The Archaeology of Jerusalem: From the Origins to the Ottomans
The Archaeology of Jerusalem: From the Origins to the Ottomans
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Overview
In this sweeping and lavishly illustrated history, Katharina Galor and Hanswulf Bloedhorn survey nearly four thousand years of human settlement and building activity in Jerusalem, from prehistoric times through the Ottoman period. The study is structured chronologically, exploring the city’s material culture, including fortifications and water systems as well as key sacred, civic, and domestic architecture. Distinctive finds such as paintings, mosaics, pottery, and coins highlight each period. Their book provides a unique perspective on the emergence and development of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the relationship among the three religions and their cultures into the modern period.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300198997 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/28/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Sales rank: | 985,801 |
| File size: | 40 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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The Archaeology of Jerusalem
From the Origins to the Ottomans
By Katharina Galor, Hanswulf Bloedhorn
Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2013 Yale UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-11195-8
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
History of the Research
Jerusalem ... by far the most famous city of the East and not of Judaea only.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, V, 70
Turning to the past to enhance one's perspective of the present is not a modern invention. From early on, Jerusalem has beckoned numerous historians, explorers, and adventurers. Whether to illuminate one's ancestral heritage or to revisit sites that shaped world religions, the quest to uncover Jerusalem's mysterious legacy has been a source of inspiration for many (fig. 1.1).
Flavius Josephus (ca. 37–95 C.E.) may be considered a pioneer in the exploration of Jerusalem's history, described in the course of his work to record the history of his people for the contemporary Roman reader. Byzantine and medieval pilgrims attempted to locate those sites associated with Jesus and recorded their observations (plate 1). Theoderich, in his Libellus de locis sanctis (1172 C.E.), sought to reconstruct first-century C.E. Jerusalem using Josephus's description of the city. Mujir al-Din in the fifteenth century C.E. should be considered as the most important author recording the history of the city from an Islamic perspective. The earliest physical explorations of the East began with Napoleon's campaign in Egypt (1798–99). After attention to Egypt and Mesopotamia, interest to explore Palestine archaeologically was sparked only in the mid nineteenth century.
In 1838, Edward Robinson, professor of biblical literature at Union Theological Seminary in New York, made his first trip to Palestine, followed by a second journey in 1852. With his numerous identifications of places mentioned in the Bible he was able to establish the foundations for a historical topography of Palestine. Although Robinson was one of the first modern investigators to study Jerusalem, his most valuable contributions were for Palestine as a whole.
More relevant for the investigation of Jerusalem proper are the studies conducted by the Swiss physician Titus Tobler. In the course of his visits to Palestine, first in 1835–36 and then in 1845–46, he compiled a detailed description of the city. His visual observations, combined with a systematic study of late antique and medieval pilgrim accounts, resulted in a standard reference work. Two additional journeys, in 1857–58 and 1865, led to the organized collation and publication of all known and relevant pilgrim reports, as well as the production of a comprehensive chronologically sequenced bibliography of Palestine.
The earliest field investigations of the city were conducted by Conrad Schick. Although trained as a locksmith and clockmaker, he was sent to Jerusalem in 1846 in the service of the Mission Society of St. Chrischona (near Basel) and recorded his valuable architectural observations in numerous articles.
The first excavations proper were undertaken by Félix de Saulcy. In the winter of 1850–51, he began to expose the tomb of the royal family of Adiabene north of the city, which he erroneously identified as the Tomb of the Kings of Judah.
The first institutionalized framework for further field investigations was created in 1864. Under the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, Captain Charles W. Wilson was entrusted to supervise the renovation of the city's water supply system. His systematic description of the city, with plans featuring its most important buildings, appeared in the fall of 1865.
