Archaeologists uncover intact section of ancient Jerusalem wall from Hanukkah era

JERUSALEM (AP) – Archaeologists have finished uncovering the longest continuous remains of an ancient wall that encircled Jerusalem, including possible evidence of a 2,100-year-old ceasefire between warring kingdoms.

Last week, archaeologists finished excavating the most complete part ever discovered of the foundations of the walls, which surrounded Jerusalem during the time of the Hasmonean Kingdom, when the story of Hanukkah took place.

In Hebrew, Hanukkah means “dedication,” and the holiday marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in the second century B.C., after a small group of Jewish fighters liberated it from occupying foreign forces, and the Hasmonean Kingdom that followed.

Jews celebrate the eight-day holiday, which this year begins on Dec. 14, with the ritual of lighting a nightly candle, in honor of the tiny supply of ritually pure oil that they found in the temple that lasted for eight nights instead of just one. Many also eat fried foods such as potato pancakes, called latkes, to memorialize this miraculously long-lasting oil.

The Hasmonean wall foundation, whose excavation was finished last week in Jerusalem, was likely built a few decades after the story of Hanukkah by the same rulers. It’s almost 50 meters (164 feet) long, around half the length of a football field, and around 5 meters (16 feet) wide. It held walls, which according to estimations and some historical writings, were taller than the current walls surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City.

Much of the current walls surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City date back hundreds of years to the Ottoman Era.

The Hasmonean walls encircled an area much larger than the current Old City of Jerusalem, with 60 watchtowers along the wall that were more than 10 meters (33 feet) tall, according to ancient writings. The part recently uncovered is one of the longest sections found intact from the foundation of the Hasmonean walls.

One of the most interesting aspects of the foundation was that the wall above it seems to have been purposefully and uniformly dismantled to a uniform height, not chaotically destroyed by the ravages of time or war, said Dr. Amit Re’em, one of the lead archaeologists for the project from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Experts wondered why any leader would take apart a perfectly good security wall in an area that was constantly threatened by invasion.

In 132 or 133 B.C., Hellenistic King Antiochus the Seventh, an heir to the Antiochus the Fourth from the story of Hanukkah, laid siege to Jerusalem and the Judean Kingdom, according to ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.

As the Judean army struggled, Jewish king John Hyrcanus I decided to strike a deal with Antiochus. He raided King David’s tomb for 3,000 talents of silver and offered 500 hostages, including his own brother, according to the writings of Josephus.

“Antiochus Sidetes (the Seventh) reached a ceasefire agreement with John Hyrcanus, saying, if you want me to remove my army, you yourself, the Jewish king, must raze to the ground the Hasmonean fortification that you and your father built,” Re’em said Monday. Josephus’ writings state that after Antiochus accepted Hyrcanus’ deal, they “pulled down the walls encircling the city.”

“We just think that we found the archaeological proof for it, so it’s pretty amazing, the archaeology and the ancient stories combining together, this is the magic of Jerusalem,” Re’em said.

Another hypothesis Re’em posits is that King Herod built his palace over the Hasmonean wall foundations, during his reign in the first-century B.C., as a clear message of his sovereignty over Jewish Jerusalem.

Other archaeologists were intrigued by why this section of the Hasmonean wall seems to have been dismantled.

Orit Peleg-Barkat, the head of classical archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, believes it likely had more to do with King Herod’s palace than the ceasefire deal with Antiochus.

Other sections of the Hasmonean wall uncovered in other parts of Jerusalem weren’t dismantled, so it could have just been one section that was dismantled, possibly to provide a foundation for Herod’s palace, Peleg-Barkat explained. Its unlikely that Jerusalem was left unprotected without any security walls for more than a century, she said.

The current section of the wall was uncovered underneath an abandoned wing of the building known as the Kishleh, which was built in 1830 as a military base. The wing was used as a prison, including by the British up until the 1940s, and the walls were covered with graffiti carved by prisoners in English, Hebrew and Arabic. The remnants of the iron bars of the cells are still visible in the ceiling.

Most of the building is still used by the Israeli police today, but one wing was abandoned and later transferred to the Tower of David Museum. Archaeologists first began excavating this wing of the Kishleh in 1999, but violence in Jerusalem during the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, halted the excavations until two years ago.

Archaeologists removed the equivalent of two Olympic swimming pools worth of dirt and debris by hand over the past two years from the hall. The excavations revealed what they believe are Middle Age-era dye pits, likely for fabric dying, and the long section of the Hasmonean wall foundation.

In the coming years, the Tower of David Museum will install a floating glass floor over the ruins and use the hall as one of its new galleries in the Schulich Wing of Archaeology, Art and Innovation. The renovations of this section are expected to take at least two years, now that the archaeological dig has concluded.