Written by Stephen Langfur
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The Top of the Hill
 Archaeological dating is difficult in the earliest Jerusalem, for these reasons:
a) The slopes are so steep that ancient builders either re-used existing structures or cut back to bedrock, dumping earlier remains, so that little could be found in situ.
b) Part of the hill was used as a quarry, probably in the Roman period.
c) Much of it was explored by 19th-century archaeologists. The importance of broken pottery for dating had not yet been discovered. They threw away the sherds they found.
We enter from a road that runs approximately through the middle of the ancient city. The current visitors' center is on that city's eastern side. Beneath this are huge stones set in patterns. They are the foundations of a very large building. It was discovered in an area that was fortunately left alone by Jerusalem's first archaeologists, who avoided spots where the debris was heavy. In 2005, on the basis of pottery discovered in the fill beneath the building's floor, archaeologist Eilat Mazar dated the structure to the 10th century BC - the time of David - although it continued in use until the Babylonian destruction of 586. (Beneath the fill, the next pottery she discovered was from the 18th century BC, the time of Jerusalem's founding.) Mazar thinks that the structure may have been David's palace, referred to in 2 Samuel 5:11 - "Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David, and cedar trees, and carpenters, and masons; and they built David a house."
(For the location, see photo, right. For close-ups of the foundations, see the following photos.)
In order to ascertain the date of such a structure, one needs to find pottery in situ both above it and below it - in short, a pottery sandwich. (On dating by means of pottery, see here.) Normally, the pottery found above will post-date the structure, and the pottery found below will pre-date it. Mazar claims to have found such a sandwich here, as indicated in this photo:
The question of the pottery-dating is not settled, however. For the eastern foundation wall (the wall that is 21 feet thick) appears to have been built as a single project, hence at the same time, with a "stepped stone structure" on the east (soon to be discussed in detail). There is no seam distinguishing them, as you can see in the picture below. Archaeologist Jane Cahill, who dug at the stepped stone structure with Yigal Shiloh in the early
1980's, insists that the latest pottery found in it dates to the 12th century BC. Eilat
Mazar, on the other hand, looks at the pottery in Shiloh's report - the same pottery Cahill sees - and
dates it two centuries later, which would fit her theory that the structure was "David's palace."
Returning to the large structure on top, whether David's palace or not, it continued in use until the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BC. Among the finds is a bulla (an imprint in clay, used to seal a document) bearing the name of Jehucal son of Shelemiahu son of Shobai. Jehucal is mentioned in Jeremiah 37:3. Nearby was found another bulla belonging to Gedaliah son of Passhur, who is mentioned in Jeremiah 38: 1- 4 as one of the ministers, together with Jucal, who heard Jeremiah's dire prophecy and recommended his execution. Another bulla, found by Yigal Shiloh in a house (destroyed in 586) just below this large structure, reads "Belonging to Gemaryahu son of Shaphan." A scribe of this name is mentioned in Jeremiah 36: 1-12. He is part of the story which results in the king's burning Jeremiah's scroll, written by the prophet's scribe, Baruch the son of Neryahu. (Incidentally, a bulla of Baruch - not found in a systematic excavation as the above three were - has recently been declared a fake.)
 At the eastern foot of the hill, an earlier archaeologist, Kathleen Kenyon, found a large voluted capital (now displayed in the Israel Museum), similar to other such capitals from Israelite palaces in Samaria, Megiddo and Hazor. Mazar asks us to imagine the size of the column that would have been topped by such a capital, and then to imagine a building containing similar columns.
We go east and behold the steep drop to the Kidron Valley. Across from us rises the southern extension of the Mount of Olives.
This southern part of Olivet is called the Hill of Offense, because of a legend that upon it King Solomon erected altars to the gods of his thousand pagan wives. On its steep slope today is the Arab village of Silwan, whose houses seem stacked on one another. The impression is like the one that Jerusalem itself must have offered 3000 years ago, when the houses hung thus on the slope beneath us.
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| Silwan |
We can spot the location of the Gihon, the only year-round spring in the area, today at the bottom of the hill we are on. In antiquity, however, the Kidron Valley was 30 feet deeper at this point, and the Gihon was on the slope. Producing enough water for 2500 people, this spring made the city possible, but we can see that the inhabitants would have had a problem reaching it in times of siege. An enemy could stand on the other side of the narrow valley, where Silwan is today, and shoot arrows at anyone fetching water. We shall see how the early Jerusalemites solved this problem.
