EPHRAIM STERN, Editor
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
AYELET LEWINSON-GILBOA, Assistant Editor
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
JOSEPH AVIRAM, Editorial Director
Israel Exploration Society
Volume 2
THE ISRAEL EXPIDRATION SOCIETY
CARTA, JERUSALEM
© Copyright 1993
The Israel Exploration Society & Carta,
The Israel Map & Publishing Company, Limited
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
ISBN 965-220-209-6 (set)
ISBN 965-220-211-8 (v.2)
Printing Number
6 5 4
Printed in Israel
3 2
698
JERUSALEM
JERUSALEM
THE EARLY PERIODS AND THE FIRST TEMPLE PERIOD
NAME
The name of the city appears as early as the Egyptian Execration texts in
the twentieth and nineteenth centuries BCE, in a form probably to be
read Rushalimum. In the fourteenth century BCE el-Amarna letters, it appears
as Urusalim and in the Sennacherib inscriptions (seventh century BCE), as
Uruslimmu. The early Hebrew pronunciation was apparently Yerushalem, as
is evidenced by the spelling in the Hebrew Bible and by its form in the
Septuagint. As for the meaning of the name, it can be assumed to be a
compound of the West Semitic elements yrw and slm, probably to be interpreted as "Foundation of(the God) Shalem" (cf. Jeruel, 2 Chr. 20:16 and the
usage of the word yrh in Job 38:6). Shalem is known from an Ugaritic
mythological text as one of the two "beautiful and gracious gods," Shal;tar
and Shalim (Dawn and Twilight, respectively). Salem, the shortened form of
the name occurring in Genesis 14:18 and Psalms 76:2, as well as in later
sources, also seems to be quite early.
The city was known also as Jebus, an ethnic name denoting the population
of the city and its land in the period of the Israelite settlement down to its
conquest by David. Araunah ('wrnh, 'rwnh), apparently the last pre-Israelite
rulerofthe city, isthuscalledAraunah theJebusite. In the narrative ofDavid's
conquest, it is related that "the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the
Jebusites ... David took the stronghold of Zion, that is, the city of David"
(2 Sam. 5:6~7). The name City of David was given to the citadel of Zion by
the king himself: "And David dwelt in the stronghold, and called it the city of
David" (2 Sam. 5:9, 1 Chr. 11 :7).
The early name Zion specified the eastern hill of the city, with its northern
summit (Mount Zion), known also as the Temple Mount, the "mountain of
the house of the Lord," where Solomon built the Temple and the royal palace.
Over the generations, the name Zion took on poetic connotations as an
appellation for the entire city. The Temple Mount is also identified as Mount
Moriah (2 Chr. 3:1) and the holy mountain in the "land of Moriah" (Gen.
22:2), vestiges of some early, obscure tradition.
There are still other early names for Jerusalem, such as the "cityofJudah"
(2 Chr. 25:28) denoting its status as the capital of the kingdom of Judah, and
"The City" (in the Lachish letters).
HISTORY
THE PRE-DAVIDIC CITY. The archaeological finds and epigraphic and
biblical evidence do not provide a well-founded basis for reconstructing
the development and history of Jerusalem from its founding until its establishment as the capital of the Israelite kingdom. Even so, archaeological
research has been able to determine precisely where the city was located
in earliest times-on the southeastern spur below the Temple Mount (see
below).
The many changes in the city's history and never-ceasing construction and
destruction have largely obliterated the remains of the early settlement. Even
so, various finds point to the continuity of settlement on this historical site
from the Chalco lithic period. Painted ware from the Early Bronze Age I was
discovered here, as early as the Parker expedition (c. 191 0). Remains from the
Chalcolithic period, the Early and Middle Bronze ages, as well as from the
Late Bronze Age, have been found in the various excavations carried out on
the southeastern spur and its slopes (see below).
Also indicative of the early settlement are cemeteries from the Middle and
Late Bronze ages on the western slopes of the Mount of Olives and in the
Kidron Valley, opposite the eastern hill. In one group ofburials, excavated by
the Franciscan Fathers on the site known as Dominus Flevit, a very rich
assemblage of pottery was discovered, along with a number of alabaster
and faience vessels and Egyptian scarabs, mostly from the Middle Bronze
Age IIC and the Late Bronze Age I~IIA. Especially instructive are the numerous vessels from the fourteenth century BCE, mostly from the first half of
that century (the Amarna period). They generally are of the same types found
in a tomb with a rich pottery collection in the Nal;talat Al;tim neighborhood
near Rel;tavia, and in a pit on the grounds of the former Government House,
south of the city. These discoveries suggest sporadic settlement outside the
fortified city. There is a surprisingly large number of imported pottery and
City of David. looking north: (rear) the Old City and the Temple Mount; (right) Kidron Valley.
