Without Avigad’s Pictures—Is the Jerusalem Cardo Roman After All?

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One of the most sensational finds of recent excavations in Jerusalem was Professor Nachman Avigad’s discovery of the ancient Cardo, the main north-south thoroughfare through the city.

The Jerusalem Cardo was well-known long before its discovery in an excavation. It is clearly pictured on the famous Madaba map, a mosaic map of the world found in 1884 in the ruins of a Byzantine church in Madaba, now in Jordan. The center jewel of the map is the city of Jerusalem (see illustration). And the central street of the city is the Cardo—portrayed as a wide thoroughfare with a many-columned portico on either side.

Although the Madaba map dates from the late Byzantine period (mid-16th century A.D.), scholars long assumed that the Cardo as pictured on the Madaba map was actually constructed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian at about the time of the Second Jewish Revolt (the Bar-Kochba revolt—132–135 A.D.) which he crushed. Jews were then forbidden to live in Jerusalem and the city was rebuilt as a Roman city named Aelia Capitolina.

At that time, it was thought, the Romans laid out the city like a standard Roman camp, with two major intersecting thoroughfares dividing the city roughly into four quadrants—the Cardo running from north to south and the Decumannus running from west to east.

When, in the course of his excavations in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, Professor Avigad discovered a beautifully paved thoroughfare, it was generally assumed he had found the Roman Cardo. The thoroughfare as excavated bore a remarkable resemblance to the Cardo as pictured on the Madaba map—a central thoroughfare 60 feet wide (the center line of which was marked by a special vertical line of pavement stones, flanked on either side by a many-columned portico).

Unauthorized sources leaked the find to the press—which reported the discovery of the Roman Cardo. The BAR, however, learned from a source close to the excavation that in fact Avigad had lifted the best preserved pavement stones and found beneath them pottery and tiles easily datable to the Byzantine period.

Accordingly, BAR reported the finding of the Byzantine Cardo, not the Roman Cardo (see “The Ancient Cardo Is Discovered In Jerusalem,” BAR 02:04).

At the end of the season Avigad announced to the press that the Cardo he had found was Byzantine, not Roman. All of the stories—except BAR’s—had erroneously reported the find as Roman.

The Jerusalem Post headlined its correction, “Jerusalem’s ‘Roman Cardo’ Isn’t Roman After All” (see “Tight-Lipped Archaeologists—How the Press Erred,” BAR 03:02).

In August 1977 scholars from all over the world assembled in Jerusalem for the Seventh World Congress of Jewish Studies. There Avigad defended his conclusion that the Cardo was Byzantine, not Roman.

But Avigad’s argument was not unanimously accepted. Some scholars believe that the Jerusalem Cardo Avigad found was built by the Romans after all.

The debate afforded a remarkable insight into the scholars’ world, where the evidence is sifted and weighed, and conclusions drawn. Neither side claiming certainty, each sought to marshal inference upon inference in the hope of reaching the truth.

Avigad had two chief supports for his conclusion that the Cardo was Byzantine. First was the late Byzantine pottery sealed beneath the pavement stones.

Second, Avigad suggested that his conclusion was supported by his excavations in the surrounding areas—the Jewish Quarter of the Old City—in which he found no evidence of Roman occupation during the period of Aelia Capitolina. Avigad concluded that the Romans may have built a Cardo in the northern half of the Old City, which lies buried beneath the present Moslem and 011Christian Quarters, but that the Romans probably confined their Cardo to the part of the city which they occupied, that is, the northern part. Avigad also relied on the fact that three capitals which he found—capitals no doubt used for the pillars which supported the porticos—were clearly Byzantine. When challenged, however, Avigad recognized that these capitals, standing alone, would not be enough to date the Cardo because these capitals could easily have been added during the Byzantine period to an essentially Roman Cardo. In short, the capitals could easily be part of a Byzantine repair or reconstruction—long after the Cardo had been constructed by the Romans.

Avigad’s conclusions that the Cardo was Byzantine was contested by a promising young Byzantine scholar, Dr. Yoram Tsafrir, who like Professor Avigad, teaches at Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Dr. Tsafrir is spending this year at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., where he is finishing research on the Byzantine period.).