Wilson's unexpected success in surveying the city's archaeological remains led to the establishment of the Palestine Exploration Fund on May 12, 1865. The express goal of the Fund was to undertake investigations "for biblical illustration." In the fall of 1865, Wilson, accompanied by Lieutenant Anderson and Corporal Phillips, was again sent to Palestine. His work in 1866 was restricted to Jerusalem, where spectacular results were expected to appear quickly. In 1867, the team was reinforced by the addition of Lieutenant Charles Warren, who soon discovered the shaft behind the Gihon that was later named after him. In the following years, because excavations on the Haram al-Sharif were impossible, numerous risky shaft excavations were conducted outside the Haram's enclosure walls. Warren and Wilson's written report appeared in 1871. The Jerusalem volume of The Survey of Western Palestine, with contributions by Wilson as well as by Warren, Conder, and Charles Clermont-Ganneau, was published in 1884, comprising a compendium of the archaeological knowledge of the day.
Clermont-Ganneau served as a secretary at the French consulate in Jerusalem from 1865 to 1872, when he also conducted intensive archaeological investigations in Jerusalem and the vicinity. In 1873–74 he was again in Palestine, sent by the Palestine Exploration Fund. Although he could not obtain an excavation permit, his mission was no less successful through his numerous architectural observations, which he compiled during his journeys in Palestine and published in 1896; his notes about Jerusalem followed three years later.
Following the British model, the Germans founded the Deutscher Verein zur Erforschung Palästinas (German Society for the Exploration of Palestine) in 1877. Hermann Guthe was entrusted with the task of excavating in Jerusalem.
In the 1870s the debate heightened as to whether the Canaanite city captured by David was to be sought on the Southwest Hill, the traditional Mount Zion, or whether the settlement had begun on the Southeast Hill, which include the Gihon and the water installations. This question remained in the background of the ensuing excavations conducted by the Palestine Exploration Fund. Frederick J. Bliss, former assistant to William M. F. Petrie, came to Jerusalem after the end of his work at Tall al-Hasi in May 1894 and, together with Archibald C. Dickie, began his excavations on the Southwest Hill. Bliss and Dickie did not use Petrie's pioneering stratigraphic method in his excavations but rather Warren's older technique of shaft and tunnel excavations. Despite these apparent methodological drawbacks, however, Bliss and Dickie's excavations mark a considerable stride in research because of their precise documentation. The confirmation for their precision was recently reestablished by the renewed excavation of the city wall on the southern slope of Mount Zion conducted by Yehiel Zelinger.
A unique excavation project was undertaken by Montague B. Parker beginning in 1909. Less interested in illuminating the settlement history, he was determined to uncover the treasure of King Solomon's temple. Louis-Hugues Vincent of the École biblique et archéologique française, who accompanied Parker on his adventurous excavations, took the opportunity to make scientific observations and swiftly published the results as a monograph.
Baron Edmond de Rothschild initiated an excavation motivated by his desire to discover the tombs of the kings of Judah. On his behalf, Raymond Weill conducted a first campaign in 1913–14. In addition to various city wall sections, he uncovered the building inscription of what is presumed to have been the Theodotus synagogue. Soon after, he cleared several underground structures, which he claimed were the tombs of the kings of Judah.
Conditions for archaeological excavations in Jerusalem changed decisively in the British Mandatory period. The Department of Antiquities of Palestine was established to allow for several extensive excavations. Methodological innovations were made, which meant, most importantly, that shaft explorations were no longer considered an appropriate means to uncover the ancient city.
The first large-scale exploration, directed by Robert A. S. Macalister and John G. Duncan under the auspices of the Palestine Exploration Fund between 1923 and 1925, was on the top of the Southeast Hill as well as in the area above the Gihon Spring.
Between 1927 and 1929 John W. Crowfoot and Gerald M. Fitzgerald expanded the excavations on the western slope of the Southeast Hill. Unfortunately, their finds were only published in abbreviated form.
Also methodologically deficient and unsatisfactorily documented were the extended excavations undertaken by Eleazar L. Sukenik and Leo A. Mayer on behalf of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society north of the Old City in 1925–28 and again in 1940. Robert W. Hamilton and Cedric N. Johns advanced the methodological framework of investigations in Jerusalem by introducing the technique of stratigraphic excavations during several soundings and excavations carried out in the 1930s and 1940s.
