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Archaeologists Unveil 1,500-Year-Old Street Beneath Old City

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  • Archaeologists Unveil 1,500-Year-Old Street Beneath Old City

    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.
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