Week One: Digging at Mt Zion
We just completed our first week (June 15-19) of the June/July six week season of the Mt Zion excavations. Things have gotten off to a very good start with great promise of things to come. Most of our Team members have come for two weeks, so we will have another group arriving June 29th, and a third July 13th, but since some stay longer than two weeks there will be some valuable overlap.
Mt Zion “Area E” as we call it, is just east of Zion Gate, down the slope along the present Old City Wall. This wall dates to the 16th century, built under the direction of the famous Ottoman Sultan, Suleiman “the Magnificent.” Though we are outside the present wall today, in antiquity our area was not only inside the city walls, but was precisely at the center of the”four-square” city. This location presents an unprecedented opportunity to explore ancient Jerusalem ‘through the ages,” from the Iron Age down to modern times. Thanks to the construction of the magnificent Nea Church by the emperor Justinian in the 6th century A.D., just to the north of our
location, soil fill and rubble was pushed over site, sealing off earlier layers and periods quite effectively. We know from probes done in the 1970s by Magen Broshi that we have well preserved chambers and vaults, to a height of 18 meters, that date to the late 2nd Temple period (Roman 1st century Jerusalem) and were witness to the Roman destruction of the city in 70 A.D., with Byzantine, Islamic, Crusader, and Ottoman layers above. Because the site slopes down from Zion Gate to the modern road, it is possible to see a kind of journey through time, with all these levels represented.
Our intent, as in any proper archaeological excavation is to “dig in phase,” that is, to take the whole complex of areas we have opened down together in sequence, without probing down deeply into one area before other areas are also removed. Everything we removed is meticulously recorded by drawings and photographs. In the particular areas we are now digging our plan is to expose and preserve the late 2nd Temple period remains, that is Herodian Jerusalem, prior to the 70 A.D. Roman destruction. For Christians this is indeed “Jerusalem in the time of Jesus.”
Our group jumped right into our task with great enthusiasm and fervor. As with any excavation, the first day or two is devoted to cleaning the site. This includes debris that has fallen in, repair of sandbags, and removal of weeds and vegetation that has accumulated. After two days of hard, hot, and dirty work the site began to literally “gleam” in the sun, inviting us to begin the actual work of excavation. On Tuesday we began that work in earnest, picking up where things had left off following our four week season in March.
We had previously opened four areas at the lower end of the site, exposing Byzantine structures including a lovely mosaic floor, and underneath, just the top of what we think are the 2nd Temple/early Roman remains, dating back to the Roman destruction in 70 A.D. We extended these areas to the north and to the west, with two additional areas. Half the team was thus removing modern layers while the other half began to work down through the Byzantine levels as well as removing the “fill” from the Justinian period. These ancient fills are extraordinarily rich with finds, including lots of coins, pottery, lamp fragments, glass, metal, bones, and broken stone vessels. We realized we were basically digging through the “debris” of Roman Herodian Jerusalem, but just above structures that are extraordinarily well preserved.
A highlight of the week was the arrival of Jesse and Michael Pinchas and their team to do Ground Penetrating Radar over the areas we have begun to examine. Their results offer great promise in guiding us as to our strategy in excavating what lies below, since they can give us 3-D imagery of subsurface structures. We also enjoyed visits from staff and students from the German School of Archaeology and the University of the Holy Land. David and Patty Tyler of New York, who are doing fund raising for us, joined us for the first week as our guests and they were quite happy to pitch in for three days and get as hot, dirty, and tired, as the rest of us.
We know we are in a palatial residential area, likely inhabited by the wealthy aristocratic and priestly classes. One could have looked out to the northeast from this site and seen the magnificent Herodian Temple. Some evidence of that turned up in our digging this week with fragments of stone vessels, that signal a regard for ritual purity, as well as terra sigillata, or imported ceramic fine ware. We expect much more of that to come. We also have reason to think that Herod’s Theater was close by, if not partially on our site. So there is much excitement ahead and our whole team, both staff and students, could not wait for week two to begin!
We hope many of you will join us in future seasons and whether you can come or not you can participate in our Web fund drive and do your part, small or large, to “Dig Mount Zion.”