This is a section 70 m long and 6 m high of the Jerusalem wall from the tenth century BC. The section is in the south of the Temple Mount
A team of archaeologists led by Dr. Eilat Mazar from the Hebrew University uncovered a 70 m long and 6 m high section of the Jerusalem wall from the tenth century BC. In the section of the wall that was exposed in the south of the Temple Mount, various buildings are combined, including: an inner gate through which they entered the royal quarter of the city, a state building near the gate, and a corner tower that dominates a considerable section of the Kidron route. The section of the wall was uncovered during the recently completed excavations conducted by the Institute of Archeology at the Hebrew University in cooperation with the Antiquities Authority, the Nature and Parks Authority and the East Jerusalem Development Company.
"The characteristics of the uncovered wall match other walls and city gates discovered from the First Temple period," says Dr. Eilat Mazar. "This find together with the dating of the pottery found in the area of the wall make it possible to attribute the time of its construction to an advanced stage of the tenth century BC". According to her, the findings can be associated with the period of the United Kingdom and suggest with a high degree of probability that the wall that was uncovered is the wall built by King Solomon in Jerusalem. "This is the first time that a building has been discovered that may be in line with the descriptions of the construction of King Solomon in Jerusalem" states Dr. Mazar.
The exposed wall testifies to governmental capacity, and its strength and the characteristics of its state construction testify to a high level of engineering. It was built along the eastern edge of the Ofel area that stretches in the center of the eastern hill of Jerusalem, between the City of David and the Temple Mount. The wall passes in a strategic high place, at the top of the steep western slope of the Kidron River bed.
The front of the gate house exposed in the section of the wall, rises to a height of 6 m. The gate house is built in a typical way for gate houses from the First Temple period, such as Megiddo, Beer Sheva and Ashdod. The gate has a symmetrical plan of four identical small rooms, two on each side of the central passage of the gate. Similar to other gatehouses, a large tower with an area of approximately 18x24 m was built in front of the gate that was exposed, which was designed to protect the entrance to the city. The tower is currently under the surface of the road and its existence can be learned from the testimonies and drawings of Charles Warren who excavated the site in 1867. "Some of the gate chambers were used for guarding and some were used for trading," explains Dr. Mazar, "In the courtyard of the tower there was extensive public activity and it was a meeting place and a place for gatherings, trade, worship, conducting trials and transactions."
A preserved state public building was also discovered near Beit Hashar. The fragments of pottery found under the floors of the building indicate that it was built in the tenth century BC. On the floors, in the remains of a fierce fire that occurred on the spot, jars about 1.15 m in height were discovered that were broken and burned in the rooms that were used as warehouses on the ground floor of the building. An engraved Hebrew inscription was found on one of the jugs: "To Sher Hau...". "The jars found are the largest ever discovered in Jerusalem," says Dr. Mazar, adding that "the inscription found on one of them indicates that the jars belonged to one of the ministers of the kingdom, apparently the minister of bakers who was responsible for baking the bread in the royal court."
Near the pottery shards were also discovered ritual figurines and imprints of seals on the handles of jugs with the inscription "To the King" indicating their belonging to the state administrative apparatus. In addition to this, dozens of seal impressions that have been preserved on pure clay with decorations and Hebrew names testify to the state character of the building. The vast majority of the tiny findings from the excavation were discovered during wet filtering carried out through the Temple Mount Dirt Filtering Project under the management of Dr. Gabriel Barkai and Yitzhak Tzoig and under the auspices of the Nature and Parks Authority and the Elad Association.
Between the large tower in front of the gate and the state building, a section of the corner tower 8 m long and 6 m high was exposed. The tower is built of ashlar stones, the longest of which is 2.4 m long. To the east of the state building, another section of the wall extending 35 meters long was discovered in the excavation. This section has been preserved to a height of about 5 m and it continues the route of the wall in a straight line and surrounds the Ofel towards the northeast.
"The route of the wall, its characteristics and its dating may coincide with what is told in the Bible about King Solomon who built with the help of the Phoenicians, the celebrated builders, the Temple and the complex of buildings of his new palace and surrounded them with a wall that was probably connected to the old wall of the City of David" says Dr. Mazar and Manfa To chapter XNUMX in the book of XNUMX Kings where it is written: "...until his bride built his house and the house of God and the wall of Jerusalem around it".
The excavations conducted in the last three months were supported by a generous donation from the couple Daniel Mintz and Meredith Bergman from New York who are interested in biblical archaeology. Their contribution was intended to complete the excavations and the processing of the findings and to prepare the site for public visits within the Ofel Archaeological Garden and the Sobb Walls of Jerusalem National Park. Archeology students from the Hebrew University, paid laborers and volunteer students from Oklahoma participated in the excavations.
15 תגובות
I feel deprived, after all I too was a son and by the way so was my father Asa, who was a famous military man and king for more than 40 years and even his sons will be treated well by that.
Dr. Eilat follows in the footsteps of the researchers of the XNUMXth century, even though more than a hundred years have passed since then.
Really... every few years they discover something that apparently belongs to the 10th century, make statements that here it is - they found proof of the correctness of the biblical story - and after a while everything dissolves and it turns out that this is not the case.
