This Place Is for the Birds

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Surely one of the most exciting moments in the life of a Biblical archaeologist is finding something that seems to illuminate the Biblical text. The recent discovery of the Siloam Pool where, according to John 9:1–7, Jesus cured a man who had been blind from birth, is certainly one prime example.

Cheek-by-jowl to the newly discovered Siloam Pool at the southern end of the City of David, a 12-acre ridge south of Jerusalem’s Old City, is another find that has been associated with the New Testament: a circle of stones 20 feet in circumference, resting on bedrock. When it was discovered in December 1913 by French archaeologist Raymond Weill, it rose to a height of 5 feet. Today some of the stones have been 032robbed, but the basic outline is still clear. Weill suggested that the tower was part of a fortification system higher up the slope.

When discovered, it was built of roughly hewn field stones, large and small, and bonded with gray mortar. It was carefully plastered on the exterior right down to the sloping bedrock on which it was built.

After its discovery, many sought to identify this stone circle as the remains of a tower mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus, urging his followers to repent or perish, refers to a “tower of Siloam” that fell and killed 18 people (Luke 13:3–4). Whether this stone circle near the Siloam Pool was the tower referred to in Luke is speculative, but one thing seems certain: This particular circle of stones was never a watchtower. It would be hard to find a scholar who identifies the stone circle as a tower built for security purposes. The principal reason is that it stands near the bottom of the valley. The City of David is located on a steep rocky spur with valleys on either side. This stone circle is only 30 feet from the bottom of the Kidron Valley. Watchtowers are built to see people and things that cannot be seen from the ground. They are built on heights, not in valleys. A watchtower in a valley makes no sense. You can get a better view simply by walking up the hill.

But it was a tower—just not a watchtower. It was almost surely a columbarium tower—that is, a dovecote for raising pigeons.

In the City of David excavations headed by the late Yigal Shiloh between 1978 and 1982, two more columbaria were discovered just a few steps from the structure found by Weill. These columbaria help to confirm the identification of the Weill discovery as a columbarium. One of the new columbaria is round. Renewed excavations in 1995 revealed an internal wall that preserved several typical niches for the pigeons. Equally decisive was the discovery of four pigeon bones inside the structure. The 035other columbarium from Shiloh’s excavation was rectangular. It, too, revealed the typical niches of a dovecote.

The new excavations have also been able to date these towers more securely than Weill was able to do in the early years of the 20th century—to the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods, or the Second Temple period in Jewish history, the time of Jesus, ending with the Roman destruction of 70 C.E.

Approximately 40 ancient columbaria have been discovered in the vicinity of Jerusalem,¹ and hundreds have been found in Israel. Most are hewn in manmade caves with walls of the characteristic niches for the birds. A large number of these caves are clustered in the Judean Shephelah (or foothills).² This may be due to the ease of hewing the soft local limestone and the structures’ durability even when subjected to secondary use in later periods.

Much research has been devoted to understanding these niche-bearing caves. Today, scholars agree that these rock-cut caves housed pigeons for the production of fertilizer and meat.

But dovecotes were also built in the form of towers. Unlike the rock-cut caves, the tower-like columbaria generally did not survive the centuries. Archaeological excavations in Israel have uncovered a mere handful of these structures. In addition to the columbaria from the City of David, columbaria towers from the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods have been found at ten sites throughout Israel, including Masada, Jericho and Herodium.³

The tower-like columbaria possess similar characteristics: Most are circular; a few are square. Smooth white plaster covers their exterior, as is the case in the City of David—probably to keep snakes and other predators out. They also lack a doorway at ground level; the entrances were raised and accessed by a ladder. The interior consisted of rows of niches.

Some of the towers have an interior dividing wall, like the most recent one from the City of David, which both supported the roofing and added space for additional niches. All of the towers were built in the vicinity of agricultural fields (like the ones in the City of David), a settlement or a fortress.

Pigeon raising in the Land of Israel evidently goes back to the third century B.C.E.; it flourished mostly, however, during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods.

Pigeon raising was a widespread industry in the Roman world. Written accounts and works of art testify to the high value that was placed on these birds.⁴

In a detailed agricultural manual called Rerum Rusticarum, first-century B.C.E. Roman writer Varro describes large towers with vaulted roofs—called peristeron or peristerotrophion—that housed up to 5,000 domesticated pigeons each.⁵ These towers had a single narrow entrance and screened windows that admitted light, yet prevented predators from entering. The walls were covered inside and out, especially around the windows, with smooth white plaster containing marble dust. According to Varro, the white plaster prevented any predator from gripping the wall surface and climbing up to the pigeons.