JERUSALEM
and ran on from there to the northeast until it reached the southern end of the
Temple Mount enclosure. This view has been rejected by most scholarssuffice it to point out the clearly Hasmonean style ofthemasonryofthe gate in
the fortified segment (C2) southwest of the Siloam Pool and in segments Z
andY on the slope of Mount Zion. In addition, Shiloh's excavations in his
area H, at the foot of the eastern slope of Mount Zion, revealed remains of
Hasmonean masonry.
From the gate in area C2 the wall continued to the east, cutting across the
broad, southern issue of the Tyropoeon Valley in a series of dams, along the
line of the southern dam wall of the present-day Birketel-B.amra. The southernmost of this ancient system of dams detected by Bliss and Dickie is the socalled buttressed wall, commonly believed to have served as the city wall in this
area. Its total length is more than 100m; the foundation is about 6 m thick;
and it survives to a considerable height. A series of seven buttresses projected
from the outer (southern) face ofthewall; each buttress is approximately half
as thick as the wall. Most of the upper part of the wall is ashlar masonry with
drafted margins. To the north, 15m away, is a parallel wall, some 3m thick;
other walls connect the two parallel walls. The system of dam walls was dated
by Bliss and Dickie to the First Temple period, a date accepted by early
scholars of Jerusalem archaeology. In her site F, Kenyon discovered an
additional .Hasmonean dam wall, also part of the system of dams at the
mouth of the Tyropoeon Valley. In 1978-1979 Shiloh, in his area AI, exposed and reexamined the southeastern corner of the buttressed wall and the
wall running north from it to the rock scarp. He concluded that the buttressed
wall already existed in the first century CE and might have been built even
earlier, under the Hasmonean rulers (stratum 7B). After crossing the issue of
the Tyropoeon Valley, the First Wall skirted the southern tip of the City of
David on the rocky scarp visible there. From that point on, it continued along
the crest of the eastern slope until it reached the Temple Mount enclosure (see
above The City of David, The Fortifications).
DATE OF THE FIRST WALL'S CONSTRUCTION. The new archaeological
data produced by the recent excavations in the Jewish Quarter and the Citadel
date the original construction of the First Wall around the southwestern hill to
the end of the First Temple period. This conclusion is in agreement with
Josephus' account (War V, 142-145): he attributes the building of the First
Wall to David and Solomon (that is to say, the First Temple period) and
therefore refers to it as the Old Wall. This new conclusion runs counter
to the previously held view: scholars hitherto believed, based on previously
excavated fortification remains, that the First Wall was erected in the Hasmonean period. It is now possible to be more precise: the Hasmonean rulers
only restored the fortifications of the First Wall along the line already laid
down by the original builders toward the end of the First Temple period. The
exact date of these operations is difficult to determine. Some scholars place it
in the reign of one of the first Hasmonean rulers, in the mid-second century
BCE; others prefer a later date, in the time ofHyrcanus I (end of the second
century BCE) and Alexander Jannaeus (beginning of the first century BCE).
The archaeological finds on the southwestern hill clearly testify to intensive
occupation on the hill in the Second Temple period, beginning in the second
half of the second century BCE. The abundance ofballista stones and arrowheads discovered in what was originally the foreground outside the fortifications in the Citadel courtyard demonstrate that when Antioch us VII Sidetes
laid siege to Jerusalem (in 134-132 BCE), the southwestern hill was already
surrounded by a massive wall with towers, which the attackers were unable to
breach. It would appear, therefore, that the rebuilding of the First Wall was
carried out mainly in the time of Simeon and John Hyrcanus I, after the
conquest of the Acra in 141 BCE-but before the beginning of the siege in 134
BCE.
