New Insights on the Archaeology of Jerusalem Based on Recent Excavations (Joe Uziel)

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In "New Insights on the Archaeology of Jerusalem Based on Recent Excavations," Dr. Joe Uziel, an archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority, shares his extensive work and discoveries in Israel, particularly in the City of David. He highlights the city's historical development from its earliest urban establishment to late antiquity. Dr. Uziel identifies key archaeological finds, including structures from various periods such as the First and Second Temple any and a Roman theater-like structure. He explains the importance of integrating new technologies in archaeology to unearth Jerusalem's ancient history, touching on the city's water systems, defenses, and urban expansion over the centuries. The lecture also discusses the societal and cultural dynamics revealed through these excavations, offering deeper insights into Jerusalem's past.

Highlights

Dr. Uziel is an archaeologist with extensive experience in excavating the City of David. 🏛️
Recent discoveries include buildings from the First Temple period and a Roman theater-like structure. 🎭
The City of David was chosen for settlement due to its natural spring and defensible landscapes. ⛰️
Complex societal structures, including administration and trade, were present in Ninth Century BCE Jerusalem. 📜
Innovative methods like radiocarbon dating are now being used to accurately excavate and date finds from Jerusalem. 🕵️‍♀️

Key Takeaways

Dr. Joe Uziel has made significant contributions to understanding Jerusalem's history through his excavations, spanning over a decade. 📚
Recent discoveries include buildings from the First Temple period and a Roman theater-like structure in Jerusalem. 🎭
The excavations in Jerusalem reveal complex societal structures, including writing and administration in the Ninth Century BCE. 🏰
Water systems and natural resources played a crucial role in the city's early urban planning and defense strategies. 🚰
New archaeological methods, like radiocarbon dating, provide fresh insights into ancient Jerusalem's development. 🕵️‍♂️

Overview

Dr. Joe Uziel, a noted archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority, has been unearthing the secrets of Jerusalem for over a decade. His focus has been particularly on the City of David, where he has used advanced methods to explore the ancient city's history and archaeology. The lecture details his team's findings, which include significant structures dating back to the First Temple period and the unique discovery of a Roman theater-like structure. The use of integrated technologies has been pivotal in bringing to light the intricate details of Jerusalem's past.

Through Dr. Uziel's findings, it's evident that natural resources heavily influenced Jerusalem’s development. The settlement began around a crucial natural spring, ensuring a steady water supply, which was essential for its sustenance and growth. Over time, robust defenses were built, including large fortifications protecting the city’s water source. Uziel explains how archaeological tools such as radiocarbon dating have transformed our understanding of the city's historical timeline and societal practices.

The excavations reveal a city of complexity and paradox. Ninth Century BCE Jerusalem showed advanced administration and trade, notably with the Philistines, despite being historical adversaries. This complexity is evident in the inscriptions and clay stamps found, indicating a well-organized society capable of complex governance and trade. Dr. Uziel's lecture enriches our understanding by showing how Jerusalem's history can be pieced together through diligent archaeological practices and new scientific approaches.

Chapters

00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Speaker Bio The chapter provides an introduction and a speaker biography for Dr. Joe Lucielle, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem. Dr. Lucielle has extensive experience excavating significant historical sites such as the City of David, Davidson Center, and western wall tunnels. He completed his PhD at Bar-Ilan University, concentrating on middle Bronze Age studies and the southern coastal plain. His current research focuses on Jerusalem's history and archaeology from its early urban development 4000 years ago to late antiquity. Dr. Lucielle is noted for utilizing advanced methods and new technologies to enhance field research.
01:00 - 02:30: Challenges with Electronic Presentations Dr. Isaiah and his team have made significant archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem, including structures from the First Temple period, a main street from the Second Temple era, and a Roman theater-like building – the first of its kind found in Jerusalem.
02:30 - 07:00: Overview of the Archaeological Study of Jerusalem In this chapter, the speaker is setting up for a presentation on the archaeological study of Jerusalem. They are dealing with some typical issues of electronic forums, such as audio clarity, but express hope that everyone can hear them well. They are also preparing to share their screen, which will temporarily replace their background visuals. The setting is informal as the speaker addresses an audience and prepares for a slideshow presentation.
07:00 - 12:00: Discussion on Ancient Jerusalem's Settlement and Water Source The chapter discusses the challenges encountered during a presentation about ancient Jerusalem's settlement and water source. Participants are struggling with technical issues related to screen sharing. Despite these difficulties, there is an emphasis on ensuring effective communication and information sharing among the participants.
12:00 - 18:00: The Expansion and Fortification of Ancient Jerusalem This chapter focuses on the recent archaeological findings in Jerusalem. The speaker has been actively involved in these excavations for approximately ten years. Despite the slow start due to connection issues, the discussion soon moves to sharing new insights gained from these digs, emphasizing the expansion and fortification of ancient Jerusalem.
18:00 - 23:00: Evidence of Writing and Trade in 9th Century BCE Jerusalem The chapter titled 'Evidence of Writing and Trade in 9th Century BCE Jerusalem' opens with the author recounting their past work experience at the archaeological site of Gath of the Philistines. They describe a pivotal moment about ten years prior when they were invited to join excavations in Jerusalem, an opportunity extended by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the governmental organization responsible for managing archaeological digs in Israel. Thrilled by this chance, the author eagerly accepted the offer and since then, has been deeply involved in the archaeological explorations and research in Jerusalem.
23:00 - 29:00: First Temple Period Findings and Use of New Dating Methods The chapter provides background information about Jerusalem, focusing particularly on ancient Jerusalem as perceived by those familiar or unfamiliar with the area. It references the old city area as central to the discussion.
29:00 - 31:00: The 586 BCE Destruction and the Persian Period Resettlement The chapter explores the development and resettlement patterns of Jerusalem, particularly focusing on the Temple Mount area. It mentions that while the Temple Mount is significant today, the original settlement of Jerusalem began on a small narrow hill to the south, not in the current old city. The old city is now surrounded by walls built by the Ottomans. The narration aims to clarify misconceptions about the initial locations of Jerusalem's settlements and their historical significance during the Persian period and surrounding events like the destruction in 586 BCE.
31:00 - 42:00: The Greatness of Herodian Jerusalem This chapter explores the strategic and resource-driven aspects of town planning in ancient times, particularly focusing on Herodian Jerusalem. It highlights the importance of natural resources, such as a natural spring, to the development and placement of settlements. The absence of such features in certain areas, like the upper mound, is contrasted with locations that possessed these valuable resources, underlining their significance for ancient town builders or planners.
42:00 - 48:40: Excavation of the Stepped Street and Roman Influence The chapter titled 'Excavation of the Stepped Street and Roman Influence' focuses on the strategic importance of hilltops in the Jerusalem area, highlighting their natural defense advantages against external attackers. However, the chapter also emphasizes the critical necessity of water for sustaining life, agriculture, and food production in ancient times.
