Ahron Horovitz, who for years has taught the history of Jerusalem to the general public, recently had an interesting insight into the dramatic change that has taken place in how the Israeli archaeological establishment views biblical texts. Horovitz, head of the Megalim Institute for Jerusalem studies, notes that "in the past, archaeology saw itself as a sort of servant. It was satisfied to clean the dust off ancient remnants of things that are described in the Bible and put them on display for the world."
But Horovitz says that in recent years, archaeology has changed from a "servant" to a fully-enfranchised member of the family.
"Sometimes, it even demands precedence in telling the historical story by challenging the historically accepted approach," he says.
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The story of the Herodian road through the City of David – a path Jewish visitors took to the Temple 2,000 years ago – illustrates this point. While media reports this week focused on US Ambassador David Friedman and special envoy Jason Greenblatt participating in the event unveiling newly excavated sections of the road, the real drama to emerge out of the earth is an archaeological one.
For five years, Israeli archaeologists have been digging underground and beneath homes in the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem to excavate the Herodian road, which runs for 700 meters (2,300 feet), from the Pool of Siloam in central Silwan to the slopes of the southern corner of the Western Wall. A total of 350 meters of the eight-meter-wide road have already been excavated. The rest of the project will take about five years to complete.
But it is already clear that the name "Herodian road" is misleading. King Herod never trod it, and apparently had nothing to do with its construction. Archaeological finds indicate that the road was constructed in 30-31 CE, whereas Herod died in 4 CE.
Archaeologist Moran Hajbi of the Jerusalem District of the Israel Antiquities Authority explains that the road was built after the time of Herod, under the auspices of the Roman governors of Jerusalem, "apparently in the time of Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who is known for crucifying Jesus."
Hajbi, along with his colleagues Ari Levi, Nahshon Zanton, and Dr. Joe Uziel, are excavating the "Pilgrim's Road" on the eastern hill of Jerusalem, where the biblical capital of King David was located. The site was also home to the administrative institutions of the Judean kingdom in the First Temple era.
'Traces of blackened seeds'
The archaeologists' discovery about the age of the Pilgrim's Road comes as no surprise. It is the latest in a series of archaeological finds in recent years, which match historical sources, and which teach us that the construction of the Temple Mount compound, with its immense walls, was completed in the time of Agrippa II, Herod's great-grandson. In other words: halfway through the first century CE, and some 45 years after Herod died.
The clearest proof of that was discovered by archaeologists Eli Shukron and Ronny Reich, who excavated a mikveh (ritual bath) at the foot of the Western Wall, not far from its southern end, that had been filled in with rubble and covered with large slabs of rock. A small section of the Western Wall was built over the covered mikveh, including Robinson's Arch.
When Reich and Shukron opened up the sealed mikveh, they found coins dating from the period of Roman Prefect Valerius Gratus, who lived 15 years after Herod's death and is known for ousting four Temple priests in his 11 years as governor. The coins brought down the widely held theory that Herod was solely responsible for the construction of the Temple Mount walls. Now it turns out that the Herodian – or Pilgrim's – Road is also of a later date.
This is not the only instance of archaeology intervening to discredit or confirm historical texts and beliefs. A few years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority reported that "traces of blackened seeds" and "rich botanical evidence" had been found beneath the thick layer of destruction that covered the Pilgrim's Road. For anyone who has the slightest familiarity with the history of Jerusalem in that period and the story of the revolt against the Romans and the destruction of the Temple, that discovery was an alarm bell. Hajbi says that the botanical evidence was discovered along a 15-meter (49-foot) stretch of the road, "burned and blackened, some of it in jugs, and with coins from the four years of the revolt alongside it."
Q: Who burned the food?
"We don't know. My colleagues Nahshon Zanton and Professor Ehud Weiss, an archaeobotanist from Bar-Ilan University, are looking into the question. I can't tell you anything more."
It's indeed a tantalizing mystery. It would appear that there are only two possible answers: Either the botanic traces – mostly wheat seeds – are the result of the Roman sack of the city, or the burned food is part of a picture we have from historical descriptions of zealots burning stocks of food as part of the civil war that engulfed Jerusalem at the time.
A little historical background: During the Great Revolt against Roman rule, during which the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the rebels split into three rival camps. Everyone was fighting everyone else: the rich vs. the poor, the moderates against the rebels. During the battles between Yohanan ben Levy, known as "Yohanan from Gush Halav," and Shimon bar Giora, grains and other staples that had been hoarded in expectance of the coming siege were deliberately burned. The Talmud's Tractate Gittin says that the storehouses were full of enough wheat and oats, oil and wood, wine and salt to last 21 years.
Why did the zealot rebels burn down the grain stores? There is no one answer. It could be because of a dispute over who owned them, but it could also be that one zealot group wanted to starve the moderates in Jerusalem into enlisting in their struggle against Roman rule.
At least two historical sources describe this self-inflicted destruction. The first comes from Book V of Josephus Flavius' "The Wars of the Jews," in which he describes how Yohanan treated Shimon and his people, and vice versa. The second source is the Roman historian Tacitus, who lived in the first century CE. He, too, describes the war between brothers and says that as part of the Jews' internecine war, grain stores were set alight.
Do the jugs of wheat discovered on the Pilgrim's Road bear testimony to the civil war that took place a few years before the Temple was destroyed, or are they the work of the Romans' attempts to quash the revolt? Time and research will tell.