(In the time of the First Temple, the hill where Silwan is today was honeycombed with cave-tombs hewn into the rock. Most of them are hidden by the houses today. To judge from the workmanship, these were the tombs of the upper classes. The people of ancient Jerusalem lived facing their eminent dead.)
Apart from the water problem, the first city had another major vulnerability. Where we stand, on its northern end - and only here - no deep valley protected it. A fortress was probably at this spot.
Descending a staircase, we turn and see 18 meters of the massive, curved "stepped-stone structure" pictured above. It continues far beneath us for at least another 9 meters. No one is sure, for much is still covered by debris from the destruction of 586 BC. The function, apparently, was to reinforce the bedrock (which is cracked) in order to secure the huge structure described above (David's palace? the earlier Jebusite fortress?). Up here it is close to the bedrock that it strengthens, but below us, out of sight, Kenyon made a probe to determine its thickness. After penetrating horizontally for eleven layers of stones, she feared it would collapse and stopped.
We used to think that the stepped-stone structure was preceded by a system of terraces, but this is no longer accepted. The whole was apparently built as a single unit together with the 21-foot-thick foundation of the large building on top.
 Perhaps as early as the 10th century BC, people cut into the stepped-stone structure and built houses there. Standing on the tourist path, looking west, we can see the remains of some. To the left are two squared monolithic pillars. They belonged to the west side of a house of about 8 by 12 meters. (The archaeologists pulled down the remains of the east side in order to explore the continuation of the stepped-stone structure.) This house, Shiloh noted, was better built, its ashlars more finely chiseled, than the houses he found in a residential area to the south. Just south of the pillars is part of a staircase that probably led up to the next terrace, which has since disappeared. Just north of the pillars the diggers found the remains of three service rooms, one containing 37 (!) storage jars from the 7th century BC, the time of Jeremiah. Another small room had a stone, still visible, which is shaped for sitting. There is a hole in its center, and beneath it is a pit about eight feet deep: surely a toilet. Ostraca (inscribed potsherds) were also found in the house, written in a Hebrew script typical for Jeremiah's time. One contains the name "Ahiel," which modern scholars have used in order to designate this villa.
About 5 yards to the right (north) of Ahiel's house, there is part of a second staircase adjoining the wall of another structure. (Not shown here.) Archaeologists call this "the burnt room," for they found many lumps of carbonized wood in it. These included finely worked pieces of boxwood (not native) with motifs such as the palmette, also known from the ivories of this time. Mixed among the pottery sherds were arrowheads of bronze and iron. The impression is one of battle and fire, and to this we can relate the destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BC, as told in 2 Kings 25:8-9:
Now in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, to Jerusalem.
He burnt the house of Yahweh, and the king’s house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great house, burnt he with fire.
East of Ahiel's, beneath the path we stand on, the diggers discovered another burnt house with arrowheads from that day… and more: 51 bullae, clay seals from the letters received by the person who lived in this dwelling. The fire had burned the letters and baked the seals. These contain names, including the aforementioned Gemariah son of Shaphan.
Forty-eight years after the Babylonian destruction, the edict of Cyrus allowed the exiles to return and rebuild the Temple. Under Nehemiah (Chs. 1-6), the city wall too was rebuilt, although it enclosed a much smaller area than before the Babylonian destruction. Note the corner of an inset in the wall above us (No. 3 in the photograph of the stepped-stone structure above). The British archaeologist, Kathleen Kenyon, dug here from 1961 until 1967, and beneath this inset she found sherds from the time of the Babylonian invasion, no later. She identified the wall, therefore, as Nehemiah's work, designed for a very small city. (More recently, under a tower that was just north of this one - it has since been removed - the latest pottery dated from the 5th century BC, the Persian period, so part of the tower would fit the time of Nehemiah.) Afterwards the Hasmoneans incorporated Nehemiah's wall into that of their city. Most Jerusalemites in their day lived on the larger hill to the west; there was no need then to build houses on the steep slope below us, and so the wall could run this high up near the spine of the ridge.
We shall now head downhill to see how the people of the first Jerusalem defended their water supply.
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