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.

This archaeological discovery illustrates the veracity of the Jewish Bible and deconstructs the historical revisionism that is at the heart of palestinianism and the manufactured entity known as “ancient Palestine”. Via AP:

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered an ancient quarry where they believe King Herod extracted stones for the construction of the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Monday. The archaeologists believe the 1,000-square-foot (100-square-meter) quarry was part of a much larger network of quarries used by Herod in the city.

The biggest stones extracted from the quarry would have measured three yards (meters) long, two yards (meters) across, and two yards (meters) high.

The archaeologists said the size of the stones indicates they could have been used in the construction of the Temple compound, including the Western Wall, a retaining wall that remains intact and is Judaism’s Holiest Site.

Mon Jul 6, 9:36 AM ET

This image made available by Israel’s Antiquities Authority Monday, July 6, 2009 shows workers at the excavation site of an ancient quarry in Jerusalem. Archaeologists in Jerusalem have uncovered an ancient quarry where they believe the Bible’s King Herod extracted stones for the construction of the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Monday.

(AP Photo/IAA, Assaf Peretz)

Another stab into the heart of the mythos of “ancient Palestine”.  Via JPost:

Photo: Leah Ne'eman

Two ancient coins, one used to pay the Temple tax and another minted by the Greek leader the Jews fought in the story of Hanukka, have been uncovered amid debris from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, an Israeli archeologist said Thursday.

The two coins were recently found in rubble discarded by Islamic officials from the Temple Mount. It is carefully being sifted by two archeologists and a team of volunteers at a Jerusalem national park.

The first coin, a silver half-shekel, was apparently minted on the Temple Mount itself by Temple authorities in the first year of the Great Revolt against the Romans in 66-67 CE, said Bar-Ilan University Professor Gabriel Barkay, who is leading the sifting operation.

One side of the coin, which was found by a 14-year-old volunteer, shows a branch with three pomegranates, and the inscription “Holy Jerusalem”; the other side bears a chalice from the First Temple and says “Half-Shekel.”

Two astounding archaeological discoveries will be aired on national television.  These discoveries illustrate the veracity of the Jewish Bible and deconstruct the mendaciity and historical revisionism that is at the heart of palestinianism:

1) Herod’s bloody reputation has always hidden another side of one of the Bible’s greatest villains – an architectural mastermind of breathtaking proportions. An Israeli archaeologist claims to have found Herod’s most intimate creation of all – his tomb. Herod’s Lost Tomb Documentary to Air on Sunday, Nov. 23 on the National Geographic Channel.  See the Weekend Features section on their website for more on Herod’s Lost Tomb.

2) See also The Palace of David on PBS-Nova where Israeli archeologist Eilat Mazar discusses some of the remarkable ruins her team has uncovered in the City of David in Jerusalem. See interview with Eilat Mazar below.  See Video

Via PBS.org:

Biblical clues

Q: Why did you want to excavate here, in this part of Jerusalem?

Eilat Mazar: We started excavations here because we wanted to examine the possibility that the remains of King David’s palace are here. We could have been wrong, but we knew that whatever we would find would likely be important. We are in a very important spot of the City of David [the oldest part of Jerusalem], at the top of the city. It overlooks all the area around, and it’s very narrow, only about 60 meters [about 200 feet] wide.

Q: Were there clues in the Bible that this might be the spot of David’s palace?

Mazar: Yes. We knew from the Bible that King David went down to a fortress as he heard the Philistines coming to attack him. Now, where did he go down from? Most probably from where he stayed, meaning his palace.

Before our excavations, it was believed that the Stepped Stone Structure [a 60-foot high, terraced structure] here was a support structure for the fortress of Zion, a Canaanite fortress that, according to the Bible, King David captured. Our idea was to excavate just to the north of where we thought the fortress was built.

Q: Did archeologists before you think this area had remains from the time of David?

Mazar: Some did. In the 1960s, for instance, Kathleen Kenyon’s excavation revealed building remains and pottery indicating that a significant structure was built here in the 10th century B.C., meaning more or less around the time of King David [according to the biblical chronology].

Q: When you started your excavation, what was the first sign that you had found something important?

