"The palace was divided into huge banqueting halls... the ceilings were wonderful" * The identification of the remains discovered in the Kishala area of the Old City of Jerusalem with the magnificent palace of King Herod now seems certain. About two of the rooms of the magnificent palace, which was built near 23 BC, Joseph ben Matatiyo testified that they ascend in it
The palace covered almost the entire area of the Armenian quarter today, about 500 meters long and about 150 meters wide
"It is the king's palace that surpasses any description. Because he does not lack an abundance of everything luxury and comfort". This is how Josephus ben Mattathieu (Josephus Flavius) described in his book "The History of the War of the Jews with the Romans" the magnificent palace, astonishing in its beauty and of great dimensions, which King Herod built for himself around the year 23 BC.
Recently, the remains of the palace were discovered south of the Tower of David in the Old City, in the Kishala area. What was revealed are two parallel massive retaining walls - a middle wall and an eastern wall - on a south-north axis.
The walls are mostly founded on the bedrock. They are about 50 meters long and about 1.80-1.70 meters wide. Among them was a filling of earth and stones, the purpose of which was to raise the natural topography of the area and create an artificial stage, on which the palace was built. Under the two retaining walls was found a drainage channel, partly hewn and partly built, with a depth of seven meters. The canal drained the wastewater from the palace towards the valley to the west. To the west of the two walls was discovered the city wall from the Hasmonean period (second century BC), built of large hewn stones, about five meters wide.
The archaeologist in charge of the excavations at the site, Amit Ram from the Antiquities Authority, says that these are definitely remains from Herod's palace. About four months ago it was first announced that the remains of the palace may have been found. Since then, Ram says, more evidence has accumulated and there are conclusions. "In my humble opinion and in the humble opinion of many researchers who are experts in the field, it is about the Herodian walls. This finding is not ambiguous."
Prof. Ehud Netzer, from the Institute of Archeology at the Hebrew University, an expert on Herod (he excavated in Masada, Herodion and Jericho and wrote about his findings), says that "there is no doubt, in my personal opinion" that these are the remains of Herod's palace. First of all, the supporting columns are the "best candidate" for this. Secondly, this is in line with the excavations of Magen Broshi and Dr. Dan Behat in the Armenian Garden south of Kishala, and with the excavations of Giora Soler and Rana Sivan in the Citadel ("David's Tower"). "More than that: the walls that Ram found are sketched in the 'Jerusalem Review' published by the Society for the Exploration of the Land of Israel and its Antiquities 10 years ago." In the book, he says, the data from the two excavations were combined, lines were passed through the citadel and the location of Herod's palace was obtained. Therefore "there is no doubt about it. It fits in every way. The construction, power and location. Unfortunately, we only deal with the basics and not with what was above."
The excavations began more than a year ago, when the Tower of David Museum was about to expand and build an educational center. During the construction works, archaeological remains were uncovered. The museum invited the Antiquities Authority, which tasked Amit Ram to lead the rescue excavations, in which he began intensively, funded by the museum and the Jerusalem Foundation. Ram, 30 years old, was lucky that such an important exposure fell on his part at the beginning of the journey. Apart from his work at the Antiquities Authority, he is now completing his master's degree in archeology at the Hebrew University.
The excavation area is bounded by the Kishla building - a rectangular building 50 meters long and nine meters wide, erected at the end of the 19th century by the Turkish governor and intended for soldiers' quarters, Kishla in Turkish. During the Turkish rule, and then the British and the Jordanian, the building was used as a detention center. The diggers initially found graffiti inscriptions, engraved by prisoners in Hebrew (some of them prisoners of the Jewish underground), English and Arabic.
Nine plastered pools of different sizes from the Middle Ages were uncovered under the floor of the Turkish building, which were used, according to the hypothesis, for dyeing fabrics or processing leather. Ram speculates that this is the palace of the crusader kings, the pools were near it. He mentions the testimony of Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish pilgrim who visited Jerusalem around the year 1172, according to which the Jews sat at the foot of the palace of the Crusader kings and engaged in the craft of dyeing cloth. "Maybe we can make the connection", he says.
Then, at a depth of three meters from the building's floor, the two massive walls were exposed, which served as a platform for the podium on which Herod's palace was built. The palace is best known from the writings of Josephus, who described it as stated in "The History of the War of the Jews with the Romans": "Near the inner side of the towers, which are located in the north, is the king's palace that surpasses any description. for it does not lack an abundance of everything luxury and comfort. The whole is surrounded by a wall thirty cubits high, divided into equal spaces by ornate minarets. The palace is divided into huge banquet halls and bedrooms for a hundred beds. In these halls there was an untold abundance of stones, because every rare stone everywhere was collected (in them) in great numbers. The ceilings were wonderful, both because of the size of the beams and because of their magnificent decorations, the many rooms in their many different shapes and all filled with furniture, and the objects in each of them were mostly silver and gold.