An examination of the architectural features of the various sections of
fortified city walls from the Second Temple period discovered along the
line of the First Wall on the southwestern hill indicates that there were three
principal building phases, as already detected by Johns in the fortifications he
found in the Citadel. In the First Build-from the beginning of the Hasmonean period-the First Wall-originally built in the First Temple period-was rebuilt with smoothed stones, laid mainly as headers, incorporating
surviving elements of the earlier fortifications. In the Second Build-which
lasted for most of the Hasmonean period--the wall was thoroughly restored,
with a concomitant change in its architectural features. The construction of
this phase is characterized by the use of ashlar masonry with drafted margins
and a coarse protruding boss, generally laid in alternating courses of headers
and stretchers. The fortifications belonging to this Second Build are the most
characteristic of the First Wall on the southwestern hill. In the Third Buildwhich can be assigned to the span of time from Herod's reign to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE-several segments of the wall were restored using
ashlar blocks with drafted margins and a smooth, flat boss.
The three main building phases, which are accompanied by a long series of
repairs and local additions, visible at various places along the line of the First
Wall and its towers, testify to the long and complex history of this wall in the
Second Temple period. Its most characteristic features are its nonuniform
729
thickness and the nonuniform size and plan of the towers along its course.
Also noteworthy is the difference between the high-quality masonry in the
bulk of the First Wall on the southwestern hill and the simpler masonry of the
wall segments discovered on the eastern slope of the CityofDavid (see City of
David).
THE UPPER CITY. The many excavations carried out in the area of the
Upper City, within the part of the southwestern hill enclosed by the First
Wall, have revealed evidence of particularly elaborate buildings from the late
Second Temple period. As already stated, the beginnings of massive settlement in this area should be dated to the Hasmonean period. The Upper City
reached the zenith of its importance and magnificence during Herod's reign,
when it was redesigned and rebuilt; this is indicated by the luxurious residential houses unearthed in Avigad's excavations in the Jewish Quarter.
HILI~EL
GEVA
HASMONEAN PERIOD. Fragmentary remains of buildings from the Has-
monean period were found scattered in many areas, particularly overlying the
First Temple period Broad Wall (see above). These buildings were sacrificed to
the intensive building activities in the Herodian period. Some of the remains,
mainly rock-cut structures, such as mikvehs (ritual baths) and cisterns, were
discovered for the most part beneath Herodian buildings. One such example,
a cistern discovered beneath a Herodian house in area E, contained an important pottery assemblage from the second century BCE. It seems very
probable that the Hasmonean city was less well developed than the later
Herodian city. A point of interest is the construction of the Hasmonean
buildings, for the most part, on top of ruins from the First Temple period, without an intermediate layer (there was a gap in the occupation of
the area in the Persian and Early Hasmonean periods, see above).
The small finds from the Hellenistic-Hasmonean period include pottery of
various types, including imported ware; Rhodianjar handles stamped with
Greek inscriptions; jar handles stamped with the inscription IJ-1iP (yhd-t) in
paleo-Hebrew script; jar handles stamped with a pentagram with the paleoHebrew inscription o71!!l' (yrslm); and Hasmonean coins, mainly of
Alexander Jannaeus but including a hoard of coins of Mattathias Antigonus, the last Hasmonean king.
HERO DIAN PERIOD. The Herodian period was one of general prosperity in
Jerusalem, a time of growth, development, and intensive construction in the
Upper City, which becamethecenterofthecity. No buildings associated with
Herod's public construction projects were discovered in the excavations in the
Jewish Quarter. Although parts of particularly large Ionic columns and a
Corinthian capital of excellent workmanship were discovered, attesting to the
presence of monumental buildings, they cannot be associated with any one
building. On the other hand, there are particularly abundant remains of
private houses from the Herodian period, showing an impressive state of
preservation and providing, for the first time, a faithful picture of house
plans and living conditions in Jerusalem toward the end of the Second
Temple period.
Despite the buildings in the Upper City having been built quite close
together, the spacious conditions and comfort offered by many of these
homes give them the character of luxurious villas. It seems clear that the
area housed wealthy, aristocratic families, who built their homes in conformity with the taste and style of the Hellenistic-Roman period.
Among the most common installations in all the Upper City houses were
mikvehs. Each house contained at least one, and some had two or more. This
implies a high degree of observance of the laws of ritual purity. The typical
plan of a mikveh is a stepped pool, hewn in the rock, with a vaulted ceiling
built of ashlars. The water came from the many cisterns on the hill. Only one or
two houses contained a mikveh with an o:;ar (store) which supplied pure,
Jewish Quarter: upper
fragment of a jug
stamped with a
pentagram and the
name yrslm.