Mazar: We began to see signs that we were dealing with a very massive structure. Huge boulders started to appear all over the area. And we found walls that were very thick, more than five meters [about 16 feet] thick. I thought it was probably the remains of the fortress, not David’s palace. Then, a week or a week and a half later, we started to find a lot of pottery from the 12th or 11th century B.C. in different places under the massive structure. So it couldn’t be the Canaanite fortress of Zion, because the fortress would have been built hundreds of years earlier.

Q: So you found pottery under the structure, and then you also found pottery on top of the structure, is that right?

Mazar: Yes. And this pottery together helps us to date the structure. So, under the structure we found a great quantity of pottery that is typical of the 12th–11th century B.C., the late Canaanite pottery. And on top of the structure we found later pottery, typical 10th-century pottery. The structure stands in between these two periods, meaning the building itself must have been built sometime around 1000 B.C.

Q: Is it possible that the dating of the site could be off, that the structure might have been built earlier or later than the time of David and Solomon?

Mazar: In archeology, it’s very difficult to declare such a precise date. I say that the structure was built around 1000 B.C., but it could have been built 50 years before or 50 years after. It’s a possibility, although it doesn’t make sense to me to prefer these other dates, and I think it’s important to take into account the biblical story of King David.

Signs of royalty
Q: Does the pottery you found that you are dating to the 10th century look like the pottery of a palace?

Mazar: It’s beautiful, elegant pottery, certainly a prestigious collection. We also found ivory, including the handle of a knife probably, and most people didn’t have ivory at that time. This was not a regular house.

Q: Do you now see the Stepped Stone Structure as part of this massive structure you are dating to the 10th century B.C., around the time of David?

Mazar: Yes. We now see it as part of a huge structure. We are talking about a very complicated and highly skilled plan of construction. There are massive walls on the top, and because the bedrock here is very steep and cracked, these walls needed massive support, and the Stepped Stone Structure offered that support. So the Stepped Stone Structure was not built for a Canaanite fortress; it was built as one unit with the structure that we believe is the palace.

“The question is, how much of the reality that the Bible describes can we archeologists reveal?”

Q: How much of the palace complex have you found—assuming, of course, that it is a palace complex?

Mazar: The area we excavated occupies less than one-quarter of an acre, and it seems to be only about 20 percent of the whole structure at the top of the City of David. [Work subsequent to this interview has uncovered roughly 10 percent more.] So this is a huge structure, the largest ever found in Israel from the ancient Israelite period.

Q: What convinces you that the structure is a palace?

Mazar: Such a huge structure shows centralization and capability of construction. It can only be a royal structure. The question is, what kind of structure is it—a fortress or a palace or a temple? We conclude it’s a palace because the Bible reports very clearly that such a palace was built. We showed it’s not a Canaanite fortress, and we have no indication that another fortress was built. And we know there was a temple on the Temple Mount [north of the site] from that period.

A kingdom doomed to destruction

Q: In light of your discovery, how would you describe Jerusalem at the time of David and Solomon?

Mazar: It seems to me that Jerusalem at the time of King David and King Solomon was very much like the Bible describes. It was monumental; the constructions were massive. They used the Phoenicians, with their capability and skill, to build the largest structures ever built in Jerusalem: the temple, the two palaces—King David’s and later the palace of King Solomon—and the wall of Jerusalem around these structures. This was a new wall that King Solomon added to the ancient wall of the old Canaanite town.

Q: So was Jerusalem the capital of a kingdom as described in the Bible?

Mazar: King David captured a Canaanite town that was very centralized, very important. He most probably did so purposely and didn’t kill most of the people. He continued most of the existing administration. It gave him strength. I believe that Jerusalem continued to be a great metropolitan center and to serve as the capital of the Israelites.

Q: How did the palace of David come to an end? Have you found evidence in your excavation?

Mazar: We do not yet have clear evidence of the destruction. We may in future seasons. But I believe that it was part of the great destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. by the Babylonians. We have lots of other evidence of this destruction nearby.

Q: What was some of the first evidence of the destruction that you and other excavators found in nearby areas?

