2000 Year

Jerusalem tunnel contains 2000-year-old sword, pots and coins

"We found many things that we assume are linked to the rebels who hid out here, like oil lamps, cooking pots, objects that people used and took with them, perhaps, as a souvenir in the hope that they would be going back," said Eli Shukron, the Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist in charge of the dig.

The archaeologists also found a bronze key from the same era, coins minted by rebels with the slogan "Freedom of Zion," and a crude carved depiction of a menorah.

The flight of the rebels to tunnels like the one currently being excavated was described by the historian Josephus Flavius, a Jewish rebel general who shifted his allegiance to Rome during the revolt and penned the most important history of the uprising.

As the city burned, he wrote about five years afterward, the rebels decided their "last hope" lay in the tunnels. They planned to wait until the legions had departed and then emerge and escape.

"But this proved to be an idle dream, for they were not destined to escape from either God or the Romans," he wrote. The legionnaires tore up the paving stones above the drainage channels and exposed their hiding place.

"There too were found the bodies of more than two thousand, some slain by their own hands, some by another's; but most of them died by starvation," Josephus wrote. The victors proceeded to loot, he wrote, "for many precious objects were found in these passages."

The new tunnel, lit by fluorescent bulbs and smelling of damp earth, has been cleared for much of its length but has not yet been opened to the public. Earlier this month, a team from The Associated Press walked through the tunnel from the biblical Pool of Siloam, one of the city's original water sources, continuing for 600 yards (meters) under the Palestinian neighbourhood named for the pool – Silwan – before climbing out onto a sunlit Roman-era street inside Jerusalem's Old City.

The tunnel is part of the expanding City of David excavation in Silwan, which sits above the oldest section of Jerusalem. The dig is named for the biblical monarch thought to have ruled from the site. It is funded by a group affiliated with the Jewish settlement movement and has drawn criticism from Palestinian residents who have charged that the work is disruptive and politically motivated.

Israel and the Palestinians have conflicting claims over Jerusalem that have scuttled peace efforts for decades. Both sides claim the Old City, which includes sites holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Workers uncover 2000-year-old Roman sword in Jerusalem | War ...

Aug 8, 2011, 12:35 GMT

Jerusalem – Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) employees working on an ancient drainage ditch in Jerusalem have uncovered a 2,000-year-old iron sword, still in its leather scabbard, the IAA announced Monday.

Parts of the belt that carried the sword were also found, as was a stone object, adorned with an crude engraving of a Menorah, the Jewish seven-branched candelabrum.

The IAA did not say when the discoveries were made, but released its announcement to coincide with the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Second Biblical Temple by the Romans.

Excavation director Eli Shukron said it appeared the sword belonged to an infantryman of the Roman garrison stationed in what is now Israel, at the start of the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 66 AD.

‘The sword’s fine state of preservation is surprising: not only its length (about 60 cm), but also the preservation of the leather scabbard (a material that generally disintegrates quickly over time) and some of its decoration,’ he said.

The engraving of the Menorah features only five branches, Shukron said researchers assumed that a passer-by who saw the Menorah standing in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and was amazed by its beauty ‘incised his impressions on a stone and afterwords tossed his scrawling to the side of the road, without imagining that his creation would be found 2,000 years later.’

The drainage ditch in which the sword and the stone were found served as a refuge for Jerusalem residents at the time the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, at the culmination of the doomed revolt against Roman rule.

According to Jewish tradition, both the First and the Second Biblical Temples were destroyed on the same date, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, in 586 BC and in 70 AD respectively.

Religious Jews commemorate the date by fasting; the fast this year begins at sundown on Monday and ends at sunset Tuesday.

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