City of David

City of David in the period of Herod's Temple, Holyland Model of Jerusalem. The southern wall of the Temple Mount appears at top.

Tourist inside Hezekiah's tunnel 2010

The City of David (Hebrew: עיר דוד‎, Ir David; Arabic: مدينة داوود‎, Madīna Dāwūd) is the Israeli name^[1] for the neighbourhood of Wadi Hilweh (Arabic: وادي حلوه‎) in Silwan.^[2]

The area is one of the most intensively excavated sites in the wider region.^[3] The debate within biblical archaeology over the location of the City of David began in the late 19th century with the excavations of Charles Warren and Hermann Guthe on the hill southeast of the Old City.^[4][5] The 1909-11 work of Louis-Hugues Vincent and Montagu Brownlow Parker identified the earliest known human remains in the Jerusalem region,^[6][7]suggesting the area was an ancient core of settlement in Jerusalem dating back to the Bronze Age.^[8][9] It is on a narrow ridge running south from the Temple Mount in the predominantly Arab neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem.^[10][11] It is thought to have been a walled city in the Bronze Age which enjoyed the defensive advantages of its position by the Tyropoeon Valley to its west, by the Hinnom valley to the south, and the Kidron Valley on the east. In the ancient pre-Israelite period, the area is thought to have been separated from the site of the later Temple Mount by the Ophel, an uninhabited area which became the seat of government under Israelite rule.^[12] During the reign of Hezekiah, the walls of the city were expanded westward, enclosing a previously unwalled suburb in the area now known as the Old City of Jerusalem, west of the Temple Mount.

The area is highly controversial in the context of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.^[13][14][15] The City is located around and below Silwan, a predominantly Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, with some Jewish residents. Within the City of David itself, Jews now form the majority of the population. Ongoing archeological digs by the private Israeli settlement group Elad are excavating eventually under some Muslim homes, possibly causing damage.^[16][17][18] According to Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, Israeli planning authorities have plans to raze Palestinian homes to make the area into an archaeological park.^[19] In October 2014, Uri Ariel, former Israeli Minister of Housing and Construction, caused controversy when he suggested he was "considering taking up residence" in the area.^[20]

Archaeology

Part of the Large Stone Structure identified by some archaeologists with the remains of King David's Palace

Nahal Kidron, which separated the Ophel from today's Old City, lies hidden beneath the debris of centuries. Archaeological exploration of the area began in the nineteenth century. The area includes several sites of archaeological interest, notably Hezekiah's tunnel (a water supply system, where the Siloam inscription was found), Warren's shaft (an earlier structure, postulated by some to have been a water supply system), and the Pool of Siloam (the presently extant Byzantine-era pool, and the recently discovered Second Temple-period pool). All of these water supply systems drew their water from the Gihon Spring which lies on the Ophel's eastern slope, and is generally considered the reason that the City was built at this location.^[12]

The site of the Gihon Spring and Pool of Siloam are incorporated in an archaeological park open to the public. Visitors can wade through Hezekiah's Tunnel, through which the waters of the ancient spring still flow.^[21] Ongoing archaeological digs by the private Elad group are excavating eventually under some Arab homes.

The earliest excavations were undertaken by Charles Warren in 1867; there have been numerous excavations since and several digs are currently underway. Complete lists of the Ottoman Era digs , British Mandate era digs , Jordanian era digs and of the early Israeli era digs are available at the website of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Chalcolithic (4500–3500 BCE)

Chalcolithic remains include bits of pottery found in clefts in the bedrock by Macalister and Duncan.^[22] The expedition also discovered a number of artifices cut into the bedrock. These included places where the rock had been smoothed and others where it had been cut to form flow channels. There were also several groups of small basins, sometimes called cupmarks, cut into the bedrock. These are assumed to have been used for some form of agricultural processing. Macalister and Duncan speculated that they were used in olive oil processing.^[22] Edwin C. M. van den Brink, who notes that similar carved basins have been found at Beit Shemesh and near Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut speculates that they may have been created by repeated grinding and crushing activity, such as the grinding of grain or the crushing of olives.^[23] Eilat Mazar speculates that they were used to collect rainwater.^[12]

Early Bronze Age (3500–2350 BCE)

Pieces of pottery.