48:40 - 57:00: Discovery Beneath Wilson’s Arch The chapter 'Discovery Beneath Wilson’s Arch' discusses the early settlement of Jerusalem, emphasizing the critical role of a steady water source in site selection. It highlights that the first buildings, constructed around 5,000 years ago, were built near the area's spring. The chapter describes how this small settlement gradually expanded from its origins near the spring on the lower parts of the hill.
57:00 - 64:00: Significance of Aqueducts and Water Supply in Jerusalem The chapter discusses the geographical and historical significance of the area known as the City of David, which is located on a small, well-defined hill in Jerusalem. This hill is uniquely positioned between two deep valleys. One of these valleys is the Kidron Valley, which is particularly noteworthy because it contains a spring at its base. This spring was crucial for the ancient water supply system of Jerusalem, underlining the importance of aqueducts and water management in the city's history.
64:00 - 80:00: Questions and Answers with Audience The chapter 'Questions and Answers with Audience' covers a description of the Central Valley, also known as the Turo Peon Valley. This valley is often hidden or covered and plays a significant role in the geography discussed in the lecture, particularly in relation to the City of David. The speaker invites the audience to understand the importance of this valley although it may not be visible immediately.

New Insights on the Archaeology of Jerusalem Based on Recent Excavations (Joe Uziel) Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 introduction and then we will start dr. Joe lucielle is an archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority Jerusalem district where he has excavated the City of David Davidson Center and western wall tunnels dr. Isaiah complete his PhD at bar-ilan University on the middle Bronze Age and southern coastal plain and now focuses his research on the history and archaeology of Jerusalem from its earliest urban establishment some four thousand years ago and until late antiquity dr. Zeile has advanced methods applied in the field using new technologies in order to learn about
00:30 - 01:00 Jerusalem's ancient population through the application of new tools recent discoveries made by dr. Isaiah and his teams in the field include buildings dating from the first Temple period the main street of Second Temple in Jerusalem and a Roman theater like structure the first such building to be discovered in Jerusalem recently he has taken the position of the head of the Dead Sea Scrolls unit at the Israel Antiquities Authority so with that dr. Zeile welcome to CSP and everybody thank you for joining us today
01:00 - 01:30 thank you very much for having me I hope you can all hear okay there's a lot of challenges with these electronic you know forums so I hope everyone can hear between okay I'm going to go ahead and share my screen so the nice background behind me will be less prominent but you'll see it later on as we go through the slideshow just Aria if you can give
01:30 - 02:00 me a thumbs up and tell me you see my screen so I know that do you does everyone see my screen okay I don't I don't I don't see your screen yet so just so you know your screen okay but it could be my computer so try it again okay Jared okay second I stopped
02:00 - 02:30 sharing I think the connections a bit slow there you go okay perfect all right so we're gonna be talking about some of the new insights on the archeology of Jerusalem based on the recent excavations I've been excavating in Jerusalem for about a decade now and I would just say that I'm very largely avoided in the
02:30 - 03:00 days when I was working with the huva further to the West at the site of gaffe of the Philistines but about ten years ago I was offered the opportunity to join the excavations in Jerusalem by the instrument equities Authority which is the government body which runs the excavations in the country and basically I grabbed it with two hands and since then I've been immersed in Jerusalem
03:00 - 03:30 100% so I'm gonna try and give a little bit of background of everything first of all when we think about Jerusalem and especially if you haven't been to Jerusalem or if you've only been to Jerusalem you know here and there you often think about ancient Jerusalem in terms the area up here if you can see my mouse which is the area of the old city
03:30 - 04:00 the area of the Temple Mount and these are very important areas and in fact they are part of Jerusalem's ancient core but they're not the oldest part of Jerusalem in fact Jerusalem settlement doesn't begin in the old city which is now surrounded by the Ottomans ottoman walls but it actually develop I'm a small narrow hill to the south where this white arrow is pointing and the reason that the city develops there
04:00 - 04:30 or the settlement develops there is that that has something which the upper mound does not have and that constancy to be right of big screen is a natural spring if I'm an ancient town builder or a town planner there are a couple of things that I look for when I'm planning my town and where to put it and one of them
04:30 - 05:00 is a place where I can protect pretty easily against attackers from outside the city and that exists in quite a lot of hilltops in the Jerusalem area because we're talking about a hilly area but something that doesn't exist everywhere is water and water is very very important because water is the source of life in ancient times without water you can't have agriculture you can't grow food food or is used in a lot
05:00 - 05:30 of types of production and so having a steady water source is a very very important part in choosing where you place your site and in fact when we know about Jerusalem is that the earliest settlement on the site begins some roughly 5,000 years ago with buildings constructed very very close to the area of the spring down on the lower parts of the hill and slowly that live small settlement expands more and more and
05:30 - 06:00 extends over the area of the entire what we call southeastern Hill or what you may know it is the City of David the City of David is a small hill which is very very well defined by two very deep valleys one of which you can see in the picture if I move my mouse you can see here the key drone Valley at the base of the hill in the Kidron Valley is where the spring emanates from and on the
06:00 - 06:30 other side there is just as deep of a valley known as the Central Valley the turo peon Valley and that Valley you don't see very well it's covered up and you'll see a little bit later on in our lecture why it gets covered up but you'll have to take my word for it and believe me when I say that right around here an additional Valley runs which basically secludes the area of this small hill of the City of David in later
06:30 - 07:00 times of course the settlement expands towards the north to include the area of the Temple Mount upon which in the first Temple period a temple is built it is then destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians and then some 70 years later the temple is rebuilt and expands slowly over time until it reaches its peak in the late second temple period roughly
07:00 - 07:30 2,000 years ago and if you come to visit Jerusalem and you look at things like the western wall you're actually looking at the wall or the western wall there are four of them which hold up the platform upon which the second temple was built now I'm not nearly the first to excavate in Jerusalem in fact Jerusalem is one of the most extensively and intensively excavated sites not only in Israel but in the world Jerusalem
07:30 - 08:00 draws a lot of interest obviously because of its importance to Judaism to Christianity to Islam and archaeology in Israel or archeology in the Holy Land as we make role it is quite a has been quite driven by its connection and its importance to important religions and so beginning in the mid 19th century we have explorers and American explorers in
08:00 - 08:30 German explorers coming to Jerusalem and doing archaeological work and archaeological work is important and over those hundred and fifty years or even more now 170 years I'd say methods develop more and more and one of the biggest challenges in driving in Jerusalem a site that's been so extensively excavated is what else can I learn so much has been done 150 years of archaeological work what else
08:30 - 09:00 can i contribute as a scholar coming to Jerusalem and I hope in the next few minutes we'll be able to understand that there is still a lot to learn about Uslan and especially by integrating new methods which weren't around five or ten or 15 or 20 years ago we can learn new pieces of information which weren't explored by past explorers just as a quick no I want to mention that recent
09:00 - 09:30 archaeologists love to argue I mean we love to party more than anyone else I think and the idea that the city developed from the area of the spring as I explained before and then later expanded northward towards the Temple Mount and westward towards what we know as Mount Zion for the southwestern Hill in the area of the Jewish quarter Ferg was basically