Feeling the final moments
The IAA excavation of the ancient Pilgrim's Road has called another widely accepted belief into question. According to the writings of Yosef ben Mattiyahu (Josephus Flavius), the residents of the biblical City of David, which was also known as the "lower city," were poor. New evidence demonstrates that the people who lived there in that era were actually well-to-do. Joe Uziel, Ari Levy, Zanton, and Hajbi say that the "impressive" road that has been excavated, along with the buildings excavated alongside it, testify to the population of the time being well-off, in contrast to what was previously believed. Among the rubble of the ruined Temple, plenty of valuable objects have been found, including fragments of embellished stone tables. One was decorated with ornamental carvings on its sides and another round one, made of bitumen, was inlaid with colored stones. Jewelry and earthenware vessels and small bottles that were used to hold perfumes or oils were also discovered there. This "rich man's street," which was thought to be the home to the poor at that time, will soon be opened to the general public. Five or so years from now, one will be able to walk the same path that pilgrims coming to visit the Temple on the three major holidays – Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot – used to travel.
The pilgrims would purify themselves in the Siloam Pool to the south of the City of David, and walk up the stepped street until they reached the foot of the Temple Mount. Of the 350 meters of the road excavated thus far, some 250 meters are paved in stone, as was standard in large-scale construction throughout the Roman Empire. The missing 100 meters of paving, Hajbi believes, was either stolen or never completed.
Over the years, coins, cooking pots, earthenware and stone vessels, rare glass items, and even a grand podium used in public events have been unearthed along the road, as have arrowheads and ballista stones. For the first time in 2,000 years, it has been possible to reach out and touch what remains of the ancient city in its final moments, before it was razed, and almost feel the final battle between the Roman forces and the Jewish rebels who barricaded themselves in the lower city during the battle that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem.
The IAA is not the first to dig here. Archaeologists Frederick Jones Bliss and Archibald Campbell Dickie were the first to bring their shovels, in 1894-1897. They paid "baksheesh" (bribe money) to the local farmers, went down the shafts, and dug tunnels in every direction, exposing small sections of the Pilgrim's Road.
British adventurer Montagu Parker dug here, too, as did the well-known British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, when Jordan controlled the city. Kenyon unearthed another section of the Pilgrim's Road and even photographed the road's stone borders. But when IAA archaeologists reached the same point, the stones Kenyon had documented were nowhere to be found, having been stolen.
Decades after Kenyon, Reich, and Shukron excavated additional parts of the road, as well as the Herodian drainage tunnel that runs underneath it. Exciting finds from the Second Temple era were discovered in the tunnel: the sword of a Roman legionnaire in a leather scabbard; a clay fragment bearing a drawing of the Temple menorah, by some unknown person who had probably seen it for themselves; and a gold bell with a spiral end. The bell had been sewn onto a piece of clothing worn by a high-status resident of Jerusalem – possibly the High Priest himself.
'Our Colosseum'
The Pilgrim's Road, or the Herodian street, as many still call it, was used for only some 40 years. According to the archaeological evidence, it was built around 30 CE and destroyed in 70 CE, with the destruction of the Second Temple. For nearly 2,000 years it was buried beneath dirt and rubble. Until the archaeologists arrived.
Professor Benjamin Mazar located some parts of the path on the slopes near the southern part of the Western Wall. On top of the road rested stones of the Western Wall of the Temple Mount that the Romans smashed and threw downhill. Other parts of the road were uncovered in the Western Wall tunnels, near Warren's Gate, and even at the northern end of the tunnels.
Yuval Baruch, the archaeologist who oversees the Jerusalem District for the IAA, said that the current work continues the previous excavations of the road that began in the 19th century. Baruch mentions that the early European and American researchers were the ones who determined that the biblical City of David sat on the eastern hill of Jerusalem. Since then, archaeological finds have consistently bolstered that discovery.
Israel Antiquities Authority Director General Yisrael Hasson, notes that the project to excavate the Pilgrim's Road is part of a complete plant to excavate and develop ancient Jerusalem that the government approved two years ago. The goals of the plan include "increasing the number of visitors to all ancient Jerusalem sites to some 3 million per year" and "creating direct physical links between the southern part of the ancient city and the parts within the walls."
The meaning is clear: This will create a path that will allow the public to walk up from the Siloam Pool along the Pilgrim's Road underground, and later on to reach the Western Wall plaza, then eventually come to the Western Wall tunnels to the north of the plaza.
Israel Prize laureate David Be'eri, director general of the City of David, is finding it hard to conceal his glee. Be'eri stresses that "in the Second Temple era, the Pilgrim's Road connected the masses of people who would come from all over Israel and the world on their way to the Temple."
Be'eri says that he expects in the near future the road will "connect millions of visitors and tourists who will walk on those very same stones."
"Two thousand years ago, the Romans thought they had brought an end to Jewish life in the Land of Israel and Jerusalem. Today, we're back at the very same place, as a free people in their country and their capital," he says.
Last Sunday, when the two southern sections of the Pilgrim's Road excavation were unveiled at a ceremony, one of the dignitaries present remarked, "Rome has the Colosseum, Egypt has the pyramids, and now Jerusalem has the Pilgrim's Road that so many traveled in the past, and many more will follow in the future." That might be a little pretentious, but it's not far off.
