ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNVEIL 1,500-YEAR-OLD STREET BENEATH OLD CITY
by Dan Slobodkin
Jerusalem Despatch
Feb 10 2010
The Antiquities Authority unveiled Wednesday a section of a stone
street in the Old City that provides important new evidence about
the city’s commercial life 1,500 years ago.
The findings confirmed an ancient mosaic map found in Madaba, Jordan
in 1876, which showed the entrance to Jerusalem from the west was
via a huge gate that led to the main thoroughfare.
Evidence of various ancient buildings appearing on the map has been
uncovered previously or has survived to this day, but the large,
bustling street was unknown because archaeological excavations could
not be conducted in the heavily used area.
Now, due to infrastructure work, the Jerusalem Development Authority
has launched a renewal project there, focusing on the entrance to
Rechov David.
>>From his knowledge of the Madaba Map, excavation director Dr. Ofer
Sion of the Israel Antiquities Authority surmised that the main road
passed by the spot. "After removing a number of archaeological strata,
at a depth of 4.5 m below today’s street level, much to our excitement,
we discovered the large flagstones used to pave the street," he said.
A foundation built of stone was unearthed alongside the street, which
had a sidewalk and a row of columns. "It’s fabulous to see that David
Street, which is teeming with so much life today, actually preserved
the route of the noisy street from 1,500 years ago," Dr. Sion remarked.
During the Middle Ages a large building that faced the street was
constructed on the stone foundation of the Byzantine period. In a
later phase, during the Mamluk period (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries
CE) elongated rooms, apparently used as shops and storerooms, were
built inside the structure. Beneath the building, directly below the
street that runs between David’s Citadel and Rechov David and leads
to the Armenian Quarter, is an enormous cistern, 8O12 meters and five
meters deep.
The Madaba Map is an 8O16-meter mosaic map that described the Land of
Israel through the intimate knowledge the mosaic’s builder had of the
country. The map, constructed in a Byzantine-era church in Jordan,
depicts schematically all of the Land of Israel, with an emphasis on
Christian sites.
Other artifacts discovered in the excavations include numerous pottery
vessels and coins and five small, square, bronze weights shopkeepers
used for weighing precious metals.