09:30 - 10:00 the very very very well accepted core idea in the way in which drooling developed but recently some scholars have suggested that perhaps the site developed first on the Temple Mount and then spread towards the south towards the City of David and towards the southwestern Hill at the same time the main reason that I don't accept this
10:00 - 10:30 premise is basically it ignores two very important pieces of information one is it ignores the importance of having a natural spring available to you and basically utilizing it but more importantly to it largely ignores the archaeological data which has been uncovered in the City of David over the past 150 years and so I think we're still basically looking at our left side
10:30 - 11:00 of our screen option a as the primary option and so I'll actually begin with a discussion of some of the recent things that we've been exposing in the City of David and then later on we'll move further north towards not the Temple Mount itself because there are no excavations on the Temple Mount but very very close to the Temple Mount in our excavations in the western wall tunnels okay so here we have a reconstruction of
11:00 - 11:30 what the first city of Jerusalem may have looked like and of course this is very very maximalist okay this is like the biggest it could have possibly been but what I want you to notice mostly is where the black arrow is emanating from and the black arrow is starting it's starting point is actually where the spring is located now if the spring is Jerusalem's most important natural resource and we know that as opposed to
11:30 - 12:00 for example other sites let's say in Lebanon where an important resource would have been the cedar wood or sites in the Negev area which would have had copper copper waring and so there were other natural resources in the and Jerusalem we're largely talking City
12:00 - 12:30 you need to plan not just having a water resource for protecting that water source because if you don't protect that water source then in any attack basically the water source can be cut off and then you can very quickly be conquered and so very very important to Jerusalem's urban development would have been protecting and manipulating that water source and over the excavations of about 150 years many many many different
12:30 - 13:00 water sources were exposed sorry they're different water systems and fortifications were exposed the most famous of which is known as the spill womp tunnel where hezekiah tunnel which in the 8th century BCE prior to the Assyrian attack on Jerusalem according to at least the more conservative opinion which I tend to agree with
13:00 - 13:30 Hezekiah cards a tunnel moving for water from the spring here in the rock underneath all the houses of the city and bringing it to the southern end of the city a into a very very large pool of water known as the Silla lon pull from that point on the sill want pool at the southern end of the city becomes the main water source the water is fed from the spring but the spring is no longer
13:30 - 14:00 the point that's access to the prior to that point the spring needed to be protected and so one of the first things that we see in Jerusalem's City is the construction of very very large fortifications these walls marked in yellow okay right here which surround the spring and protect them now I would like to show you pictures of it but I really really recommend as Aria mentioned coming to Israel on your next trip even if it's a year and a half away
14:00 - 14:30 now because of the coded virus and basically taking a look at these incredible constructions which are thousands of years old built of huge stones standing to a height of some seven meters so from roughly converting two feet to that 20 feet 12 walls that are about being feet thick something that's very very massive and when they were originally exposed the excavators ronnie
14:30 - 15:00 rach mulli she dated these structures to about 36 3,700 years ago at a period where jerusalem was settled by what we can generally call Canaanite with the Bible may call Jesu bites and of course archaeology does not have the capability to ethnically identify these people and know what they were calling themselves but we're roughly talking about the same
15:00 - 15:30 culture that settled the entire Land of Israel in the entire southern Levant and they dated these structures to that period for several different reasons first of all here you could see some pictures this is Ronnie right standing next to one of the stones so you can just get an idea the stone is about two meters high about one and a half meters wide to think about moving these types
15:30 - 16:00 of stones and this is just one of many many stones into place at a time when there was no mechanical equipment is quite quite impressive and here you can see le shukroon who is standing against one of the walls and if le shoe Crona is about five ten you can get an idea of how well-preserved these fortifications are and again they're dating them to about thirty six thirty seven hundred
16:00 - 16:30 years ago at a time when the Canaanites were settled in Jersey now the reasoning behind their dating was several fold here you can see some reconstructions of what this may have looked like to an attacking army what they would have had to overcome in order to try and cut off the water source and what it would have looked like from the inside with the house is looking down walking down within a fortified area in order to fetch their
16:30 - 17:00 water from the spring and then turn around and hike back up and whenever these fortifications were built they obviously served their purpose because one of the things that we learn about Jerusalem is that as opposed to many of the other sites in the country that we meet destruction after destruction after destruction in Jerusalem we are very very short of destructions in fact for
17:00 - 17:30 the early periods and learning all the way out to the attack and death period we can really talk about two destructions one which is in 70 AD 70 seee the Roman destruction of Jerusalem which is a very very very massive destruction and the other one is the 586 BC destruction by the Babylonians and so these fortifications obviously serve their purpose because for hundreds of years no conquering army was able to destroy
17:30 - 18:00 Jerusalem and we know that there were conquering armies running around trying to for example Sennacherib king of Assyria who comes to Jerusalem and tries to destroy it and in the end he ends up leaving of course he explains it differently than the Bible but in the bottom line is is he doesn't get his way he doesn't destroy Jerusalem and we also have indications from the biblical text that about a hundred years earlier there
18:00 - 18:30 are immense up the aramean armies tried to do the same thing and if I go back to Gath of the Philistines one of the other major sites in the country time we know that the arameans both archaeologically and textually when you have evidence that the arameans destroyed the site completely and apparently they tried anything to Jerusalem and it didn't work out and it's most likely because of these massive fortifications put in both the city but also its water source
18:30 - 19:00 now all it's very much made sense in terms of archaeological logic and I don't want to get too into it because we'll run out of time very quickly but beyond the archaeological logic that I that I mentioned here one of the most important things that led them to this conclusion that Jerusalem should be that Jerusalem's fortifications should be dated to 36 37 38 hundred years ago
19:00 - 19:30 where a group of texts discovered in Egypt right on bowls and figurines that cursed many of the cities in the region of Israel okay in the region of Canaan of Kaman and one of the cities that is very likely mentioned in these texts is Jerusalem and so the archaeologists who expose these fortifications said in order to have a city in Jerusalem you
19:30 - 20:00 needed to protect its water source and if the Egyptians are mentioning this city then we must have here a connection between our historical records and archaeological record these fortifications were built in the age some 3,500 years ago when we began excavating when I took over the project from ten years ago we began excavating buildings which were built up against
20:00 - 20:30 these fortifications and these buildings dated to much much later they dated to the ninth century BCE a period when Jerusalem was no longer Canaanite it was now actually under Jude I'd control there was a Jew diet monarchy okay the United Monarchy of David and Solomon had already split and we had two separate kingdoms Israel in the north and Judah in the south and
20:30 - 21:00 Judas capital was Jerusalem now I just want to make a side note here because I'm sure some of you are asking yourselves wait a second you're just skipped over David and Solomon and that's probably one of the most important periods that you're looking for truth be told yes it would be nice to find but the bottom line is at least archaeologically we have not found a lot events for Jerusalem of the 10th century BCE now this has led to many many
21:00 - 21:30 arguments and some of you have may have read a recent article in The New Yorker which was published which basically interviewed Israel Finkelstein Professor Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University that describes David as a sort of bandit running around and charismatic illegal Catharine people behind him but without a real capital without a real Kingdom
