Via AP:
This image made available by Israel’s Antiquities Authority Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2009 shows part of a a 3,700-year-old fortification wall discovered in Jerusalem. Archaeologists have discovered a 3,700-year-old wall in the City of David, part of the earliest fortification construction on such a large scale ever found in Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Wednesday. The 26-foot high wall is believed to have been part of a protected passage used by the Biblical Canaanites that led from a fortress on top of a hill to a spring. Ronny Reich, director of the excavation and a professor of archaeology at the University of Haifa, said the discovery marks the first time such “massive construction” before the time of King Herod was found in the oldest parts of the city. (AP Photo/IAA)
Archaeologists digging in Jerusalem have uncovered a 3,700-year-old wall that is the oldest example of massive fortifications ever found in the city, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Wednesday.
The 26-foot-high wall is believed to have been part of a protected passage built by ancient Canaanites from a hilltop fortress to a nearby spring that was the city’s only water source and vulnerable to marauders.
The discovery marks the first time archaeologists have found such massive construction from before the time of Herod, the ruler behind numerous monumental projects in the city 2,000 years ago, and shows that Jerusalem of the Middle Bronze Age had a powerful population capable of complex building projects, said Ronny Reich, director of the excavation and an archaeology professor at the University of Haifa.
The wall dates to the 17th century B.C., when Jerusalem was a small, fortified enclave controlled by the Canaanites, one of the peoples the Bible says lived in the Holy Land before the Hebrew conquest. The kingdom thought to have been ruled from Jerusalem by the biblical King David is usually dated to at least seven centuries later.
A small section of the wall was first discovered in 1909, but diggers have now exposed a 79-foot portion, and Reich believes it stretches much further. Reich said budget constraints related to the global financial crisis put an end to the excavation, at least for now.
“The wall is enormous, and that it survived 3,700 years — this is, even for us, a long time,” Reich said. It was remarkable that a fortification of this kind was not dismantled for later building projects, he said.
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Hey, who's the guy with the sword?
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September 3rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Pretty amazing stuff. Hopefully, they can do more excavating and learn more about it. If the age is correct, it would have been built around the same time that Israel was settling in Egypt.
smoothstone Says:September 6th, 2009 at 8:51 am
It is amazing. And it also illustrates the mendacity and the mythology of the “ancient” poorpalestinianpeepull.