Mazar: At the beginning of the 1980s, Professor Yigal Shiloh, a mentor of mine, excavated an area that includes what is known as the Burnt Room and the Bullae House. In their destruction layer, he found pottery typical of this period together with arrowheads that show that some fight was conducted here. It really revealed the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.

Q: And more evidence for the invasion and destruction has also emerged, is that right?

Mazar: Yes. In my excavations at the Ophel, to the south of the Temple Mount, I discovered a royal structure that appears to have been destroyed by an immense fire around 586 B.C. As we excavated, our hands were black with the ashes. And the Bible tells us that the Babylonians set houses on fire.

Evidence of a biblical scribe
Q: Tell me more about the Bullae House. Why does it have that name?

Mazar: We think it was likely a royal archive. It has the name Bullae House because Shiloh found there, in addition to pottery and arrowheads, 51 bullae. A bulla is a very small seal impression made of clay. They were used by officials sealing documents. They would role up a papyrus document, tie it with string, and then put a bit of soft clay on top of the string and stamp it with a seal. This kept the document secret, because the seal would be broken if it was opened.

The bullae that first Shiloh’s excavation and later my excavation found were remarkably well-preserved. The papyrus was destroyed in the fire, but the clay seal impressions were hardened because of the fire. The amazing thing is, we can actually read the names that were sealed in the clay.

One of the famous names we see is Yehuchal ben Shelemiyahu, a personality we know from the Bible. He was a very high official and minister, a well-known scribe at the end of the First Temple period, in the service of the Judean king Zedekiah. To find the seal impression of such a celebrity is astonishing. It’s a case of archeology confirming what is in the Bible.

“There is still so much to be done in Jerusalem. Ancient Jerusalem really is not revealed yet.”

Q: Do you think there were royal scribes in the court of David or Solomon who were recording things for them? Could those writings have become part of the written Bible?

Mazar: I believe that King David inherited the very developed scribes and administration that were part of Canaanite Jerusalem. And I’m sure that King David was aware of the importance of written documents. He likely took care to have a very detailed archive that contained administrative documents and also included poems, stories, songs, some of which we probably see in the Bible.

Q: How important to your work is the text of the Bible?

Mazar: It’s the historical source, so important, so fantastically written. The question is, how much of the reality that the Bible describes can we archeologists reveal? Sometimes you find something like the bulla with the name of a minister that appears in the Bible. This happens once in a while. More often you find structures that surely were constructed in ancient times, and the stones, the remains, speak. We need to listen to what they say.

Q: Do you see your work as furthering the legacy of past biblical archeologists?

Mazar: What we are discovering in Jerusalem now builds on the work of past archeologists, past scholars. I got my first field experience as an archeologist with the famous Professor Shiloh. I was also a student of my grandfather, Professor Benjamin Mazar. He taught me how to observe historical sources, how to examine the archeological remains in light of these historical sources. I learned so much from both of them. And I’m just one part of a long chain. The next generation will continue the work. There is still so much to be done in Jerusalem. Ancient Jerusalem really is not revealed yet.

New revelations

[Editor's note: Since Gary Glassman interviewed Eilat Mazar in the summer of 2007 for "The Bible's Buried Secrets," her team has made a number of noteworthy discoveries, three of which are detailed below.]

An ancient escape tunnel

Early in 2008, Mazar’s team found the entrance of what turned out to be an extensive tunnel running under the Stepped Stone Structure. Mazar believes that the tunnel was likely first created before the time of King David to convey water, and then incorporated into the construction of his palace complex around 1000 B.C. She says there is “high probability” that it is the water tunnel called tsinor in the biblical story of King David’s conquest of Jerusalem (in II Samuel 5:6-8 and I Chronicles 11:4-6).

Mazar thinks that, centuries later, the tunnel may have served as an escape route during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. The Bible, in the Second Book of Kings (25:4), describes King Zedekiah’s escape through such a tunnel during the siege. The tunnel, with walls composed of unworked stone and bedrock, is wide enough to allow passage of one person crawling through at a time. Within the tunnel, Mazar’s team uncovered intact oil lamps characteristic of the siege period.

