Ancient wall discovered in Jerusalem

AP Photo/IAA

Israeli archaeologists have discovered an ancient wall on a site known as the City of David, in a Palestinian neighborhood just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s old city. The 3,700 year old wall dates back to the Bronze Age when Jerusalem was a small society controlled by the Canaanites.

The excavation team explains that the wall was formed as part of a structure that protected a passage from a hilltop fortress to a nearby spring; a spring that is still used by modern inhabitants of Jerusalem. This spring was and is the area’s only water source.

The ancient wall is reportedly twenty-six feet high and seventy-nine feet long, but is thought to be longer, continuing west beyond the parts that are already exposed. The enormous wall is the largest and oldest of its kind in the region and the first time such massive construction, predating the Herodian period, has been discovered in Jerusalem.

Ronny Reich, dig director and Archaeology Professor at the University of Haifa, says that this finding demonstrates that Jerusalem inhabitants were sophisticated enough to undertake major building projects.

Such walls were primarily used to defend against pillaging desert nomads looking to rob the city. Archaeologist Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority said, “You see all the big boulders – all the boulders are four to five tons.”