Jerusalem pilgrimage route

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Stepped street layout
Idealized representation of the course of the road from the Siloam pond to the Temple Mount

The Jerusalem Pilgrimage Route was an ancient road that opened the Herodian Temple in Jerusalem from the south. According to the excavator Ronny Reich , it was the main gateway for pilgrims coming from the south until the temple and city were destroyed in the Jewish War (70 AD). A section of the road has been exposed since 2004 and is accessible in a tunnel.

description

The road began at the pond of Siloam , where there was enough water for the cultic cleansing of many people. It then led about 600 meters through the then urban area to the southern wall of the temple, with the increase in terrain being compensated for by alternating narrow and wide steps.

The temple visitors arriving on this street found two monumental stairs on the south side of the temple, which led to a double portal and a triple portal (today walled up). The staircase leading to the double portal, 65.5 m wide and 6.7 m high, has been partially preserved. “The 30 steps were carved out of the rock and provided with slabs, with step depths of 30 cm and 90 cm alternating. These stairs and landing steps, called krepidoma in antiquity ... can also be found in Greco-Roman. Temple complex. "

The portals are not identical to the portals of the Herodian Temple; the south wall of the Haram is a "wall patchwork", with older spoils being reused during renovation work; so on the right above the double portal there was an upside down Latin inscription in honor of the emperor Antoninus Pius . The stabilizing so-called master position of the Herodian wall is still present in the masonry between the two portals and on the southeast corner .

Today's ascent of the Jerusalem pilgrimage tunnel is connected with the descent into the ancient aqueduct running under the street. In the touristic preparation of the excavation, this is linked to the narrative of the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70; At that time, many fighters and civilians tried to escape through underground passages, as Flavius ​​Josephus reported. In fact, the team led by Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron came across the foundations of a Byzantine building while excavating the Herodian Street, which the antiquities authorities classified as worthy of preservation. The descent into the ancient aqueduct running under the road then made it possible to continue the tunnel, as planned, to the south-west corner of the temple.

Beginning of the pilgrimage route: The exposed edge of the Siloam basin, where ritual ablutions could be performed before visiting the temple.

Archaeological exploration

The existence of this road has long been known.

  • From 1894 to 1897, Frederick J. Bliss and Archibald J. Dickey, on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund, excavated parts of an ancient road that ran towards the Temple Mount from the south and then covered them with earth again.
  • Also, Kathleen Kenyon , in 1963 another, closer located on the Temple Mount piece of road uncovered, the excavation was then allowed to fill up again.
  • 1996, founded by David Be'eri took Elad Foundation the City of David -Nationalpark by the State Nature and Parks Authority . (This non-profit organization aims to establish a Jewish presence in the Palestinian town of Silwan . The name אלע"ד Elad is an acronym for Hebrew: אל עיר דוד El Ir David , "towards the city of David".) The other excavations were a joint venture between the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Elad Foundation , funds provided by Elad made large-scale archaeological research possible.
  • In 2004, shortly after the discovery of the Siloam pond from the time of the Second Temple, Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron began uncovering the allegedly Herodian road that ran alongside. Reich later admitted that there was no permit to do so. What started out as breaking the rules later became an official project.
    End of the pilgrimage route: stairs to the double portal of the Herodian Temple.
  • In 2007, the excavators discovered a representative street running parallel to the street discovered by Bliss and Dickey, obviously the main historical route of the temple pilgrims. Reich suspected that both roads converged further north.
  • In 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court temporarily stopped the excavations on this route because residents of the Palestinian town of Silwan had claimed that the excavation had destabilized their homes. The Supreme Court then allowed the excavations to continue, "but that does not prevent the tunnel from occasionally caving in and creating gaping holes on the surface, mostly after heavy rainfall."
  • In 2009 Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron uncovered a 60 meter long and a maximum of 2.50 meter wide section of the ancient road in the area of ​​the Siloah pond. The area available for the excavation was limited because neither the Waqf authorities nor the Greek Orthodox Church, as owners of neighboring properties, had consented to the archaeological exploration. The representative, almost eight meters wide pilgrimage route of Herod was on this narrow section for future tourists only with restrictions.
  • In 2011, the excavation of the ancient street continued in the form of a tunnel under the main street (Wadi Hilweh Street) running through Silwan . The plan was to create a visitor entrance at the Siloah pond, behind which one could hike underground on the pilgrimage route, partly also in the associated water pipe system running under the paving, northwards to the southwest corner of the temple grounds (exit at the Davidson Center ), in the future perhaps even with a connection to the Western Wall Tunnel , so that visitors could spend hours underground in ancient Jerusalem without even seeing the daylight.
  • From 2014 to 2016, another segment of the pilgrimage route was excavated underground over the full width (7.50 m) and over a length of 120 meters.
Touristic development: mural depicting pilgrims who are on their way to the Herodian Temple on the occasion of the festival of Sukkot .

criticism

From the technical and archaeological side, Yoram Tsafrir criticized the fact that the tunnel apparently had to be massively supported with steel girders and that it looked like a military installation. One should rather wait for politically more peaceful times, in which the residents of Silwans have a positive attitude towards a normal archaeological excavation in their place. Working your way horizontally through the ground is an unprofessional approach that makes it impossible to classify the finds.

On the other hand, Ronny Reich emphasized that “cleaning” the ancient water pipe system is not a horizontal excavation. Regarding the uncovering of the stepped road, Reich admitted in 2011 that the archaeological work in a tunnel had not been optimal, but that he had weighed the gain in knowledge through the excavation that was only possible in this way against the loss of knowledge through the unorthodox excavation method. Reich, who personally positioned himself politically on the left, would have preferred state funding for the excavation rather than support from Elad; Elad had no influence on the archaeologists in terms of content.

perspective

The main purpose of the project is to promote tourism; in future it can connect the Davidstadt National Park to the Western Wall Tunnel, which is very successful in terms of tourism. “From a scientific point of view,” said Ronny Reich in 2016, “it doesn't do much. It can be a nice addition as a monument, but it hardly improves the level of information. We knew the course of the road beforehand, we knew what it looked like and also who had built it. "

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem . S. 307 .
  2. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem . S. 310 .
  3. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem . S. 309 .
  4. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem . S. 307 .
  5. ^ A b Nir Hasson: Underground Jerusalem .
  6. ↑ Nadav Shragai: Pilgrims' Road to Temple Unearthed .
  7. ^ Nir Hasson: In Jerusalem's City of David Excavation, Politics Is Never Absent .
  8. ^ Nir Hasson: Underground Jerusalem .
  9. ↑ Nir Hasson: Jerusalem's Time Tunnels .
  10. ^ Nir Hasson: Underground Jerusalem .
  11. ↑ a b Nir Hasson: Jerusalem's Time Tunnels .