730
JERUSALEM
Jewish Quarter: plan of the excavation areas and principal remains.
DAVID ST.
N
II
u
~ZION
GATE
0
25
50
L-------~------~m
undrawn water (area T-4). Evidence that the baths were used for ritual imThe mosaic floors discovered in the Upper City are the earliest of their kind
mersion only is the bathrooms, complete with bathtubs, found adjoining in Jerusalem, dating from Herod's reign to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70
them. The bathrooms were paved with colored mosaics, as were some of CE. Contemporary mosaics laid in the same style were found in Herod's palace
the rooms.
at Masada. Common to all of them is the total absence of animal or human
JERUSALEM
Jewish Quarter: mosaic with an interlacing meander motif, area F.
figures, as Jews at that time strictly avoided figurative art. The mosaics are
decorated with geometric and floral motifs. The central motif is most often a
schematic rosette, carefully drawn with a compass-a very common element
in Second Temple period Jewish art. Other motifs are interlacing meanders,
wavy lines, and pleated bands.
Jewish Quarter: mosaic floor in the bath courtyard (no. 8) in the
Palatial Mansion.
731
Jewish Quarter: seven-branched menorah, shewbread table, and an altar
incised in plaster.
The residents of Jerusalem decorated their walls in the Hellenistic-Roman
style, with frescoes. The painted plaster was found mostly in fragments. The
decorative motifs used were colored panels, imitation marble, architectural
patterns (columns and dentils), and floral patterns, some similar to the frescoes at Pompeii. Representations of animals and humans were also avoided in
the wall paintings. Stucco also decorated walls, but less commonly. This
molded plaster was used to imitate ashlar blocks; floral and architectural
motifs in stucco were also found.
The houses in the Upper City yielded the first pieces of furniture from the
Second Temple period-stone tables. These impressive products of Jerusalem's stone industry were common in wealthy homes. There were two types:
high (80 em) tables, made of a rectangular slab on a central leg shaped like a
column; and low (c. 50 em) tables made of a circular stone slab and three
wooden legs (which have not survived).
Jewish Quarter: bronze vessels on a decorated stone table and under it,
two large stone vessels.
732
JERUSALEM
Jewish Quarter: red-slipped Eastern terra sigillata ware.
Jewish Quarter:
Corinthian capital.
Below: Jewish
Quarter, area E:
plan of the house
.from Herod's time.
Particularly striking was the abundant use of stone vessels of various types:
bowls, plates, cups, trays, lids, and large, gobletlike jars. All show fine workmanship; most were trimmed on a lathe, a few were handmade. This abundance of stone vessels may have been in response to Jewish law, which says that
stone vessels cannot become impure (Mishnah, Kef. 10:1; Par. 3:2).
Other small finds in these houses include painted pottery bowls, redslipped imported terra sigillata ware, stone sundials, and an elaborate glass
decanter signed by Enion of Sidon. A unique find was waste material from a
glass factory.
The House from Herod's Time (Area E). Based on the numismatic and ceramic
evidence, this house, excavated in area E, was built in the mid-first century BCE
on the ruins of an earlier building. A sealed cistern beneath the house contained a pottery assemblage from the second century BCE. The house was
destroyed at the beginning of the first century CE, when a road was built
through it and its remains were buried under the paving stones. The house
(c. 200 sq m) was comprised of several rooms around an inner courtyard (1 ).
Broken vessels were found in three niches in the western wall that were used as
cupboards. The walls were coated with white plaster, remains of which were
also found on the floor. A mikveh (2) with broad steps was a significant
element in the house's plan. Near the entrance to the mikveh, a stone basin, with a projection in the center of its bottom, was pierced with three holes;
it may have been used for washing the feet.
The finds -red-slipped imported Eastern terra sigillata ware and a group
of Italian wine-storage jars bearing Latin inscriptions---suggest that the
house belonged to a wealthy family. Among the local vessels, a group of
asymmetric pilgrim flasks is noteworthy. There was, curiously, a total absence of the so-called Herod ian lamp among the many lamps discovered in
the house. This may indicate that those lamps were in use only after Herod's
reign. On the floor coins of Alexander
Jannaeus and Herod were found; beneath it there were only Hasmonean
coins.
