City of David

Last week, my Biblical Archaeology class went on a tiyyul (basically a fieldtrip) to the ancient city of David. One of my favorite things about living in Jerusalem is that an ancient location like this is only about a 5 minute walk from where I go to school. We walked through Gehennah, which has a lot of folklore attached to it from Biblical times- namely where the Pagans would do child sacrifices. most recently it was a slum until the City of Jerusalem turned it into a park. We then walked the ramparts of Jerusalem, on the walls of the old city of Jerusalem, on the same stones that have been walked on for many many years by our ancestors. The City of David was excavated (and is still being excavated) by a woman who believes she has uncovered David's Palace. Where, according to tradition, he looked down into the valley and saw Bat Sheba bathing on her roof. Whether or not this story historically took place, it was pretty amazing to be standing on or near that place.

In the City of David, as in most of Jerusalem and Israel, the modern city has been built over the ancient ruins. In this picture, towards the bottom is the City of David, but all you can see are the modern houses built right on top of the ancient city. This is actually how most ruins in Israel are found: someone wants to develop the land, and when their bulldozer hits a Tell (a site where several ancient civilization ruins are found right on top of each other, it looks like a hill) and according to Israeli law- all archaeological sites must be excavated and the findings must be given to the antiquities department. But people waste no time building over sites. Also in this picture, if you look very closely up near the top of the hill, you can see the United Nations Middle East Headquarters!

I have often mentioned in this blog that I do not like to take pictures of some sites because it is so difficult to accurately portray its beauty. And this picture is a great example of that. It is an example of either a terraced wall from the Late Bronze Age or a stepped-stone wall from the Early Iron Age (4 hours of lecture is a lot..I have a hard time remembering it all). Basically it is a fortified wall at the edge of what was supposedly the Palace, in order to keep the right people in, and the wrong people out. And yes, I know it just looks like a pile of rocks, but it used to be a thriving city I promise. OR some really strong people decided to play tricks on us and put all these rocks together and pretend it was important. the Jury is still out.

This picture is actually pretty cool. At first glance it looks like another pile of rocks. However, if you look closely, you can see a horizontal line in the rocks that stands out from the rest between what look like cement square structures. This is the destruction layer from when the Second Temple was destroyed. It is so amazing for me to see things like this. An entire section of History so important to the Jewish People, in a meter tall pile of rocks. This picture is also an excellent demonstration of the juxtaposition of Old Jerusalem with Modern Jerusalem. The ancient City of David on the bottom, including what may be the ruins of the Palace of David Himself, and a house built right on top of it. I also have the utmost respect for archaeologists who can look at these piles of rocks, and put the pieces together that teach us so much about our History.

A big issue back in David's day was water. Particularly in Jerusalem, where there really is very little water. Even today, most of the water for Jerusalem comes all the way from the Kinneret in Northern Israel. Back in the day, they dug an impressive well to gather water from below. The Gihon Spring was the major source of water for the City of David. However, the spring was in teh Gihon Valley which technically was outside the city walls. Let me remind you that Jerusalem is VERY Hilly. Imagine for a second carrying several buckets full of water at a 100% incline in the 120 degree (farenheit) temperature, many times a day. The ancient Israelites were not stupid, they put in place several ways to solve this problem. Including the Siloam Channel, many reservoirs including the Siloam Pool which is still in the Gihon Valley (not used for that purpose anymore), and most importantly Hezekiah's Tunnel. On our Tiyyul, we descended into Warren's Shaft which was dug to allow residents of the City of David to access the water during war times when they could not go outside city walls. I do not have any pictures of the shaft or tunnel, because I spent the entire time trying not to have a claustrophobia attack! The tunnel was small enough that every extremity was touching rock even when I held them close to my body. Our group opted out of the Hezekiah Tunnel tour, because water still flows through the tunnel and is thigh-deep. But if you are ever in Jerusalem, that tour comes highly recommended. I've included a picture from the website of Warren's Shaft. Also, if you are interested in learning more about the City of David, visit this website: http://cityofdavid.org.il/about_eng.asp