21:30 - 22:00 the bottom line is that I think and I'm saying this hesitantly as you can tell that archeology doesn't have all the answers and sometimes what you don't find doesn't necessarily mean what wasn't there so sometimes we don't find things that were there and that's just part of the game and so I think we need to base ourselves more with what we are finding and less with what we're not finding and so I skip over the 10th
22:00 - 22:30 century because we really don't know a lot about it archaeologically but we do know a lot about 9th century BCE Jerusalem and there we're finding a lot a lot of important remains all over the city everywhere we excavate and some of those remains are built up against these fortifications and so what we are understanding is whoever is building up these structures in the 9th century and using these fortifications obviously has
22:30 - 23:00 enough power to organize labor to put in the effort into building a city and not only that but is involved in trade with other entities as we'll get to in a minute and so we see that Jerusalem is really blossoming in the 9th century BCE and here you can see patches of what seemed to be reconstruction of these
23:00 - 23:30 four vacations at a certain period so it's not just the building of these fortifications but it's their maintenance it's keeping them up over time I don't wanna bore you too much with archaeological sections but I will show you a photo of the tower now after Ronnie Ryan finally shukran began to expose the tower we continue to expose the tower and we came upon the opportunity to date the tower because we
23:30 - 24:00 wanted to get hard solid evidence not just speculation of linking the construction of these fortifications with those texts from Egypt and so we basically exposed its outer face and we saw that it's lower courses the lower stones of this tower were not built on bedrock but they were built on layers of soil and layers of soil contain materials that can be dateable archaeological dateable materials can be
24:00 - 24:30 many many things it can be ceramics for example which we can date roughly for periods of usually about between I'd say 50 to 100 years and so if we find certain types of ceramics we're going to be able to use those to date the fortifications in later periods when we get to the Second Temple period we'll talk about coins and coins are extremely important because coins many times just
24:30 - 25:00 as points today have specific years and then we can get to very very fine-tuned dating but in this case we didn't have pottery and we didn't have coins but what we did have was organic remains and organic remains are extremely important because up until uh I'd say about seven or eight years ago we were not using a very very important technology in Jerusalem that is used all over the
25:00 - 25:30 world archaeologically and that's radiocarbon dating basically takes organic remains which have isotopes in them and one specific isotope carbon-14 which has a half-life and uses it to measure the dates now this method has been around for I'd say roughly about 60 or 70 years of them and I'm mistaken it's been highly improved in the past I'd say 15 years or so and
25:30 - 26:00 even in the past couple years in the past years it's even then even more and more proof so it's constantly being improved and we basically had the opportunity to come and say well they've been talking about middle Bronze Age about Canaanite Jerusalem let's see if they're right and we made two sections beneath this tower that was built on soil and basically we came up with completely different dates and if I mentioned that Jerusalem of the ninth century BCE these to be a bustling city
26:00 - 26:30 well-organized with a powerful government that's we're getting in our radiocarbon dates because as opposed to the dating that we thought was correct somewhere around thirty seven hundred years ago we can now talk about almost a thousand years later 900 years later the construction of these towers and if not the construction then at the very least they're repair and so I think that when we're talking about Jerusalem we can
26:30 - 27:00 really see a very very sharp development in the 9th century BCE using our new methods not only are we getting construction of fortifications of different buildings but we're getting a lot of different finds for example here we have a small churn which has a Hebrew inscription carved on it okay it's the only part of the inscription and the
27:00 - 27:30 importance is not the name mentioned which is here you have an ancient Dalit a hey it seems to be a the leg of possibly several letters and then we have here a mem an ancient mem and here we have parts of an ancient shin so we have here an ancient Hebrew inscription from about 29 800 years ago sorry but the importance of this inscription is that we see
27:30 - 28:00 there's writing in ancient Jerusalem in the 9th century and this is important because in the ancient world writing is very very closely linked to administrative complexity and so we're starting to see different aspects of that complexity and not only that but we see these little small clumps of clay here that you can see and they're stamped these are basically similar to what you would think about if I I always
28:00 - 28:30 like to use the movie Robin Hood where you see lady Marian rolling up a letter that she wants to send and she takes wax and she poured it on the edge of the letter that she's rolled up and then she puts her stamp on it in order to make sure that nobody opens it until it reaches its addressee so here we have the same idea except instead of using wax they reviews small bits of clay and they stamp them and at this point in
28:30 - 29:00 time in the 9th century BCE what they're using are different symbols iconography that they stamp on these pieces of clay in order to close up containers or letters that were sent from different places in the Judean Kingdom to Jerusalem and whatever these holding here a group of pottery which
29:00 - 29:30 arrived at slim which arrives for a very interesting place Bexley arrives from that site or one of those sites in the southern coastal plain known as a Philistine site and the way we know it is we can examine the clay that was used to produce these vessels and we can see that they're not locally made in Jerusalem but they're brought from a farther brought from these sites of Philistia and here we get a very very
29:30 - 30:00 interesting picture of 19th century Jerusalem that's not only involved in administration and writing and construction fortifications but they're involved in trade and what are they who are they trading with they're trading with who we would expect to be their arch enemies the Philistines now this is interesting because when we go back to the biblical text and of course as archaeologists were not biblical scholars and so we have to try and use it carefully but we can see that the
30:00 - 30:30 biblical text is quite complex at explaining the relationship between the Philistines and Judah and the although at times these two entities seem to be at each other's throats there are other times where there seems to be some sort of veteran lationship and one of the cases for example is when David runs off to death of the Philistines when he's escaping from Saul and so he may have
30:30 - 31:00 have logical evidence to show that this relationship was very very well developed or at least had trade going on here you can see fuller forms of these pots from sites in Philistia which basically those small shirts that I told you are pieces of these same types of pots and so basically we're seeing that ninth century Jerusalem is a very very complex City with the strong government
31:00 - 31:30 fortifications trade administration writing and so on and so forth I want to now go to the area that's marked in this small screen square which we've been excavating for the past three years and which has had some quite some interesting finds first of all Ronny rayona we shook word and I keep referring to them so just so you understand I'm talking about the team of archeologists that excavated at the site
31:30 - 32:00 prior to my arrival so they excavated up until 2011 or to that to the end of 2011 at the site at which point I began excavating and here you can see a very very unique complex of rock-cut rooms now usually when we excavate houses from first from the first temple period you'll see the houses are built of stones usually actually small uncut
32:00 - 32:30 rough stones built on top of each other but here what they actually did was they carved out the houses are the structures into the bedrock and they formed the walls out of the bedrock and these walls also include all kinds of strange features and right and shukran suggested that this may be some kind of cultic complex now this is a pinterest because we're talking about First Temple period Jerusalem and so why would you have cult
32:30 - 33:00 when you have the temple although it's farther up but you should have only one place of worship in Jerusalem as we'll see in a moment our concept of for a simple Jerusalem may not be as righteous as later Second Temple period Jerusalem and first temple period Jerusalem they were using things that not necessarily think would be in line through written