Middle Bronze Age (2000–1550 BCE)

Middle Bronze Age Jerusalem is mentioned several times in Egyptian texts from the 19th-18th centuries BCE.^[24] It is mentioned in this era in the biblical story of Melchizedek.(Genesis 14:18-20) In this period the city is sufficiently large and powerful to construct a "massive" stone wall to defend its water supply, the Gihon Spring, by protecting the vulnerable passage from the top of the hill to the spring tower below.^[25]

Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BCE)

Pottery and bronze arrowheads dating form this period have been found.^[12]

In 2010, a fragment of a clay tablet dating from the 14th century BCE was uncovered, making it the oldest written document yet uncovered in Jerusalem. It is dated by the writing it bears, in an ancient Akkadian cuneiform script. The text was deciphered by graduate student Takayoshi Oshima working under professor Wayne Horowitz. According to Horowitz, the quality of the writing indicates that this was a royal inscription, apparently a letter from the king of Jerusalem to the pharaoh in Egypt.^[26] Professor Christopher Rollston points out that there is no mention of any personal names or titles and no place names in the document. He notes that the quality of the script is good but that this does not show that it is "international royal correspondence." He also suggests that caution should be taken before positing a definite date as it is not a stratified find, having been discovered after excavation in a 'wet sieving' process.^[27]

Iron Age I (1200–980/70 BCE)

Jebusite city wall.

Jebusite city. A city wall dating to no later than the twelfth century BCE has been uncovered, and neither its existence nor the existence of a fortified city at that date is in dispute. On one side of the controversy are those who maintain the plausibility or validity of the biblical account of a conquest by troops under King David who, as described in the Bible, captured the city not only by breaching the walls,^[28] but also by climbing upwards through the ancient water system at the Gihon Spring.^[29] The supposition is that the Israelites continued to use the intact Jebusite walls and extended the city northward, under king Solomon, to include the Temple Mount.^[30]

Iron Age IIa (1000–900 BCE)

Stepped Stone Structure (Millo).

Sign at the center of Hezekiah's Tunnel

The period of the tenth and ninth centuries BCE, corresponding to the biblical Kings David and Solomon, has been the subject of an intense scholarly dispute, as well as of ongoing archaeological investigations.^[31]

The 2005 discovery by archaeologist Eilat Mazar of a Large Stone Structure, which she dated to the tenth century BCE, would be evidence of buildings in Jerusalem of a size appropriate to the capital of a centralized kingdom at that time. Others, most notably Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, argue that the structure could, for the most part, be from the much later Hasmonean period.^[32] However, new evidence continues to emerge from the dig. Mazar's date is supported by 10th century imported luxury goods found within the large Stone Structure, including two Phoenician-style ivory inlays once attached to iron objects, comparable objects found in a Phoenician tomb at Achziv suggest that they may have decorated a sword handle.^[33] A quantity of luxury round, carinated bowls with red slip and hand burnishing support both the tenth century date and a sophisticated, urban lifestyle.^[34] A bone has been radiocarbon dated by Elisabetta Boaretto at the Weizmann Institute, showing a probability date between 1050 and 780 BCE.^[34] A large section of a "delicate and elegant" Black-on-red jug, also found in the structure, is of a kind dated to the second half of the tenth century BCE.^[35][36]

In 2010 Mazar announced the discovery of what she believed to be a 10th-century BCE city wall. According to Mazar, ""It's the most significant construction we have from First Temple days in Israel," and "It means that at that time, the 10th century, in Jerusalem there was a regime capable of carrying out such construction." The 10th century BCE is the period the Bible describes as the reign of King Solomon. Aren Maeir, an archeology professor at Bar Ilan University, said he has yet to see evidence that the fortifications are as old as Mazar claims.^[37]