A second royal seal

Two years after the discovery of the tiny clay bulla, or stamp, bearing the name of Yehuchal ben Shelemiyahu, Mazar’s excavation brought to light a similar stamp from the same location. In ancient Hebrew script, it reads “Gedaliah ben Pashur.” Ben Pashur’s name appears in the same verse of the Book of Jeremiah (38:1) as ben Shelemiyahu’s. Both men, according to the Bible, served as ministers in the court of King Zedekiah, who reigned from 597–587/6 B.C., just prior to the destruction of the First Temple and fall of Jerusalem.

The prophet Nehemiah’s wall?
In an emergency attempt to shore up an unstable structure at the excavation site, Mazar’s team chanced upon another important find—the remnants of a wall that Mazar suspects is related to the prophet Nehemiah, who governed Jerusalem around 445 B.C., following the return of the Israelites from their exile in Babylon. An assemblage of pottery, as well as bullae and arrowheads, helped Mazar date the 100-foot-long wall to Nehemiah’s time.

According to the Bible, Nehemiah, both a prophet and political leader, was determined to restore Jerusalem as the Israelites’ capital a century after its destruction by the Babylonians, and he directed the construction of an enormous wall near David’s former palace in a mere 52 days.

[For more discoveries related to the early Israelites, see Archeological Evidence.]

Via AP:

Israeli archaeologists have discovered a 2,000-year-old gold earring beneath a parking lot next to the walls of Jerusalem’s old city, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Monday.

The discovery dates to the time of Christ, during the Roman period, said Doron Ben-Ami, director of excavation at the site. The piece was found in a Byzantine structure built several centuries after the jeweled earring was made, showing it was likely passed down through generations, he said.

The find is luxurious: A large pearl inlaid in gold with two drop pieces, each with an emerald and pearl set in gold.

“It must have belonged to someone of the elite in Jerusalem,” Ben-Ami said. “Such a precious item, it couldn’t be one of just ordinary people.”

In a statement released Monday, the authority said the piece of jewelry was “astonishingly well-preserved.” Finds from the Roman period are rare in Jerusalem, Ben-Ami said, because the city was destroyed by the Roman Empire in the first century A.D.

Shimon Gibson, an American archaeologist who was not involved in the dig, said the find was truly amazing, less because of its Roman origins than for its precious nature.

“Jewelry is hardly preserved in archaeological context in Jerusalem,” he said, because precious metals were often sold or melted down during the many historic takeovers of the city.

“It adds to the visual history of Jerusalem,” Gibson added, saying it brings attention to the life of women in antiquity.

Though Gibson dates the piece slightly later than the antiquities authority, to sometime between the second and fourth centuries A.D., he said its quality and beauty were impressive.

Ben-Ami added that he expects more small, luxury items to turn up in future excavations.

Earrings similar to this one have been found at archaeological sites throughout Europe, Ben-Ami said, where the Roman Empire also flourished. The authority said the earring appeared to be crafted using a technique similar to that depicted in portraits from Roman-era Egypt.

Via Reuters:

Archaeologists in Israel said on Thursday they had unearthed the oldest Hebrew text ever found, while excavating a fortress city overlooking a valley where the Bible says David slew Goliath.

The dig’s uncovering of the past near the ancient battlefield in the Valley of Elah, now home to wineries and a satellite station, could have implications for the emotional debate over the future of Jerusalem, some 20 km (12 miles) away.

Archaeologists from the Hebrew University said they found five lines of text written in black ink on a shard of pottery dug up at a five-acre (two-hectare) site called Elah Fortress, or Khirbet Qeiyafa.

Experts have not yet been able to decipher the text fully, but carbon dating of artifacts found at the site indicates the Hebrew inscription was written about 3,000 years ago, predating the Dead Sea Scrolls by 1,000 years, the archaeologists said.

Several words, including “judge,” “slave” and “king,” could be identified and the experts said they hoped the text would shed light on how alphabetic scripts developed.

In a finding that could have symbolic value for Israel, the archaeologists said other items discovered at the fortress dig indicated there was most likely a strong king and central government in Jerusalem during the period scholars believe that David ruled the holy city and ancient Israel.

“The chronology and geography of Khirbet Qeiyafa create a unique meeting point between the mythology, history, historiography and archaeology of King David,” said Yosef Garfinkel, the lead archaeologist at the fortress site.