33:00 - 33:30 law for example we find many many many figurines now figurines are of course against the written law but we still find them in just about every house that we excavated in Jerusalem and another thing that we find is here you see a room just above these rock-cut rooms which we excavated you can he see here that they were smashed vessels here and in between these vessels which you see here once
33:30 - 34:00 again as we expose them you can see here this small a head that's the head of a very very small pig which we excavated in this room and the way we reconstruct this us in the Brio is that this is some kind of room but there was storage you had these jars here that probably held commodities and at some point in time something happens
34:00 - 34:30 in jerusalem somewhere in the 8th century BCE where the room collapses and gets destroyed and this little piglet gets stuck in between these jars and finds its end why is this piglets on point because as you know in Jewish law today and actually this goes way back pig is not a kosher animal and in fact it has a very very extreme taboo in
34:30 - 35:00 ultra today and that taboo goes way far back at least till the Second Temple period and some scholars have even argued that it should extend back all the way to the earliest beginnings of the Israelite culture some 3,200 years ago because for a large for the most part we do not find pig bones in the
35:00 - 35:30 archaeological excavations of sites related to the tribes of Israel to Judah and so we've basically some scholars have developed this into the idea that they prevented themselves from eating pork and the reason that they did so is because those Philistines which we mentioned before we're actually consuming quite a lot of pork but in the case we have here we see that they were not only consuming small amounts of pork
35:30 - 36:00 but they were still consuming pork in Jerusalem but they were also raising the pigs at the time and so we understand that this taboo may have not may not have been as strict as we once thought for first temple period Jerusalem and as I mentioned before in general our idea of Jerusalem of the first temple period indicates that although there was a written law and it had many many prohibitions there was a lot of I'd say
36:00 - 36:30 people who weren't keeping that to the letter of the law I just want to show you for a minute these same rooms where we found this pig actually have a very very very long life they undergo some kind of destruction again in the mid eighth-century BCE it's not a very very large destruction it doesn't cover the entire site and we're sort of trying to figure out what that
36:30 - 37:00 could have been that caused the destruction but then they very very quickly resettle these buildings and you can see the the little blue tags marking area surfaces which were basically the surface the living surfaces in these buildings extending from somewhere roughly let's say around 750 BC and all the way till five 1860 in 586 BCE I'll go back to that in a minute
37:00 - 37:30 Jerusalem is destroyed and we'll take a look at that in a minute because these buildings don't show signs of destruction but we'll see other buildings which do now one of the important things that we found in these rooms are you remember those clumps of clay these stamps these that we call boule which were used in order to stamp letters well if in the 9th century they were using pictures by the 8th century they were using maize and these names
37:30 - 38:00 teach us a lot about the officials living working in Jerusalem some of them have very very important made some of them have the names mentions of the Bible we can reconstruct lineages and in the one before you right here we can actually read in ancient Hebrew letters laughs II I've been Menahem now Menahem of course we know the name in a hint from the Bible as one of the kings of Israel and we
38:00 - 38:30 also know the name I'm not a thief haha he had Viktor two kings of Israel now the official stamping this small piece of clay which closed a letter was not one of the kings of Israel who had fought the Jerusalem later but what is important hearing that whoever this individual was the lineage of using these names and being called or being
38:30 - 39:00 named after Kingston Trio this may be an indication the people living dreaming in the late eighth century BCE because what is that in 723 BCE the Assyrians destroy the kingdom of Israel and many many refugees begin to scatter across the country and some of those refugees arrived in Jerusalem and some of those refugees actually find their way into key positions in Jerusalem's
39:00 - 39:30 administration and it's possible that we're looking at some evidence for works to fix that okay I'm I'm gonna move ahead I think we have roughly about 20 minutes Arion is that roughly right yeah about 15 minutes or so I would say 15 minutes okay Oh last slide a first template um and then we're gonna jump ahead to Second Temple
39:30 - 40:00 Jerusalem so here you could see remains of the destruction of 586 BCE that were found in these same buildings you see the smashed pots you see the black markings which are the markings of charcoal which probably held up the ceiling of this room and burnt down and fell on top of these pots and destroyed the city in 586 BC but as I mentioned
40:00 - 40:30 before Jerusalem quickly revives and it revives some seventy years later in the Persian period and the temple is rebuilt and people begin to move back and to resettle Jerusalem and Jerusalem reaches its peak roughly 2,000 years ago in the 1st century BCE or 1st century CE at the time of a king named Herod who
40:30 - 41:00 you probably have heard of and subsequently after his death to a time when the city is ruled by Roman governors known as procurator's the most famous of which is Pontius Pilate and he's infamous of course for the crucifixion of Jesus until it reaches its end in 70 CE EE in 66 CE II the Jews would bail against the Roman Empire the rebellion lasts four years and in 70 CE the city is destroyed what we're looking
41:00 - 41:30 at here are two important reconstructions for our discussion the first just shows the extent of the city and its greatest height and here you can see the area of the Temple Mount and you can see the four walls this is the western wall the northern wall the eastern wall and the southern wall and you see that this is the area of the City of David which was settled from
41:30 - 42:00 ready earlier on but now is known as the Lower City and the area up here of the upper City and the elites were probably living in the upper City and then there's new neighborhoods extending way beyond and what happens is is Jerusalem as it expands it needs to expand its fortified area as well and so you have several lines of fortifications now one of the advantages that we have for Second Temple period Jerusalem is that
42:00 - 42:30 we also have very very good historical documentation by Josephus Flavius who particularly describes the events of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem but he also describes in detail many of the features that we're expose archaeologically including the temple mount's on our right you can see the main street of jerusalem running along the city of david and this street
42:30 - 43:00 connects the two main points of interest like say in Jerusalem's landscape in the late second temple period the main point of interest is the temple down here and the second point of interest is the soul womp pool now you remember i mentioned before the sil want pool receives the waters of the spring and it collects them in a very very large pool but in this period of the site well period 2000
43:00 - 43:30 years ago the importance of the spring was a much more symbolic importance a much more ritual importance than actual sustenance because a new technology had developed known as aqueducts and aqueducts which is a basically comes into play roughly about two thousand one hundred two thousand five hundred and fifty years ago can move water from place to place as long as that water is going downhill the water can basically
43:30 - 44:00 be moved and so in jerusalem we can supply the upper areas of the temple mount and the upper city with water without having to go down to the pool or to the spring and collect that water and so this water has more of a symbolic spiritual aspect to it and if you would have been arriving in jerusalem not in october 2021 but in october 51 then what
44:00 - 44:30 you would have done is you would have entered the city from its southern gate down here you would have stopped at the sill wan pool to refresh yourself possibly purify yourself and then you would have been begun your march up this very very steep steps streets in order to reach one of the entrances into the temple mounds we know today of entrances along a major
44:30 - 45:00 entrance along the southern wall known as the halter gate and four entrances along the internal wall here you can take a look at our excavations of this street and this street is a very very massive Street it's built of very very beautifully carved stones this is not some cheap little pathway at its
45:00 - 45:30 narrowest point it's about 18 meters wide the stones are about 40 to 50 centimetres thick and it runs for a length of about 600 meters okay our rough estimations speak about 10,000 tons of stone in order to build the street that you had to carve and you had to move into place and you had to build infrastructure to hold it up and it's not just the street itself because they