The niches were arranged in rows along the wall, Varro reported, making maximum use of the available space. Each niche, measuring “about three hands in every direction,” was meant to house a pair of pigeons. A wooden board extended from each row of niches, providing a platform for the pigeons to perch on. The farmer had to install a supply of drinking and bathing water inside the structure, and provide food in special troughs. The accumulated droppings were collected once a month for fertilizer. Varro noted the high value of the pigeons, which in Rome could reach 1,000 sesterces a pair. (In the first century C.E., a Roman 036legionary soldier earned a salary of 900 sesterces a year, but half of this was deducted for living costs.)

Pliny the Elder, who lived in the first century C.E. and famously perished in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, mentions in his multivolume Naturalis Historia that the pigeon breeders “built towers on their roofs for these birds.”⁶

Jewish sources also tell of dovecotes:⁷ “If a man sold a town, he has sold also the houses, cisterns, trenches, vaults, bathhouses, dovecotes, olive-presses and irrigated fields, but not the movable property.”⁸

According to the Mishnah, the earliest rabbinic code, a dovecote must lie at a distance of at least 50 cubits from a settlement.⁹ The commentators explain that this stems from the need to prevent the pigeons from pecking at seeds that were stored or dried on the roofs and from causing damage to the fields adjoining the houses.

Modern Egyptian farmers have a long tradition of raising pigeons in towers.¹⁰ Ancient papyri show that columbarium towers were a common feature of Egyptian agriculture in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.¹¹ The tower usually stood either adjacent to the living quarters or in the field and measured 4–8 meters high.

Excavations at Karanis in the Fayum Valley of 037Egypt exposed five columbarium towers preserved to their full height of nearly 20 feet, which were in use until the first half of the second century C.E.¹²

A round dovecote also appears beside a farmhouse in a mosaic with Egyptian scenes found near Rome.¹³ The dovecote has a pointed dome and rows of openings; pigeons are seen perching on it or flying above.

The practice of raising pigeons in columbaria continued for centuries in many parts of the world. In France and England, pigeons were first raised in dovecotes in the Middle Ages, and the right to engage in pigeon raising was reserved for high officials, landowners and clergy.¹⁴

Accounts of European travelers who passed through Isfahan, Persia, in the 17th century describe the practice of raising pigeons in round towers in melon fields.¹⁵ Some of these towers are still in use today.

Archaeological and artistic evidence, as well as written sources and the practice of pigeon-raising today all attest to the crucial role played by pigeon raising in ancient farming.

There was doubtless yet another purpose for which the pigeons were raised in the City of David. The Torah frequently refers to Temple sacrifices of pigeons and doves (Leviticus 1:14, 5:7, 11, 12:6, 8, 14:22, 30, 15:14, 29; Numbers 6:10).

A special occasion for a Temple sacrifice was following the birth of a child (Leviticus 12:6–8). According to the Gospel of Luke, after Jesus’ birth Mary and Joseph “brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord … and offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons’” (Luke 2:22–24, quoting Leviticus 12:8).

A striking illustration of this sacrificial practice was discovered in the 1960s during Benjamin Mazar’s archaeological excavations near the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. Among the remains of shops for pilgrims that lined the street next to the Temple Mount, Mazar recovered a fragment of a stone bowl that was inscribed with the Hebrew word korban (“offering” or 066“sacrifice”) and a graffito of two birds, probably pigeons. This bowl—and presumably others like it—were offered for sale to pilgrims bringing their required sacrifice of doves or pigeons to the Temple.^a

The well-known episode from the Gospel of John in which Jesus clears the moneychangers from the Temple included people selling doves (John 2:13–16).

The pigeons and doves raised in the columbarium in Jerusalem’s City of David were almost certainly used for Temple sacrifice. Its location near the Siloam Pool,^b which was probably used for ritual bathing before visiting the Temple, strongly supports this suggestion, as do the other two columbaria nearby and the 40 more in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

Surely one of the most exciting moments in the life of a Biblical archaeologist is finding something that seems to illuminate the Biblical text. The recent discovery of the Siloam Pool where, according to John 9:1–7, Jesus cured a man who had been blind from birth, is certainly one prime example. Cheek-by-jowl to the newly discovered Siloam Pool at the southern end of the City of David, a 12-acre ridge south of Jerusalem’s Old City, is another find that has been associated with the New Testament: a circle of stones 20 feet in circumference, resting on bedrock. When it […]