After a long interruption due to the war, excavations resumed with several projects conducted under the auspices of the British School of Archaeology. Between 1961 and 1967, Kathleen M. Kenyon, in collaboration with Alan D. Tushingham and Roland de Vaux (from the École biblique et archéologique française), directed a number of excavation projects. Her contribution to uncovering Jerusalem was tremendous and her publications will remain a valuable resource for the archaeological history of ancient Jerusalem.
Following the Israeli conquest of East Jerusalem in 1967, Kenyon aborted her work because of the UNESCO charter's stipulation that no further expeditions could be conducted in an occupied territory. Consequently, numerous large-scale and long-term projects were initiated by Israeli archaeologists, conducted first under the auspices of the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums, and after 1990 the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Only the most significant ones are mentioned here. Soon after the conquest of the Old City, between 1969 and 1982, Nahman Avigad conducted extensive excavations, focusing almost exclusively on the period preceding the 70 C.E. destruction. Unfortunately, most of the post-Herodian building remains had been bulldozed before the beginning of the excavation. With the exception of the Nea Church and sections of the Byzantine cardo, the expedition dealt primarily with the earlier periods and thus created a biased picture of the settlement history in this area of the Old City (fig. 1.2).
Around the same time, between 1968 and 1977, an additional large-scale excavation was conducted south of the Haram al-Sharif. Here, Benjamin Mazar, and later, Eilat Mazar, continued the work begun by Kenyon.
Earlier investigations by Johns in the Citadel and by Kenyon and Tushingham in the Armenian Garden, were resumed by a number of Israeli archaeologists: Ruth Amiran and Avraham Eitan, Hillel Geva, Renée Sivan and Giora Solar, Amit Re'em, Magen Broshi, and Dan Bahat and Broshi. All these excavations yielded fascinating results, but so far they have been published only in preliminary reports.
Between 1978 and 1985, Yigal Shiloh resumed excavations on the Southeast Hill. These were first published in several preliminary reports and more recently as final reports.
Since 1995, Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron have conducted extensive excavations around the Gihon Spring; they were the first excavators to dig down to the bedrock in this area. Their work contributes primarily to a revised understanding of the early water and fortification systems. Remains of the Herodian Siloam Pool were exposed in 2004. Soon after this discovery, Eilat Mazar uncovered additional Iron Age remains further north on the Southeast Hill. A number of small and large scale excavations conducted north of Damascus Gate exposed various sections of an extramural ecclesiastical quarter from the Byzantine period.
In spite of the ongoing interest in the biblical periods, not all historical and archaeological studies of Jerusalem are limited to pre-classical times. Tobler and Schick have already addressed the history of the holy places in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, an effort continued by Melchior de Vogüé, and later by Vincent and Félix-Marie Abel. More recently, Denys Pringle expanded the corpus of the Crusader churches. In contrast to medieval Christian architecture, the interest in Islamic archaeology and architecture is more recent in western scholarship. Since the 1980s a series of studies devoted to the Islamic heritage of the city was sponsored by the British School of Archaeology, since 2001 known as the Kenyon Institute. The survey of Islamic architecture began with Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell for the Early Islamic period and was continued by Michael Hamilton Burgoyne for the Mamluk period. A complete study on the archaeology and architecture of the Ayyubid period was recently conducted by Mahmud Hawari. Ottoman Jerusalem was studied by a number of archaeologists, historians, art historians, and architects. Their work was compiled and edited by Sylvia Auld and Robert Hillenbrand.
Two important studies devoted to the city's epigraphic heritage are Hannah M. Cotton and Werner Eck's corpus of all pre-Islamic inscriptions and Max van Berchem's survey of Arabic inscriptions.
The work, effort, and studies of all the above-mentioned individuals—in addition to numerous others not mentioned in this context—have set the groundwork for this book. Although many missing pieces of the puzzle have yet to be deciphered, the existing textual and material remains allow us to draw a fairly detailed picture of Jerusalem's fascinating past.