45:30 - 46:00 meet the street is a base them which is just as you'd have today all the dirty water you don't Keith gets drained beneath the street and runs out of the city and we've exposed this street for a length of some two hundred hundred and fifty metres thus far and hopefully will actually continue this project after kovat dies down we are working we're still working on it but at a much slower
46:00 - 46:30 pitch right now but our plan is that basically when tourists arrive at the site they'll actually be able to recreate those steps that a pilgrim would have on 2,000 years ago the city at its southern point cephus illinois and march along this step street up until all the way into the old city now
46:30 - 47:00 if you see this probe here you can see that here there isn't a stone of the street we actually excavate beneath the street and this yielded some interesting and for me because what we got beneath the street is material that we can use in order to date the building of the street and in this case we have something that's even better than radiocarbon dates and that's coins as I mentioned before coins often have a year on them and we can actually
47:00 - 47:30 pinpoint very specifically the building activities according to the dates on the coins and the coins that we got out of this probe date to 30 31 seee now 30 31 fee is well after Herod's death Aaron dies in force BC and so although many of the building projects in Jerusalem are attributed to her odd here we see that her odd may have
47:30 - 48:00 planned it on paper or his architects may have landed on paper but he did not build the street and the person who seems to be the person pushing for the building and completing the project was none other than Pontius Pilate that same Pilate who is known for the crucifixion of Jesus and because of that crucifixion he is very very often characterized very negatively in the historical sources but
48:00 - 48:30 what we are realizing is that although he may have done certain things that caused that to happen he was also and far important things such as major construction projects in Jerusalem here you can see that we are not the first to excavate and I mention this at the beginning this street this is a small tunnel of two excavators in the late 19th century that exposed
48:30 - 49:00 portions of the street but as I mentioned before the main thing that we do is when we approach this evidence we try to build on what if they knew and add new methods which they didn't have and so our dating of the streets is much much better than that what they would have known back then and here you can see them stones of coal that over over the street the collapse of seven DCE as documented in Josephus
49:00 - 49:30 that the Romans after destroying the temple and the Temple Mount burned Jerusalem all the way to the Silla long pool and these are the stones that collapsed and covered over the street from the buildings on either side of it here you could see the coins that I mentioned before and here you could see a small glass perfume bottle which we found right next to this is very very interesting podium structure built on
49:30 - 50:00 the street what this podium was used for we're not exactly sure unfortunately we didn't find it with a big sign saying this is what this is but what we imagine is that the podium was used for someone or something to stand on and attract the attention of the thousands and thousands of pilgrims that would have been marching up the street and if I mentioned before the use of new method
50:00 - 50:30 is that weren't adapt at sea there's very very large heap of stones and with very very large heap of stones we find a very very rich collection of these small little dots and these small little dots are actually not dots that they're burnt seeds and they're very very important because these bread seeds first of all tell us what people were eating in Jerusalem on the eve of its destruction
50:30 - 51:00 but they don't just tell us what they were eating but they actually come into play in understanding the events leading up to that destruction now when we read Josephus we see that he describes the city is in a great famine at the time of the Rome of the Jewish rebellion and during the siege and then the destruction and he describes that there's no food in the city and he
51:00 - 51:30 describes Horrors and I won't get into it but basically we're finding that is food in the city and there's not just a little bit we're finding tons and tons and tons of remains and we started questioning what what can this mean and we're still trying to figure it out and I don't think we have 100% of an answer but one of the things that we're coming to realize is that perhaps we need to take a better look at what Josephus says because Josephus describes the bad guys
51:30 - 52:00 in the story and in Joseph for Josephus the bad guys are the zealots they're the Jews who are trying to pull everyone along against the Romans obviously Josephus is writing under Roman rule and so he wants to be careful there and so he's not running with the Romans or the bad guys but he's also Jewish and so he doesn't want to write that the Jews are the bad guys so he plans to sell its lot one of the things that he plans to sell its form is accusing innocent people of
52:00 - 52:30 hiding food and these zealots run around and burn the storerooms the empty so-called empty storerooms of these people who are innocent and weren't hiding food and what we may be seeing here is that there was food and these zealots who were running around accusing people of hiding food or if not sharing food may actually have been right I'm not gonna go into this because I believe
52:30 - 53:00 I'm running pretty much out of time right we're again there yes okay so I want to skip ahead and I want to talk past the destruction to the last point of excavation that I'll be talking about today and that's the excavations been neat Wilson's art as I mentioned before there are four entrances that we know of along the western wall and if you've been to Jerusalem and you've been to the
53:00 - 53:30 Wailing Wall or the Western Wall you've been to this little small square right here but that actual length of the western wall is much much longer than that and along the Stuart and fifty meter segment we have four entrance the in the amount the two lower entrances known as Barclays gate and Warren's gate and the two upper entrances count up by armed arches Robinson's arch and
53:30 - 54:00 Robinson's arch unfortunately collapsed in its 70c destruction and Wilson's arch which held up in entrance and Wilson's arch still stands to this day and although of indecent ly there were very very fierce arguments about the date of when Wilson's arch as we see it today was constructed we now know 100% that Wilson's arch was constructed in
54:00 - 54:30 the Second Temple period and it stands today so we're talking about an arch standing to a height of some 10 meters that was built roughly 2,000 years to come and so standing still supports the entrance into the Temple Mount because if you walk along the old city you end up walking along the street of the chain which follows the same path and you enter the entrance known as the gate of
54:30 - 55:00 the chain in order to enter the Temple Mount now beneath the area of Wilson's Archer you could see a picture of Wilson's arch a synagogue was established after 1967 a part of the Western Wall Plaza prayer yeah and if you arrived at the Western Wall Plaza on a rainy day or in a very hot day you may want to pray inside and so back in the early days following be a six-day war
55:00 - 55:30 and a synagogue was established beneath the arch and that synagogue basically prevented any excavation up until a few years ago where a plan was put together to drill in eight columns which could hold the synagogue up and allow us to excavate beneath it and what we expose were a lot a lot of layers but I want to jump to probably what is the highlight and this which is a new segment of the
55:30 - 56:00 western wall which had indeed life for some seven hundred years is not the big the big exciting fine because we knew was there and this which is the arch which is the peer of the arch the wall which held up the arch is exciting but there's something more exciting and it's this structure and as you can see here as we began to expose it the structure had a sort of round shape to it
56:00 - 56:30 you started wondering what this could be and as we went on we realized that we were exposing what is a small theater or theater like complex in Jerusalem now Jerusalem's theatres were documented historically both by Josephus for the Second Temple period and in later historical sources for the period after 70 CE II because after 70 CE Jerusalem
56:30 - 57:00 does not remain empty the Romans after conquering Jerusalem and destroying it leave behind a garrison of soldiers known as the 10th Legion and that Legion remained in Jerusalem and slowly develops the site into civilian settlement and that civilian settlement after about sixty years of development is granted the status of being a Roman colony the Emperor Hadrian