Tsafrir could not accept the fact that this magnificent thoroughfare which looked so thoroughly Roman was in fact Byzantine. Anyone who was familiar with Byzantine streets, Tsafrir, contended, would recognize how very un-Byzantine this thoroughfare was. During the Byzantine period roads generally narrowed in width, as shops and even houses crowded onto the wide Roman roadways. No new columned streets were created by the Byzantines anywhere in the Near East. Sites like Gerasa and Samaria are examples of porticoed Roman streets which narrowed in Byzantine times.

Avigad conceded this point, but argued that Jerusalem may well have been the exception to the rule. After all, the Byzantine Christians made Jerusalem an international center for pilgrimage. That was a good reason to treat it differently. They may have wanted to connect the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the north with the Nea Church in the south, two landmarks on the Madaba map. To do this, they may have extended the Roman Cardo southward, using the same Roman style.

Tsafrir, however, had other arguments. Several ancient authors like Procopius and 012Cyril of Scythopolis (Beth Shean) have left us copious accounts of the building activities of the Byzantine emperor Justinian (522 A.D.–565 A.D.) to whose reign Avigad assigns the construction of the Cardo. These accounts mention particular buildings, wells and even cisterns. Churches like the Nea are described in detail; we are even told how the money was raised to build it. None of these accounts, however, mentions the building of a magnificent porticoed street like the Cardo.

But, Avigad countered, we also have descriptions of buildings built by the Roman emperor Hadrian as part of Aelia Capitolina, and there is no mention of a Roman Cardo either.

Tsafrir raised another point. Why would the Romans build a main thoroughfare in the northern part of the city and then stop in the middle? The answer, according to Avigad: Perhaps that is all they needed for the part of the city that they occupied. Avigad reminded his audience that he had failed to find evidence of Roman occupation anywhere in his Jewish Quarter excavations in the southern part of the Old City.

The most telling evidence in favor of Avigad’s position is no doubt the Byzantine pottery under the pavement. But, Tsafrir pointed out, Avigad had himself rejected similar evidence in another dating debate. Italian excavators who have excavated the famous synagogue at Capernaum have found fourth and fifth century A.D. coins beneath the pavement stones of the synagogue floor. On this basis the Italians have dated the synagogue to the 4th–5th century. But many Israeli archaeologists, including Avigad, refuse to accept this evidence and date the synagogue to the third century A.D. on stylistic and historical grounds. Why, asks Tsafrir, does Avigad accept the archaeological evidence in one case (his own excavation) and not in the other.

The date of the Jerusalem Cardo remains uncertain. On strictly archaeological grounds, it appears to be clearly Byzantine, but on stylistic and historical grounds (that is, evidence of other Byzantine and Roman streets), the Jerusalem Cardo would appear to be Roman, rather than Byzantine.

There the argument remains until further evidence is adduced. BAR readers, like the 058scholars themselves, will have to live with uncertainty.

Professor Avigad showed his scholarly audience some magnificent slides of the Cardo which revealed its full width and the considerable length which has been excavated. One picture clearly illustrated the vertical line of pavement stones which marked the center of the Cardo. However, Professor Avigad refused to release any of these pictures to the BAR on the ground that he is saving them for his own publication. Because building activities now cover the Cardo, it is impossible for others to photograph the Cardo. We can only hope that Avigad will publish his pictures promptly so that the important information they contain can be shared with those beyond the small group who were able to attend his exciting Jerusalem lecture.

We also look forward to the time when the Cardo will again be exposed to view. The discovery of the Cardo has brought substantial alterations in the plans for reconstruction of that area of the Jewish Quarter where the Cardo was found. A covered shopping gallery had been designed for part of the area where the Cardo was uncovered. Now reworked plans call for lowering the shopping gallery to the level of the Cardo, so that where it is intact visitors and shoppers will use the Cardo once again, just as it was used 1500 years ago—or was it 1800 years ago?

“058The ultimate goal of archaeological research is not the dating of a pot nor the reconstruction on paper or in actuality of an ancient shrine nor the relating of an object to a close parallel; these are only the necessary steps in making the products of excavations useful. In the final analysis, however, archaeology is truly valuable only when its artifactual materials lead us closer to the people who produced them and give us a glimpse of the function that these artifacts performed in the lives and thoughts of their possessors.”

Carol L. Meyers, The Tabernacle Menorah: A Synthetic Study of a Symbol from the Biblical Cult (Montana: Scholars Press, 1976), p. 2.

One of the most sensational finds of recent excavations in Jerusalem was Professor Nachman Avigad’s discovery of the ancient Cardo, the main north-south thoroughfare through the city.