CHAPTER 2
Natural and Built City Limits
Jerusalem is emphatically a mountain city. Situated in the heart of the hill country which extends from the great plain of Esdraelon to the southern extremity of the Promised Land, surrounded on all sides by limestone hills whose surface is broken by countless ravines, and only approached by rough mountain roads, its position is one of great natural strength. This peculiarity in the situation of the Holy City is frequently alluded to in the Bible, and we may infer from the well-known words of the Psalmist, "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people," that importance was attached to the hills as a barrier or protection against hostile attack.
C. W. Wilson, Picturesque Palestine, I, 1–2
Whereas the city's natural topography has remained constant in the period under consideration, the evolving history of the region has repeatedly modified the urban limits and the definition of space within. Factors that have determined the shift in boundaries include the inhabitants' relations with surrounding cultures that were either cordial or hostile at various times; their religious and ethnic affiliations; and the city's socioeconomic, ecological, and demographic conditions.
Topography and Geology
Palestine lies on a narrow stretch of the Fertile Crescent, at the southern end of the Levantine coast. Located in the center of the country, the Judaean hills mark the dividing line between the drainage basin of the Mediterranean Sea and that of the Jordan Valley. Ancient Jerusalem stands on a promontory enclosed on either side by two valleys that converge near its southernmost protrusion and continue onwards to the Dead Sea. On the crossroads of two regional trade routes, one north–south following the line of the mountain ridge, and the other east–west stretching from the sea toward Transjordan, Jerusalem has often served as the capital of the whole of Palestine. In geographical terms this is surprising, since the city was not easily accessible and there were no easy lines of communication through the hills leading into the city. Furthermore, natural water sources were always limited.
Ancient Jerusalem extended over several hills or spurs surrounded by even higher mountains (figs. 2.1–2). The city's central core of hills is encircled on the west, south, and east by valleys and deep ravines. In ancient times the hills and valleys of Jerusalem were more pronounced than they are today. The numerous acts of destruction and the changes that the city has undergone, as well as the constant accumulation of waste and debris that filled the valleys and consequently lowered the heights, rendered the site the appearance of a plateau rather than of prominent hills and deep valleys (plate 2).
The eastern border of the ancient city is marked by the Kidron Valley (Wadi al-Joz in the north and Wadi an-Nar in the east and south), which separates it from the Mount of Olives ridge (Jabal az-Zaitun, 830 meters). Its western border is the Valley of Hinnom (Wadi ar-Rababa), which runs north–south, skirting Mount Zion, and then turns east along the southern border of the ancient city down until its confluence with the Kidron Valley. The city's northern border has no clear-cut topographical demarcation. The only morphological feature that separated the city from the hills to the north was the (now filled) Transversal Valley. From Late Hellenistic times onward the city's boundaries spread beyond the Transversal Valley. From north to south, the city is divided by the valley (al-Wad), known later, from the time of Josephus, as the Central or Tyropoeon Valley. It was this depression that separated the so-called Southwest Hill or Upper City (765 meters), now occupied by the Armenian and Jewish Quarters, and Mount Zion further south (770 meters), from the Southeast Hill or Lower City. The latter included the Temple Mount (745 meters) and the City of David to the south (660 meters).
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface.................... ix
1 Introduction: History of the Research.................... 1
2 Natural and Built City Limits.................... 10
3 The Chalcolithic Period and the Bronze Age.................... 18
4 The Iron Age.................... 28
5 The Babylonian and Persian Periods.................... 55
6 The Hellenistic Period.................... 63
7 The Roman Period.................... 113
8 The Byzantine Period.................... 127
9 The Early Islamic Period.................... 151
10 The Crusader and Ayyubid Periods.................... 174
11 The Mamluk Period.................... 209
12 The Ottoman Period.................... 232
Epilogue.................... 251
Appendix I: Jerusalem Chronology.................... 253
Appendix II: Major Excavations in Jerusalem.................... 255
Notes.................... 259
Bibliography.................... 289
Index.................... 327