57:00 - 57:30 actually renamed Jerusalem he calls it Aliyah Capitolina and in 130c he arrives in Jerusalem declares Jerusalem is a Roman colony and has a Roman colony Jerusalem needed Roman style buildings and that's what we're looking at here is one of these buildings you can see here the curved wall which would have encompassed the orchestra back here where my mouse is
57:30 - 58:00 moving is where the very very important people would have sat and here are steps going up to what it would have been rows of seats in order to see something going on in the stage area which is us if you can see it here you have the stage area back here one of the most interesting things about the structure that we found is that it was never completed now we
58:00 - 58:30 can't be a hundred percent sure and we can't even be 50 percent ray there may be many many reasons that the structure was not completed at that time but several pop-up into mind first of all one of them could be the same reason that you have today for structures not being completed which is money runs out or there was a technical flaw which stopped the construction but a more historically attractive scenario
58:30 - 59:00 would actually be to link to the historic events that we know happened here now we know this building dates to roughly the time of the Declaration of illiac Catarina and what we suggest as it's possible that the construction of this building was ongoing during the time when Elia Capitolina was declared and during the event that happens two years after that because they're not
59:00 - 59:30 Jews in Jerusalem at that time but there's Jews living in the areas surrounding Jerusalem and they're not so happy about Hadrian change in Jerusalem's named from Jerusalem to Ilya Capitolina and making it into a Roman colony and they revolt for a second time the second revolt known as Barclay the Bar Kokhba revolt is quite a serious event and it's possible that what we're looking at is we're catching that exact moment in history where the Roman legion
59:30 - 60:00 is constructing buildings in Rome and Jerusalem and then the revolt breaks out and they have to leave Jerusalem to deal with that revolt only coming back some three years later and possibly changing plans due to many many reasons I think at this point I'm gonna leave it to questions I'm gonna open it up to questions I hope that you enjoyed and things were clear thank you so will you
60:00 - 60:30 unshare the screen and we'll have kind of a few questions and while you're doing that let me start with a few so look this way actually first is are you were you in charge of are you working on the rest of the tunnels that many of us have seen that opened up in the last I don't know how many years has been ten years or so oh and see you know what's what's under the the current city and you can walk through the tunnels by the Kotel yes so
60:30 - 61:00 the the excavation that I just showed you is actually my part in the excavation of the tunnels the tunnels were excavated first of all they were excavated back in the 19th century partially by the likes of Charles Warren the British explorers arriving in Jerusalem more recently they're excavated by Dan Bahat and then afterward by Alexander Fleming circle of the Israeli Antiquities Authority my
61:00 - 61:30 excavation is the last link in that and it's actually the last arch prior to entering into the Temple Mount so the next time you come here in October 2021 if you go to the western wall tunnels you'll be able to walk through this area when will we be able to walk on the part of the road that you showed us in the city of David that you're excavating right now that's that's an excellent
61:30 - 62:00 question I would have liked to say that I would like to say that by October 2021 when you come at least part of that road will be opened up basically we exposed a very very lengthy segment of it and now it's at the point of design so once we finish our excavation basically you need a team to come in and design the whole you know I'd say the the the background
62:00 - 62:30 make everything pretty the lighting and so on and so forth and so that's where it stands now because of the virus of course the pandemic right now everything is sort of you know with a question mark but hopefully I believe that by October 2021 you'll be able to walk parts of that Road well as as Friends of a huva Howe which makes us special friends of yours can we arrange a private like
62:30 - 63:00 special tour of this even though it's no open to the public or is it well we can't do that right so when we come the people who are coming on our trip and can you meet us there is that something we can arrange is it yeah we about a year and a bit time for smiling now I see oh yes oh yes you can definitely contact me and I can we're on in we are you like to do things that other people don't get to do and with VIP tours so it's you know very important to us someone asks a good question you talked
63:00 - 63:30 about the different water saw source that was available via the aqueduct is that from a different spring or a different water source the same water source that fed the pool down below no so it's from different water sources that's an excellent question thank you basically Jerusalem is not the highest hill in the in the vicinity if we go further to the south to the areas of the hedron hills the area of modern gush etzion their map there are natural
63:30 - 64:00 springs which basically would have fed the aqueduct now because the height of these areas is actually higher than Jerusalem itself the aqueducts would basically run the water at a very very slight slope and take it towards the higher areas of Jerusalem such as the Temple Mount the spring that I spoke about at the beginning which is at the base of the hill basically you can't run it upwards water won't go upwards and so
64:00 - 64:30 basically you would have had to gone down to fetch your water like Jack and Jill basically Jackie okay but it's a it's a different water source I think that was the question Carl cedar wants to know what RQL is like a slice yes Karl cedar wants to know what archaeologists like you think of James James Michener's the source and Macaulay's Motel of the mysteries I admit I have not read so I cannot I
64:30 - 65:00 cannot yeah yeah I know I know I get that all the time no I have not we will send you both but I'll have Karl put them in the mail this afternoon so that I will admit that I will say this when I was reading books that weren't I'd say scientific books when I found the time to do it I would always run off to faraway places I love archaeology but I also wanna you
65:00 - 65:30 know get away from it every once in a while and so you know a lot of of tom clancys stuff that would be or might there are there any books about ancient Jerusalem that you have read that you would recommend to people who want to learn more about the fostering yes first of all a Ronny Reich's book called excavating the City of David is an excellent book in summarizing the
65:30 - 66:00 history of the excavations the history of the site it's written in a very very very readable manner and so I very very highly recommend it I also highly recommend to follow the press because the press has taken great interest in archaeology and specifically in archeology of Jerusalem and so every time now we're not every time but a lot of the time that we release or publish a
66:00 - 66:30 scientific article there'll be a press release alongside it and the press release will usually summarize it in a way that's um you know more easily read without all the minut and somewhat tedious details to the stuff that you found that you showed us the coins the stamps where do we go to see them when we go to Jerusalem of a which music they know so so first of all I'll say this
66:30 - 67:00 the material that we have found is now at the is at the moment stored in the ia storerooms it's not on display at all can you know as that as a CSP VIP opportunity that's a little bit more complicated okay definitely yes but what I can say is that if there are fines or or I'll put it differently right now the City of David is in the
67:00 - 67:30 midst of planning a sort of museum section on the site and that museum will house many of the finds that we found in our excavations and so hopefully and that's a little bit farther away than you know a year and a half but hopefully at some point down the line you'll be able to include in your tour a view of some of the important finds that we found in our excavations most of us who visited Jerusalem and I speak for myself
67:30 - 68:00 not for Ahuva or other experts really spend our time in in around the western wall and now the tunnels not many of us spend time the City of David is that really worth the time as a layperson and I assume lead a special guide to that yeah oh yes no no the City of David is very very very worth the time first of all walking through the so long
68:00 - 68:30 tunnel and whether you know I won't get into the I believe that it is Hezekiah who carves it there are opinions that it may be a little bit later it's still in the first temple to walk through this that feet of 533 meters carved in the rock in order to move water from one place to the next it's incredible seeing the street which will hopefully be part of the tour is also going to be incredible but if for those who don't go on the street you can walk along the second period is the Second Temple
