EXCAVATING THE CITY OF DAVID - Where Jerusalem’s History Began
By Ronny Reich
Archaeological research over the past 150 years has identified Jerusalem’s southeastern hill, outside the Old City walls, as the biblical City of David. The growing realization that this hill is indeed the most ancient part of Jerusalem led many scholars to excavate it. Since the first excavation by Charles Warren in 1867 to the present, fourteen archaeological expeditions have dug here, making the City of David hill one of the most excavated sites in Israel. British, German, French, and Israeli teams have dug here under four different governments (Ottoman, British Mandate, Jordanian, and Israeli), producing an impressive quantity of data. Some of these remains are uniquely important, including the Siloam Tunnel, the Warren’s Shaft system, the Siloam Inscription, the Theodotos Inscription, and the Pool of Siloam.
Recent excavations at the City of David have uncovered impressive remains of Middle Bronze Age fortifications around the Gihon Spring and remains of the Siloam Pool dating to the Second Temple period. The Siloam Tunnel has now been thoroughly documented and studied. This book begins with a chronological survey of a century and a half of excavation and study of the City of David hill. It then summarizes the history of the hill, from prehistoric times to the end of the Ottoman period. It presents an up-to-date summary of past and recent archaeological discoveries, many of which, presented here for the first time, have dramatically changed our thinking about Jerusalem’s ancient history.
Ronny Reich has been excavating and studying Jerusalem’s antiquities for over forty years. From 1969 to 1978 he participated in the excavations directed by Professor Nahman Avigad in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter. Since 1995 he has been co-director of the City of David Excavations. Professor Reich is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Jewish ritual baths in the Second Temple period. Since 1995 he has been a professor of archaeology at the University of Haifa. In 2000 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for Archaeological Research.
27 × 22 cm., 382 pages, hardcover, numerous black & white and color illustrations.
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