Necropolis

Remnants of the Tomb of Pharaoh's daughter

The elaborate rock-cut tombs of the Israelite period, dating from the 9th to the 7th centuries BCE are found on the ridge on the far side of the Kidron Valley in and under the Arab village of Silwan.^[38] These are large, elaborate tombs of finely-cut stone, such as could only have been built by the highest-ranking members of a wealthy society. According to David Ussishkin, "here ministers, nobles and notables of the kingdom of Judah were buried."^[38]

The architecture of the tombs and the manner of burial is different "from anything known from contemporary Palestine. Elements such as entrances located high above the surface, gabled ceilings, straight ceilings with a cornice,13 trough-shaped resting-places with pillows, above-ground tombs, and inscriptions engraved on the facade appear only here."^[38] However, the stone benches were carved with headrests in a style borrowed from Egyptian Hathor wig.^[39] Ussishkin believes that the architectural similarity to building styles of the Phoenician cities validates the biblical description of Phoenician influence on the Israelite kingdoms, but speculates that some or all of the tombs may have been built by Phoenician aristocrats living in Jerusalem.^[38]

Although only three partial inscriptions survive, the paleography makes the dating certain ^[38] and they suffice for most archaeologists to identify one tomb with the Biblical Shebna, steward and treasurer of King Hezekiah.^[40]

Iron Age IIIb (8th century – 586 BCE)

This is the period that corresponds to the biblical Kings Hezekiah through Josiah and the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar II.

King Hezekiah secured the city's water supply against siege by digging the Hezekiah Tunnel through bedrock and covering over all signs of the Gihon Spring and the fortifications that had surrounded it in earlier periods. He built the Pool of Siloam as a water reservoir. Hezekiah then surrounded the new reservoir and the city's burgeoning western suburbs with a new city wall.^[41][42]

Babylonian and Persian periods (586–322 BCE)

Two bullae in the neo-Babylonian style, one showing a priest standing beside an altar to the gods Marduk and Nabu.^[43] A polished, black, stone Scaraboid seal showing a "Babylonian cultic scene" of two bearded men standing on each side of an altar dedicated to the Babylonian moon god Sin. The scaraboid is understood to have been produced in Babylonia, with space left below that altar for a personal name. In that space are Hebrew letters that Peter van der Veen has read as the name Shelomit.^[44]

Hasmonean and Herodian periods (167 BCE – 70 CE)

Major archaeological finds include the Pool of Siloam, the Jerusalem pilgrim road, the palace of Queen Helena of Adiabene and the Jerusalem Water Channel. Active Roman-era excavations are also underway at the Givati Parking Lot dig site.^[45]

New Testament references for the City of David being Bethlehem

The place of Jesus's birth, Bethlehem, is also called the City of David (πόλις Δαυείδ).

Luke 2:4

"Of course, Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David."(εἰς τὴν Ἰουδαίαν εἰς πόλιν Δαυεὶδ ἥτις καλεῖται Βηθλεέμ )

Luke 2:11

"For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." (ὅτι ἐτέχθη ὑμῖν σήμερον Σωτήρ, ὅς ἐστιν Χριστὸς Κύριος, ἐν πόλει Δαυείδ)

Byzantine and early Islamic Periods (324–1099 CE)

Byzantine era mansion called the House of Eusebius.^[46]

Modern period

Ir David and the Mount of Olives

Mid-19th century photographs taken by Scotsman James Graham (photographer) (1853–57) show the ridge of Ir David as being devoid of housing. It is terraced and planted, apparently, with olive trees.^[47]

Modern settlement began in 1873-1874, when the Meyuchas family, a Jewish rabbinical and merchant family that had lived in Jerusalem since their expulsion from Spain, moved a short distance outside the city walls to a house on the ridge.^[48] During the latter stages of the Mandate era the nearby Arab village of Silwan expanded up the ridge as well. After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the whole area fell on the eastern side of the Green Line under Jordanian control. Arab families continued to live on the ridge and to build houses there after 1967. From 1968 to 1977 the Israel Exploration Society started the first excavations at the Ophel, lead by Benjamin Mazar and Eilat Mazar.^[49]

Controversy

The right to control both the archaeological and the residential aspects of the City of David is hotly contested by Israelis and Palestinians.^[50] There is a proposal to turn most of the area into an archaeological park,^[51] and to restore a part of the Kidron Valley currently inhabited by Arabs as a park to be called the Garden of the King.^[52]

See also

• Silwan
• First Temple
• Ancient city walls around the City of David
• Tel Motza temple

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to City of David.

