This is the eastern slope of the City of David after Kathleen Kenyon’s excavations between 1961 and 1967. Near the bottom of the valley is a house (1) covering the entrance to the Gihon Spring. Higher on the slope is the Canaanite and early Israelite wall (2) which Dame Kathleen discovered. This wall was used from about 1800 B.C. to about 800 B.C. Another wall (3) just above this was used from about 750 B.C. to the Babylonian destruction in 586 B.C. Higher still is the gabled entrance (4) to the Warren Shaft tunnel system which gave access to the Gihon Spring from inside the city. A line of remains near the summit of the hill (5) marks the line of the city wall established by Nehemiah when the exiles returned from Babylonia in the 6th century B.C. The stepped-structure (6) on this line is the upper part of the huge construction which, in 1980, was exposed for 50 feet down the slope of the hill. Dame Kathleen found some Israelite houses (7), destroyed in 586 B.C. in the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, so she concluded that the stepped-wall (6) above them was a later (second-first century B.C.) Hasmonean structure. Yigal Shiloh, after discovering that the stepped-structure continues down the hill, now dates the structure, whose function is unknown, to the 10th century B.C.
The clearly defined walls (8) above the Canaanite and early Israelite wall (2) are modern terrace walls.