"All around were round staves, connected to each other, and the pillars of each one are different. The open places above were full of grass and various trees, and between them were long walking paths, and around them were deep canals and ponds full of copper work everywhere, through which the water poured, and around the streams of water (stood) many nests of tame pigeons", for Herod loved to breed pigeons. Ben-Mathetyahu further noted that the two most beautiful rooms in the palace were called by Herod "Caesarion" or "Caesar's Room" and "Agripion" or "Agrippa's Room", and they surpassed even the Temple - Herod's greatest project in Jerusalem. He also wrote that the palace was also intended to be used as a fortress in times of need, when the fortifications were made up of the three towers from the north, which "marveled in their size, beauty and strength among the towers of the entire world".
The city wall from the west served as the western wall of the palace, and according to Ben-Mathetyahu's "Antiquities of the Jews" there was a direct connection between the palace and the temple, through one of the four gates that were in the western wall of the temple, the gate "facing the king's palace". According to Ram - according to archaeological evidence from other excavations conducted in the last 20 years - the palace extended over almost the entire area of the Armenian quarter today, about 500 meters long and about 150 meters wide.
Ram insists that the description of Ben-Mattiyahu is not the main proof that these are the remains of the palace. The main proof is the retaining walls themselves, which are similar in their construction to other Herodian buildings in Israel: on the Temple Mount, Caesarea, Herodion, Jericho. "Joseph describes the same palace to the south of the citadel, and simply gives us precise technical details, from which I can complete my find," he says.
Another proof is the location of the support columns. "Joseph describes the palace to the south of the citadel, exactly where we are excavating. He describes many water works inside the palace - fountains, canals, pools. We found a tremendous drainage system, and again, you can find the context." Also, Ram says, one can find among the words of Josephus the description of the palace as being built on a kind of artificial platform, "and this also proves beyond any doubt our archaeological find."
Was the wall built by King Hezekiah also found?
In the last phase of the Kishla excavations, a massive ancient wall was uncovered. The archaeologists are testing the explanation that this is Hezekiah's wall. If the explanation is correct, then this is a find as important as Herod's palace itself. This is because it will prove that Jerusalem extended in the days of the First Temple to the Jaffa gate area of today. The debate about how big Jerusalem was in the days of the First Temple has political implications, due to its impact on the question of historical right.
Hezekiah was king of Judah in the eighth century BC, at the end of the Iron Age. According to the nature of its construction and the archaeological findings in the vicinity of the ancient wall, it seems that it was built during this period. The length of the wall is 15 meters and its height varies between 1.65 and 2.30 meters. The Herodian retaining walls are founded on it, and the head of the Kishla excavations, Amit Ram, says that "based on the layering (stratigraphy), the archaeological find and the environmental interpretation, we think this is a wall from the time of Hezekiah." He emphasizes that the dating still requires careful examination, but if it is indeed a wall from Hezekiah's time, "it is possible that we are looking at the wall from Hezekiah's time, and this is a very important detail for understanding the study of the history of Jerusalem."
Hillel Geva, an archaeologist who excavated in Jerusalem on behalf of the Institute of Archeology at the Hebrew University, explains the importance of the find, if indeed it turns out that the wall was uncovered from the time of Hezekiah: There is a disagreement among archaeologists on the question of what the borders of Jerusalem were at the end of the First Temple. According to the minority, the wall in the days of Hezekiah did not reach the Jaffa Gate area of today, nor did it surround the entire western hill of Jerusalem in ancient times (what is today the Jewish Quarter, the Armenian Quarter and Mount Zion), but included the City of David and possibly the Jewish Quarter area. On the other hand, most archaeologists believe that the wall extended from the area of the Jewish Quarter (where Nachman Avigad uncovered the "broad wall" from the days of Hezekiah, seven meters wide) to the Tower of David, and from there it turned south over the Ben Hinnom Gorge, surrounded Mount Zion and descended towards the south of the City of David. Identifying the wall as a wall, says Geva, will make it possible to prove that "Jerusalem was much bigger in the days of Hezekiah than the minority opinion believes."
Hezekiah ben Ahaz began to reign in Judah at the age of 25, in the third year of the reign of Hosea ben Elah, the last of Israel's kings. He reigned for 29 years in Jerusalem and during his time a new era began in the city: the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel led to the renewal of ties between Judah and the rest of the inhabitants of Israel. Jerusalem returned to being a national-religious and economic center. Hezekiah "made the pool and the canal and brought the water to the city" (20 Kings, 5:XNUMX), and when Sennacherib, King of Assyria, came up against Judah, Hezekiah did several defensive actions, among which he strengthened and built "the whole breached wall and went up on the towers and across the other wall, and strengthened The fullness of the city of David..." (XNUMX Chronicles XNUMX, Lev, XNUMX).
Ram cannot commit at this stage that the wall is Hezekiah's wall, although "the developments tend more in that direction. I found pottery and stratigraphy that refers to the period of Hezekiah. The ceramics and the archaeological find and the relationship between the finds and the environment indicate that this is Hezekiah's wall. But I reserve myself and be very careful." Ram is still processing the material and "it will take some time". If it were possible to dig on the other side of the wall, to stand on its thickness, this would help to determine if it is a wall. But such an excavation is very expensive and there is no financer.