• City of David
• From Shiloah to Silwan project
• Shady Dealings in Silwan: An Ir Amim Report
• Did I Find King David's Palace? Biblical Archaeology Review
• The Dig Dividing Jerusalem: Ahdaf Soueif writes on Silwan in the Guardian
• Amit Rosenblum. City of David: Conservation Maintenance, Israel Antiquities Authority Site - Conservation Department
• Ivanovsky E., Van Zaiden A., Vaknin Y., Asamain, T., Sabag, S. (2007). City of David, Givati Car Park: Stabilization and post-excavation conservation, Israel Antiquities Authority Site - Conservation Department

Neighborhoods of Jerusalem Jerusalem neighborhoods east of the 1949 armistice line are depicted in green, those west of the line in blue (see Green Line). Old City Armenian Quarter Christian Quarter Muristan Jewish Quarter Muslim Quarter Bab al-Huta Central Neighborhoods Arzei HaBira Batei Ungarin Beit David Beit Ya'akov Beit Yisrael Bukharim Downtown Triangle Geula Givat HaVradim Givat Ram Katamon Kerem Avraham Kiryat HaLeom Kiryat HaMemshala Kiryat Shmuel Kiryat Shomrei Emunim Kiryat Wolfson Ma'alot Dafna Mahane Israel Mahane Yehuda Mazkeret Moshe Mea Shearim Mekor Baruch Mishkenot Sha'ananim Mount Zion Musrara Nahalat Shiv'a Nachlaot Nayot Neve Granot Neve Sha'anan Rehavia Romema Rova Mevo Ha'ir Russian Compound Sha'arei Hesed Shmuel HaNavi Talbiya Yemin Moshe Zikhron Moshe Zikhron Yosef Northern Neighborhoods Al-Ram Beit Hanina Ezrat Torah French Hill Givat HaMivtar Har Hotzvim Kafr 'Aqab Kiryat Belz Kiryat Mattersdorf Kiryat Sanz Mount Scopus Neve Yaakov Pisgat Ze'ev Ramat Eshkol Ramat Shlomo Ramot Ramot Polin Sanhedria Sanhedria Murhevet Shikun Chabad Shuafat Tel Arza Unsdorf Eastern Neighborhoods American Colony Al Bustan Al-Issawiya At-Tur Bab a-Zahara Ir David Jabel Mukaber Kiryat Menachem Begin Ma'ale ha-Zeitim Nachalat Shimon Nof Zion Ras al-Amud Sheikh Jarrah Shimon HaTzadik Silwan Wadi al-Joz Southern Neighborhoods Abu Tor Arnona Baka Beit Safafa East Talpiot German Colony Gilo Givat HaMatos Givat Oranim Givat Massuah Greek colony Har Homa Katamonim Malha Mekor Chaim Pat Ramat Rachel San Simon Sharafat Sur Baher Talpiot Umm Tuba Western Neighborhoods Bayit VeGan Beit HaKerem Ein Karem Givat Beit HaKerem Givat Shaul Givat Mordechai Har Nof Ir Ganim Kiryat HaYovel Kiryat Menachem Kiryat Moshe Motza Ramat Beit HaKerem Ramat Denya Ramat Sharett Yefeh Nof Historical Neighborhoods Atarot Batei Munkacs Batei Saidoff Ezrat Yisrael Kirya Ne'emana Knesset Yisrael Lifta Mamilla Moroccan Quarter Ohel Shlomo Sha'arei Yerushalayim Sheikh Badr See also: Ring Neighborhoods

Coordinates: 31°46′25″N 35°14′08″E / 31.77361°N 35.23556°E / 31.77361; 35.23556