Herodian Quarter. The excavated, restored part of the site that includes all
of areas F, M, and Pis referred to by its
excavators as the Herodian Quarter.
Covering an area of approximately
2,700 sq m, it contains the remains
of six or seven houses from the Herodian period. During the excavation
of these areas, fragmentary remains
of both earlier and later periods
emerged. The site's unique feature
is the continuous series of buildings
from the Herodian period discovered
over its length (c. 120m). Part of the
residential area of the Upper City of
Jerusalem, it provides evidence of an
urban plan for a residential neighborhood, house plans, domestic architecture and art, the living conditions of
the city's inhabitants, and various aspects of everyday life in the city in the
Second Temple period.
Jewish Quarter, area E: the house from
Herod's time.
0
4
'----'---.J m
JERUSALEM
Jewish Quarter, area F-3: system of bathrooms in a private house.
733
Jewish Quarter: plan of the Palatial Mansion.
4
Western House (Area F-3). Only the basement of this house, at the western
edge of the Herodian Quarter, survived; it illustrates the nature and layout of
the wealthy quarter's basements in private houses. They usually held the water
installations and service rooms. A networkofbathrooms was preserved in this
western house that comprised a vestibule (A2), a room with a bathtub (A3),
two mikvehs (A4, A5), and a number of cisterns. The bathrooms were paved
with colored mosaics. One mikveh (A4) was preserved intact: the lower part,
with a flight of wide steps, was hewn in the rock; the vaulted ceiling was built of
ashlars. The vault of the second mikveh (A5) was not preserved. This rich
array of bathing and ritual immersion installations attests to the great importance that was attached to this aspect of life.
Palatial Mansion (Area P). The houses at either end of the Herodian Quarter
were built on the slope of the hill, which descends to the east. Thus, the
basement floor of the Palatial Mansion at the eastern edge of the site was
9 m lower than the floor of the building at the western edge. The Palatial
Mansion, occupying an area of some 600 sq m, was the largest and most
magnificent of the buildings discovered in the Jewish Quarter. Remains were
found of two stories: the ground floor, which contained the living quarters,
and the basement, which contained the water installations and service rooms.
The ground-floor rooms were grouped around a central courtyard paved with
stone tiles (1). The courtyard communicated with the various wings in the
house, the best preserved of which was
the west wing, a well-built ashlar structure. The west wing consisted of a vestibule, paved with a (mostly destroyed)
colored mosaic (2), from which doorways led in all directions. Stairs in the
west led to a narrow lane. One room
contained numerous charred remains
of wooden beams, evidence of the
violent conflagration that had raged
here and in the adjoining room (3),
where a whole wall, decorated with
red-painted frescoes, was preserved
intact.
North of the vestibule was a large
hall (6.5 by 11 m), plastered with
white molded stucco (4). The stucco
on the hall's northern wall was preserved almost up to the ceiling. Three
small rooms on the west were originally
decorated with frescoes that were later
replaced by white plaster. Beneath the
northern room (7) the excavators discovered a mikveh from an earlier
house; it contained fallen stones and
Hasmonean pottery. In the east wing
of the house, all that remained of the
groundfloorwasa bathroom(8);itwas
paved with a colored mosaic featuring
a rosette pattern. On this side of the
courtyard two flights of stairs led to
0
4
Jewish Quarter: reconstruction of the
Palatial Afansion.
4
'--___j'----' m
the basement. Most of the rooms seen on the plan belong to the basement. Worthy of note is the large number ofmikvehs, which were even found
beneath the courtyard. Most striking was a magnificent vaulted mikveh with a
double entrance and a mosaic-paved corridor.
The residents of this house must have been a particularly notable and
wealthy family, and the exceptional number of mikvehs may indicate that
they were a family of high priests. The numismatic and other evidence reveals that the building was erected during Herod's reign on the ruins of a
Hasmonean house and destroyed when the Upper City was overrun by the
734
JERUSALEM
Jewish Quarter: reconstruction of the large
hall (no. 4) in the Palatial Mansion.
Romans and Jerusalem was destroyed
in 70 CE.