68:30 - 69:00 period drainage channel which runs beneath the street and this drainage channel is not a small pipe this is a drainage channel which you can walk fully straight up and basically find your way into the old city and so there's a lot to see there have you figured out there was a question have you figured out how they built that tunnel like the what they used with technology they had back then well first
69:00 - 69:30 of all we have not really figured it out lately and their various suggestions there's a suggestion by some geologists that they were actually following a natural physio in the rock okay a natural crack in the rock and we know that there are these cracks in the rocks because geologically the rock formations have water seeped through them and eat away at the rock and so that's one possibility and we also have the inscription which is found on the wall
69:30 - 70:00 of the tunnel which also describes that basically you had two teams working toward each other which may be much more complicated because it's not just one team working in one direction you have two teams working in either direction and it's possible that they had people on the outside sort of banging on the rock and making noise to sort of follow the sound so these are just a couple of the suggestions but it really is
70:00 - 70:30 challenging to understand ancient technologies for later periods for example in the Roman period we have a Roman architect who describes a lot of the technologies they were using for construction but for earlier periods it we just don't have it there was a question as talking about teams how many people do you have on your team these days that are doing the archaeological digs with you so there are roughly right now in the area of the City of David at
70:30 - 71:00 the Western Wall Plaza the western wall tunnels there I'd say roughly we're about fifteen archaeologists working the number of workers we have a lot of workers working with us changes from day to day I give refa estimates of roughly about 6,200 people well if this is true of course of pre-pandemic with the pandemic everything is just sort of up
71:00 - 71:30 in the air we are still continuing with the excavations but on a much smaller scale right now until hopefully things died down in order to follow with the guidelines that we're giving about the amount the people that can congregate and what's your title right now in the Israel into well right now I about about four months or five months ago I actually stopped most of my excavations in the city of David I only
71:30 - 72:00 continued the excavations around the area of the spring together with other archaeologists and I took on the position of managing the Dead Sea Scrolls unit many of you who have visited Jerusalem have probably visited the Israel Museum and the shrine of the book which holds the seven Scrolls which were I'd say the original Scrolls but they're actually only a very very small part of the collection at the Israel
72:00 - 72:30 Antiquities Authority we have roughly 1000 manuscripts made up of 25,000 fragments and in order to preserve these conserve these study beads and so on and so forth we basically have a team put together in order to make sure first and foremost that their condition remains at least steady and doesn't get worse because upon their discovery in the 40s
72:30 - 73:00 and 50s you know a little bit into the 60s a lot of damage was done to the scrolls and so right now we're trying to undo that damage okay last few questions for wrap up Monte Krieger asks a question but I think you've answered it City of David has been claimed not to be real archaeologically or other politically religiously motivated which I assume is is you're invited I assume you're involved in or not directly but indirectly your fines are go to this source of conflict as to how
73:00 - 73:30 many years how far back to do Jewish claims go to the old city and does that tie into the City of David as well but I think you've given us evidence that there's a lot of history there there's a lot of history there's history on in the City of David itself there's history running back actually the earliest finds date from about 15,000 years ago but the earliest architecture dates from about
73:30 - 74:00 roughly five thousand years ago and the City of David as ancient Jerusalem the capital of Judah we have evidence from the ninth century onward and as I mentioned before we really don't have a lot of solid evidence for the 10th century that doesn't necessarily mean that it wasn't there there are claims against the excavations in the City of David the City of David National Park is run by the Elat foundation be a LOD
74:00 - 74:30 foundation is a right-wing group and has been accused of I would say relative propagate and Jew Judah sizing the remains I could tell you that the excavations that go on in the City of David are the highest scientific caliber that we can demand they are not rhumba by the elaboration they are run by
74:30 - 75:00 archaeologists of the Israel Antiquities for me as Tel Aviv University because they're also involved and we collaborate with universities in Israel and around the world and we're doing the best science out there and we're getting published in the highest scientific journals out there so I think we can shift from saying that the excavations are yielding important scientific information they completely are last two things David Phillips wants to know for
75:00 - 75:30 a kazoo Caius tunnel is there a coin that can date it for us you may have mentioned that I'll ask the question anyway so has Hezekiah tunnel dates to whether we did it to the 8th century BC or the 7th century BC it's before coins begin to appear almost Frumkin who is a professor at Hebrew University did try to do some radiometric dating the problem is is that we know roughly the time period in
75:30 - 76:00 order for the fine-tuning there isn't just there isn't right now at least good enough science in order to be able to tell whether it was built in 701 BCE or weather was built in 690 BCE and in that sense we have a lot of arguments amongst scholars those who would prefer to data to different periods use different
76:00 - 76:30 different iterations my consideration in dating into Hezekiah does return to the biblical text because in this case we have a scenario where there are three different mentions of has a kind of moving the water in three different books in Kings and Isaiah and in Chronicles now chronicles in general from a perspective of biblical scholarship is of course considered a later composition but Kings often has at
76:30 - 77:00 least historical cores in it and so if we have three different mentions and three different books there seems to be some kind of logic at least in my mind in dating it to the period of Hezekiah and it fits well with this whole I'd say international political scenario going on of the Assyrian armies robbed a certain Empire running around destroying cities and laying them twice and
77:00 - 77:30 Jerusalem somehow surviving it yeah last question which I assume I can probably assume the answer but any chance any time soon you're gonna have the opportunity to dig under the Temple Mount area yeah so so we should not send a Hoover there with a lot of travels no no the the Temple Mount first of all is a very very obviously sensitive place
77:30 - 78:00 but it's not just that it's a sensitive place from a legal perspective it is actually not under our jurisdiction because the the antiquities law in Israel gives us authority over archaeological remains everywhere except for religious compounds and so basically the Temple Mount is really compound is not really directly in our
78:00 - 78:30 jurisdiction that said in 1999 there was a very very large building project undertaken by the lock on the Temple Mount which saw a lot of school around about whether they were adapting archaeological remains are not damaging archaeological remains the question that a very large sifting project was undertaken in order to sift all the earth they had dumped at the Temple Mount and since that point in time there
78:30 - 79:00 has been a lot more I'd say coordination between the WAC which basically runs the Temple Mount and the Israel Antiquities Authority where we basically have a better idea of what's going on there and things are done in proper coordination alright well thank you I hope if you don't mind you can share some of those images particularly with the the aerial images of ancient Jerusalem because I
79:00 - 79:30 just found that very helpful to see from the pool or the road so that would be great to share with our people and I hope to see you in person I guess a year from October on our VIP private tour of the City of David and to look at the antiquities in your apartment I mean in the basement of the antiquities building thank you very much thank you who vote for the recommendation thank you thank you everybody we went a little long but I think it was worth it and have a great day we'll see you Thursday night Danny met and the Zohar
79:30 - 80:00 and on Friday you'll get invited to our Friday musical event don't worry Rochelle it's coming soon thank you everybody thank you Joe bye bye bye guys thank you so I turned up all your videos but I tried turning a video so that we could save on the bandwidth we were having some challenges okay everybody have a great one bye Dale see you soon let's see if I can even turn this off today