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archaeologist Work has been completed to uncover the longest continuous remains of an ancient wall surrounding JerusalemWhich also includes possible evidence of a 2,100-year-old armistice between the warring states.
Last week, archaeologists completed the excavation of the most complete portion ever discovered of the foundations of the walls that surrounded Jerusalem during the time of the Hasmonean Empire, when the story of hanukkah Happened.
In JewishHanukkah means “dedication”, and this holiday marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after a small group of people in the second century BC. Jewish Fighters liberated it from foreign armies and the Hasmonean Empire that followed.
Jews observe an eight-day holiday, which begins on December 14 this year, with a nightly candle-lighting ritual in honor of the small supply of pure oil they received at the Temple, lasting eight nights instead of just one. Many people also eat fried foods like potato pancakes, called latkes, in memory of this miraculously long-lasting oil.
The foundations of the Hasmonean Wall, excavations of which ended last week in Jerusalem, were likely built by the same rulers a few decades after the Hanukkah story. It is about 50 meters (164 ft) long, about half the length of a football field, and about 5 meters (16 ft) wide. It had walls which, according to estimates and some historical accounts, were higher than the current walls surrounding the Old City of Jerusalem.
Most of the existing walls surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City are hundreds of years old, dating back to the Ottoman era.
According to ancient accounts, the Hasmonean walls enclosed an area much larger than the present Old City of Jerusalem, with 60 watchtowers along the wall that were more than 10 meters (33 ft) high. The recently uncovered section is one of the longest sections found intact from the foundations of the Hasmonean walls.
Separation Wall and Armistice
One of the most interesting aspects of the foundation was that it appeared that the wall above it was purposefully and evenly demolished to a uniform height, not destroyed chaotically by the ravages of time or war, said Dr. Amit Ream, one of the project’s lead archaeologists for the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Experts wondered why any leader would breach a perfectly good security wall in an area that was under constant threat of invasion.
According to the ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, in 132 or 133 BC, the Hellenistic king Antiochus VII, who according to the Hanukkah story was the successor of Antiochus the Fourth, laid siege to Jerusalem and the Jewish kingdom.
As the Jewish army struggled, the Jewish king John Hyrcanus I decided to make a truce with Antiochus. According to the writings of Josephus, he raided the tomb of King David for 3,000 talents of silver and offered 500 hostages, including his brother.
“Antiochus Sidetes (the Seventh) reached an armistice agreement with John Hyrcanus and said, ‘If you want me to withdraw my army, you yourself, King of the Jews, will raze to the ground the Hasmonean fortress built by you and your father,'” Ream said on Monday. Josephus’s writings state that after Antiochus accepted Hyrcanus’ deal, he “pulled down the walls that surrounded the city.”
“We just think we’ve found archaeological evidence of this, so it’s pretty amazing, archeology and ancient stories coming together, that’s the magic of Jerusalem,” Reem said.
Another hypothesis from Rem is that King Herod built his palace on the foundations of the Hasmonean Wall, during his reign in the 1st century BC, as a clear message of his sovereignty over Jewish Jerusalem.
Other archaeologists were puzzled as to why this section of the Hasmonean wall appeared to have been destroyed.
Orit Peleg-Barkat, head of classical archeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, believes it has more to do with King Herod’s palace than the armistice agreement with Antiochus.
Peleg-Barakat pointed out that other sections of Hasmonean wall exposed in other parts of Jerusalem were not destroyed, so this may have been just a section that was broken, possibly to provide the foundation for Herod’s palace. It was unlikely, he said, that Jerusalem had been left unprotected without a protective wall for more than a century.
prison wall
The current section of the wall was exposed beneath an abandoned wing of a building called Kishleh, which was built in 1830 as a military base. This wing was used as a prison until the 1940s, including by the British, and the walls were covered with graffiti scrawled by prisoners in English, Hebrew and Arabic. The remains of the iron bars of the cells are still visible in the ceiling.
Most of the building is still used by the Israeli Police today, but one wing was abandoned and later transferred to the Tower of David Museum. Archaeologists first began excavating this part of Kishleh in 1999, but excavations were halted two years ago due to violence in Jerusalem during the second intifada that began in 2000.
Archaeologists spent the past two years manually removing dirt and debris equivalent to two Olympic swimming pools from the hall. Excavations revealed what they believe to be paint pits from the Middle Ages, likely dyeing cloth, and a long section of the foundations of the Hasmonean wall.
In the coming years, the Tower of David Museum will install a floating glass floor above the ruins and use the hall as one of its new galleries in the Schulich Wing of Archaeology, Art and Innovation. Restoration of this section is expected to take at least two years, now that archaeological excavations have finished.