Click here for more photos.

Via Israel Antiquities Authority:

In excavations north of Jerusalem, a fragment of a sarcophagus cover was found engraved in Hebrew script, characteristic of the Second Temple period. The fragment, made of hard limestone, reads: “Ben HaCohen HaGadol” – “Son of the High Priest.” It probably refers to one of the priests that officiated in Jerusalem between the years 30 and 70 CE.

The Land of Benjamin where the discovery was made is known in scientific literature as the place where the priests resided during the Second Temple period. The site that was exposed is an estate of one of the high priests who served in the Temple in Jerusalem.

It seems that the fragment was plundered from its original location and was used in the construction of a later Muslim building erected atop the ruins of the houses from the Second Temple period.

A quest is under way on four continents to find the missing pages of one of the world’s most important holy texts, the 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible known as the Crown of Aleppo.

Crusaders held it for ransom, fire almost destroyed it and it was reputedly smuggled across Mideast borders hidden in a washing machine. But in 1958, when it finally reached Israel, 196 pages were missing — about 40 percent of the total — and for some Old Testament scholars they have become a kind of holy grail.

Researchers representing the manuscript’s custodian in Jerusalem now say they have leads on some of the missing pages and are nearer their goal of making the manuscript whole again. The Crown, known in English as the Aleppo Codex, may not be as famous as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But to many scholars it is even more important, because it is considered the definitive edition of the Bible for Jewry worldwide.

The Codex, on 491 parchment pages about 12 inches by 10 inches, was transcribed sometime around 930 A.D. by Shlomo Ben Boya’a, a scribe in Tiberias on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. It was edited by a renowned scholar of the time, Aaron Ben-Asher. Its completion marked the end of a centuries-long process that created the final text of the Hebrew Bible.

It belonged to a Jewish community in Jerusalem until it was seized by the Crusaders who captured and sacked the city in 1099. Ransomed, it made its way to Cairo, where it was used by the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides, who declared it the most accurate copy of the Old Testament.

The manuscript doesn’t contain passages missing from other versions. Instead, its accuracy is a matter of details like vowel signs and single letters that would only slightly alter pronunciation. But Judaism sanctifies each tiny calligraphic flourish in the Bible as a way of ensuring that communities around the world use precisely the same version of the divine book. That’s why the Codex is considered by some to be the most important Jewish text in existence, and why the missing pieces are so coveted.

Click here to read more about the Aleppo Codex.

Another stab into the heart of Palestinianism. From Reuters ( visit the link soon before they scratch it from the etherworld ) :

Israeli archaeologists unveiled on Wednesday a 2,100-year-old Jerusalem perimeter wall on Mount Zion at the southern edge of Jerusalem’s Old City, which dates back to the Second Jewish Temple. The 3.2-meter (10.5-foot)-high wall formed part of a 6 km. (3.5-mile)-long fortification around the city in biblical times, said Yehiel Zelinger, who headed the excavation for the Israel Antiquities Authority. The ancient wall on Mount Zion had disappeared from view by the time a similar stone barrier, also uncovered in the dig, was built at the site during the Byzantine period more than 250 years later. Nonetheless, the second wall followed almost exactly the same path.

“During these two periods, Jerusalem was the centre … to the Jews during the Second Temple Period and to pilgrims from the Christian world (during the Byzantine Period),” Zelinger said.

British archaeologists surveyed the site in the 19th century, leaving behind a shoe and beer and wine bottles, which Zelinger’s team found and put on display on Wednesday.

Via NYTimes:

The 2,000-year-old scrolls, found in the late 1940s in caves near the Dead Sea east of Jerusalem, contain the earliest known copies of every book of the Hebrew Bible (missing only the Book of Esther), as well as apocryphal texts and descriptions of rituals of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus. The texts, most of them on parchment but some on papyrus, date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

Only a handful of the scrolls exist in large pieces, with several on permanent exhibit at the Israel Museum here in its dimly lighted Shrine of the Book. Most of what was found is separated into 15,000 fragments that make up about 900 documents, fueling a longstanding debate on how to order the fragments as well as the origin and meaning of what is written on them.