The Legacy of Solomon
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One of the problems with Jerusalem from an archaeological point of view is the city has been destroyed and rebuilt more than forty times since the seventh century BC and in places the debris is as much as twenty metres,’ Shlomo told O’Connelly.
‘That represents a huge amount of work?’
‘Absolutely, but not only that, all these modern buildings you see around us makes excavation impossible, I mean we can’t dig under them.’
‘You mean now.’
‘Yes, as you know the first to scientifically explore the subsoil were the British. Robinson’s Arch, one of the four gates mentioned by Josephus was discovered Charles Wilson, then Barclay discovered a limestone cave near the Damascus Gate when walking his dog, it had been a quarry where stone was extracted to build the Temple and fortifications, one of the foundation stones is estimated to weigh more than one hundred tons.’
‘What about the Temple?’
‘No remains have ever been found of Solomon's temple in spite of the extensive excavations made by archaeologists such as Kathleen Kenyon and Mazar.’
‘But I thought the Temple stood over the Dome of the Rock and the Wailing Wall was the remains of its west wall.’
‘No, the Wailing Wall was substituted for the Temple in the 18th century, the site of the Temple according to De Lussac stands below the Triple Gate.’
The Dome of the Rock was built over the outcropping or the summit of Mount Moriah. It was the site of the Church of the Holy Wisdom, destroyed by the Persians and Jews in 614AD, it had stood the rock that the sixth century Christians of believed was the site of the Praetorium where Jesus was judged by Pilate and Jesus left his footprint on the rock.
During the early Christian period the Church of Saint Mary or Nea Basilica had been very imposing, Procopius said there was nothing comparable in the city, it stood where the Al Aqsa Mosque stands today. When Omar arrived in Jerusalem only the ruins remained and its stones were used to build the mosque. This led to the development of the popular belief that this had been the site of Temple of Solomon.
After Omar Jerusalem became less important, the centre of gravity of the new Arab Empire moved from the Arabian Peninsula to Damascus and later to Baghdad.
The area that today covers the Mediterranean seaboard of Syria, plus the Lebanon, Israel and Gaza were always under the control of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Greece and Rome in ancient times. Exploration of the Sinai Peninsula has only turned up evidence of meagre settlements nothing on the scale the Bible describes, just some rather rudimentary nomads, who from time to time raided villages or small towns.
Gaza City is less than two hundred kilometres from the Nile Delta, a march of five or six days from the great city of Ramesses II in the 13th century BC. Therefore it is improbable that Moses wandered about the desert for forty years with six hundred thousand men and their families. A visitor to Israel can see how small in it with the distance between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem only sixty kilometres, that is to say about two days walk in ancient times when people were used to walking and no other form of transport existed except for donkeys and carts.
The Babylonian invasion and destruction of the Kingdom of Judah took place in 586BC, this is confirmed by comparing pottery and other remains found in the archaeological horizons in the region of Jerusalem and other cities and settlements.
The ancient City of David was protected on three sides by deep valleys. From east to west are the Kedron, Central and Hinnom Valleys. The Kedron protected the city on the east. The Tyropoeon valley is now filled in by several metres of refuse accumulated over centuries. The Hinnom valley comes in from farther west and meets the first two. The meeting of these valleys marks the southern limit of the original city. Therefore in the beginning Jerusalem was a very small town of only 300 metres long by 80 wide, it had excellent natural defences on all sides, except the north, where a saddle linked it to the Benjamin Plateau.
The oldest archaeological evidence of a synagogue ever found in Jerusalem is the Theodotus Inscription. This stone plaque, which once hung in a Jerusalem synagogue before its destruction in 70AD, bears an inscription written in Greek telling of the synagogue and the family of priests that presided over it for three generations. The plaque was found in a cistern in the City of David in 1913 by a French archaeologist, Raymond Weill, a hundred or so metres the Gihon Spring:
Theodotus, son of Vettanos, a priest and an archisynagogos, son of an archisynagogos grandson of an archisynagogos, built the synagogue for the reading of the Torah and for teaching the commandments; furthermore, the hostel, and the rooms, and the water installation for lodging needy strangers. Its foundation stone was laid by his ancestors, the elders, and Simonides
Historians usually tell us that after the Great Revolt against the Romans and siege of Jerusalem, which as we know ended with the Temple being razed and the massacre and slavery of the city’s population by the Roman army of Titus, no Jews remained in the city and its surroundings.
However, recent archaeological excavations near the Shuafat refugee camp in northern Jerusalem show that a Jewish community continued to live in Jerusalem after its destruction in 70AD. The excavations at Shuafat show the continuation of Jewish presence after destruction of Second Temple
In 2003, in anticipation for the construction of the light-rail system planned for Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority began a preventive dig at the site, on the main road from Ramallah to Jerusalem, within the Jerusalem city limits.
Four kilometres from the Jerusalem city walls and located on the main road to Nablus, several spacious dwellings were found with façades of dressed stone and well laid out streets between the houses. Several amphorae that were found that contained imported wine from Greece and Italy, indications of the prosperity the inhabitants. In addition cosmetic items and glass rings were also discovered. The structures included two bathhouses as well as a large public building.
A number of stone food storage and other vessels were found indicating that these were used by Jews since this type of vessel was not considered to transmit impurity. However, no Jewish ritual baths were found. Archaeologists believe the basins discovered on the site had been used for ashes from the Temple.
The settlement was abandoned after the Bar Kochba Revolt in around 130AD. Specialists from Bar-Ilan University believe that up to the period of the Bar Kochba Revolt, a there was a good Jewish majority living between Samaria in the north to Be’er Sheva in the south. They also believed that a number of Jews lived in Jerusalem providing services to the Roman army.
The bathhouses found were believed to be for the Roman soldiers in the area. Up to this point in time the other sites in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem have only turned up farms destroyed during the Great Revolt.
A stone tablet, first evidence of reconstruction work following the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple was discovered at the Temple Mount in 1999, it had been found during construction work at the entrance to Solomon's Stables carried out by the Waqf. It was part of a victory arch and bore an inscription bearing the name of the Roman governor of Judea, Flavius Silva, who had besieged Masada with the Roman Legion X Fretensis. Josephus Flavius describes how Masada’s defenders had set fire to the fortress, preferring mass suicide to captivity or defeat.
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Folklore and Legends