings of this tripartite Biblical text:

May YHWH bles[s]

you and

[may he] keep you

[May] YHWH make

[his face] shine …

In the smaller plaque are traces of an abridged version of all three blessings:

May YHWH bless you,

keep you.

May YHWH make

his face shine

upon you and

grant you p[ea]ce.

In addition, the middle part of the first plaque contains a variation of Deuteronomy 7:9: “Know, therefore, that only the Lord your God is God, the steadfast God who keeps his covenant faithfully to the thousandth generation of those who love him and keep his commandments.”

From the larger plaque, we read:

…]YHW…

the grea[t God who keeps]

the covenant and

[G]raciousness towards those who love [him] and (alternate: those who love [hi]m)

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those who keep [his commandments …]. the Eternal(?) […].

The tiny rolled-up scrolls were no doubt intended to be worn as amulets to safeguard their owners. The prophylactic nature of our two tiny scrolls to prevent sickness and disease is evident from the words “bless” and “keep.” But the amulets were also regarded as having an apotropaic effect, as a protection against evil. This point is emphasized in the smaller amulet by a reference to Yahweh as the “rebuker of evil”: “May he/she be blessed by YHWH, the warrior and the rebuker of Evil.”

The amulets can be securely dated on a combination of three grounds. Paleographically they can be dated by the shape and form of the letters to the late seventh century B.C.E., before the Babylonian conquest. Stratigraphically the first amulet was found only about 7 centimeters (less than 3 in.) above the repository floor, which testifies to its relative antiquity within the repository assemblages, which rose to about 2 feet total. The second plaque was found in the innermost part of the repository, far from the entrance, among the earliest deposits. Finally, the date suggested paleographically corresponds to the chronological horizon of the late Iron Age pottery found in the repository. The silver plaques thus come from the late seventh century B.C.E., or the time of the prophet Jeremiah and King Josiah.

The implications of this dating are startling. First of all, it means that these texts on our silver plaques are the oldest composition of words similar to Biblical verses in existence. The earliest Biblical texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls date to about 250 B.C.E. at the earliest. That means that our texts are older than the next oldest Biblical texts by nearly 400 years.

Moreover, these inscriptions are the only texts of the First Temple period with clear similarities to Biblical verses.

This has important implications for the Biblical text. The Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses, is usually divided by text-critical scholars into four source strands, labeled J (for Yahwist, or Jahwist in German), E (for Elohist), D (for Deuteronomist) and P (for the Priestly Code). The priestly blessing from 126Numbers, which is quoted in our silver plaques, is generally considered part of P, the Priestly Code. (So, too, the passage from Deuteronomy 7:9, which has echoes in the larger silver amulet.)

There is a major scholarly disagreement as to the date of the Priestly Code. Some scholars contend it predates the Babylonian conquest. Others say it is later. Our two texts seem to support those who contend that the Priestly Code was already in existence, at least in rudimentary form, in the First Temple period.

The priestly blessing seems to have been widely used during the First Temple period. Its influence can be traced both in the Bible itself (see Psalm 67:1, for example) and in early Hebrew epigraphy. In addition to our references, an inscription painted on a large pithos at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud in the Sinai Peninsula contains the Hebrew words YBRK wYŠ MRK wYHY ‘M ’DNY, which can be translated as “[may God] bless you and keep you and be with my Lord.” This, too, dates to the First Temple period.

The Ketef Hinnom excavations have made an enormous contribution, not only to our understanding of life in Jerusalem more than 2,500 years ago, but also to our understanding of the development of the text of the Hebrew Bible.

Today the seven burial caves of Ketef Hinnom lie hidden behind the Menachem Begin Heritage Center, unmarked, unguarded and unprotected. They deserve better (see “BAR’s Crusades: Restoring Excavated Sites”).

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Author’s Note: This story is dedicated to the blessed memory of Alexander Singer (1962–1987), who participated in the first excavation season at Ketef Hinnom. An officer in the Israel Defense Forces, Alex was killed by terrorists from Lebanon in 1987 on his 25th birthday while going to the aid of his commander. He was the son of BAR contributing editor Suzanne Singer and her husband, Max.

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All uncredited photos courtesy of the author.

I’ve lived in Jerusalem for more than 59 years. I sometimes feel I can put myself in the shoes (or minds) of ancient Jerusalemites. I think I can tell better than most where these ancient Jerusalemites would have located different facilities.