Jerusalem is too far from Israel to be an effective center of government for a kingdom mostly in the north.
Fortunately for us today there is science that can disprove theories that are without foundation, to your question whether the Jewish people existed 2800 years ago, the answer is not in the tombs or in the inscriptions that have not yet been found, but in your genetic code, more precisely that of the priestly family, it has been known for some time that the priests carry A genetic change that is not similar to the rest of the population, in the calculation made on the same change in the gene, the researchers came to the conclusion that the father of the family lived 106 generations ago, which is about 3000 years. For a more detailed reading, here is the link.
http://www.qsubs.org/index.php?showtopic=9170
For those who know something
You start from a point of departure that this nation existed 2800 years ago. First - beyond writing in the Bible, which is known to have been compiled, written and signed by a certain bias, why don't you have such excessive confidence that it is about a people, say the Mesopotamians or the Egyptians in contrast.
Moreover, if what is written in the Bible is acceptable to you as the truth, since it is a written material, will you also accept all the hateful things written about the Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman writings as Sinaitic Torah, or is only the Bible sacred and the rest is tainted and deserves to be thrown into the dustbin of history. Problem, isn't it?
For those who know something
who do not know very well - the letters to Amarna do not mention Israel. Israel has no seed mentioned in the Marnfatah 1208 inscription.
And in any case, nationalist archeology is a dirty business.
to breast and to spread
Archeology must be treated like any other science. Since there are no inscriptions, findings from the tenth century - as far as it is possible to accurately date pottery - can be attributed to at least five Jerusalem kings, who were not yet Jews at all, even though they were from Judah.
And no archaeological find will give the State of Israel any power over the land that a wise policy would not give.
To Dr. Yachiam Sorek:
There is one fact - the nation of Israel has lived and existed for more than 2800 years and despite everything we are here today in Zion with Jerusalem as its capital.
It is possible that the stories in the Bible are accompanied by an amplification of events that took place and some of them may have been taken from legends that circulated in the Meza'at,
But there is no doubt that the nation of Israel was here 2800 years ago as well - this nation had to be led, this nation had to fight, this nation had to finance itself and there is quite a bit of evidence for the name of Israel from the writings of the ancient peoples of the region (for example the Tel Amrana documents - " Israel has no seed").
Israel was probably a small and weak country and perhaps also unimportant and therefore there are not many scriptures from other sources that refer to the kings of Israel.
But I would absolutely not rule out the existence of David and Shlomo - as long as there is no proof that they did not exist.
skated:
There is no need to "force" history to justify our sitting here.
https://www.hayadan.org.il/does-et-look-like-us-2301101/#comment-261065
There is no doubt that the history is revealed under the house and under the feet, here our ancestors lived even without seeing any kind of harson with a full inscription of the Minister of Finance.
I have nothing to do with the Elad association, but as a Jew (not particularly a believer!) it seems to me that they are doing holy work to prove our ownership of the tiny land we have left that those who own half the world want to take away from us without any justification!
The address to the minister of the U.. narrow probably belongs to the period of Bibi's economic decrees when he was the minister of finance !!
It is difficult to underestimate the importance of the new discovery...
A wall with the dimensions mentioned in the article,
and especially in the quality of the material and its construction,
could only be carried out by kings of the order of David and Solomon,
as the Bible describes them.
It is not very important to mention the names of the builders of the wall,
which were probably taken for granted at the time...
Currently, it is clear that Jerusalem was a key city during the period attributed to Kings David and Solomon and declined from its greatness shortly after, and the remains of the great fire can perhaps testify to this. It rose again to greatness (relatively) following the destruction of the Northern Kingdom and the massive immigration of Israelites during the reigns of Kings Hezekiah and Manasseh.
With the exception of the Tel Dan inscription, which says "Beith David" but it is likely that it does not refer to a king named David but to a dynasty of kings, there is no extra-biblical evidence of the great Jewish kings David and Solomon. The temple in Jerusalem is called the "Temple of Solomon", but it is not necessarily named after its builder. It is even possible that it is named after the belief that prevailed in the city, "Shelem", after which the city was also named.
City of David means the house of David, not a city. The Tanakh says that David "captured" the Citadel of Zion, which became the City of David. And the name Zion is apparently not of Hebrew origin but Horite or Hittite, meaning citadel.
And Yahyam Sorek is right, the automatic link of Eilat Mazar and the nationalist association Elad according to the Tanakh is too early, until they find no addresses.
I'm sorry to spoil the party, but the group that goes by the name of Elad (El City of David) has been seeking for many years to find archaeological connections between the finds that are being discovered in Jerusalem, and they are not few, and for that we must bless, and what is written in the Bible. Each find immediately receives some kind of confirmation from What is written in the Bible, but in the least of you, the things must be established and confirmed in accordance with scientific legality. No inscription has been found that belongs to David, Solomon or other kings in Jerusalem, and this in itself raises many question marks. The inscription "To the minister of the..." can be interpreted in several directions and there is no reason to point to it In a cutting way to some state-royal affiliation, what else, and if we follow the paths of biblical semantics, it is more appropriate to look for the phrase "on" or a real name that has some function.
The findings are impressive, but the scientific context for the biblical inscription has not yet been found.