House of Columns (Area M). The
House of Columns, exposed north
of the Palatial Mansion, is unique because it is the only house in the Herodian Quarter in which columns were
used. However, the exact plan of the
house could not be confirmed. The
excavators unearthed a stylobate,
which retained a few column fragments, probably from six columns.
A narrow passage ran between the columns and the parallel wall. Adjoining
the wall were two rooms paved with
colored stone tiles (opus sectile), most
of which had been plundered. The columns probably formed part of a peristyle in the manner of luxurious contemporary Roman villas.
Jewish Quarter: wall coated with stucco from the Palatial
Mansion's large hall.
Burnt House (Area B). The Burnt House was uncovered north ofthe Palatial
Mansion, at the corner ofTiferet Israel and Misgav Ladakh streets. It consisted of a small courtyard, four rooms, a kitchen, and a small mikveh, near
which was a small space, probably used as an o:;ar (storage pool). Only the
basement could be excavated. It had been used as a workshop or laboratory,
as indicated by the type and quantity of finds recovered from a thick conflagration layer. That layer had not been disturbed by later building and had
therefore preserved objects exactly
as they had been at the time of the
destruction: numerous stone vessels; stone tables, basalt mortars,
stone weights, cooking pots, oil
juglets, and perfume bottles. One
of the stone weights was engraved
with the name t11np IJ[1] ([belonging] to the son of Katros).
The house ofKatros is mentioned
in the Talmud as a priestly family
that served in the Temple (B.T.,
Pes. 57a; Tosefta, Men. 13:21).
The debris that filled the rooms
also included fallen stones, badly
scorched by fire, and charred
Stone weight from the Burnt House
wooden beams.
inscribed "(belonging) to the son of
Katros."
Many coins from the years ofthe
Jewish Quarter: general view of the Palatial Mansion.
Jewish Quarter: frescoed wall (room 3) from the Palatial Mansion.
735
JERUSALEM
Jewish Quarter: plan of the Burnt House.
General view of the Burnt House.
First Jewish Revolt against Rome were found on the floors of the rooms. The
house clearly burned down at the time of Jerusalem's destruction in 70, when
the Romans occupied the Upper City, on the 8th ofElul, one month after the
burning of the Temple, as reported by Josephus. Further evidence of the
consequences of the war on the household was provided by an iron spear
found leaning in the corner of one room and by the bones of a young woman's
hand and arm found against one of the kitchen walls.
Mount Zion: plan of the Herodian buildings.
•
~Late
~~~Both
phases
NAHMAN AVIGAD
Remains of a magnificent residential building were discovered by M. Broshi
(1971-1972), in the present area of the Armenian monastery (the House of
Caiaphas) on Mount Zion. A piece of painted plaster was discovered that
bears a drawing of a bird-an unusual motif in the Jewish artistic repertoire of
the Second Temple period.
Remains of masonry, quarrying, and various water installations, such as
the characteristic stepped ritual pools (mikvehs) of Second Temple times,
have come to light in excavations conducted since the end of the nineteenth
century in all parts of Mount Zion and on the slopes of the hill: the extensive
excavations by Bliss and Dickie (1894-1897) in the southern part of Mount
Zion and on its southern and eastern slopes; excavations by J. Margovski
(1969) and by M. Ben-Dov (early 1970s) south of the Old City, along the
wall from the Zion Gate to the Dung Gate; an excavation by E. Eisenberg
(1983) in front of the Dormition Church on Mount Zion; and the excavation
by S. Margalit and B. Pixner (early
1980s) on the southern slope of
Mount Zion. Most probably, too,
some of the water installations, quarrying, and fragmentary masonry exposed since 1890 by J. Germer-Durand in the precincts of the Church
of Saint Peter in Gallicantu on the
eastern slope of Mount Zion, as well
as some remains discovered when
foundations were laid for the DormitionAbbeyin 1899,datetothe Second
Temple period. Kenyon's excavations
on the eastern slope of Mount Zion
also revealed what she considered
evidence for settlement in the Second
Temple period-but not before the
reign of Agrippa I (see above, First
Wall). Y. Gat's excavations in 1975
at the foot of the southeastern slope
of Mount Zion, near the Siloam
Pool, revealed remains of Second
Temple period masonry. Y. Shiloh's
area H, at the foot of the eastern slope
ofMount Zion, revealed remains from
Hasmonean times (stratum 7).
Mount Zion: general view of the Herodian
buildings.
Early
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