It started 15 years ago with plans to expand the Tower of David Museum. But the story took a strange turn when archaeologists started peeling away layers under the floor in an old abandoned building adjacent to the museum in Jerusalem’s Old City.
They knew it had been used as a prison when the Ottoman Turks and then the British ruled these parts. But, as they carefully dug down, they eventually uncovered something extraordinary: the suspected remains of the palace where one of the more famous scenes of the New Testament may have taken place — the trial of Jesus.
Now, after years of excavation and a further delay caused by wars and a lack of funds, the archaeologists’ precious find is being shown to the public through tours organized by the museum.
The prison “is a great part of the ancient puzzle of Jerusalem and shows the history of this city in a very unique and clear way,” said Amit Re’em, the Jerusalem district archaeologist, who headed the excavation team more than a decade ago.
For Re’em, the building has yielded a trove of thrilling discoveries from across the centuries — symbols etched into old jail walls by prisoners from the Jewish resistance fighting to create the state of Israel in the 1940s, fabric-dyeing basins from the era of the Crusades and the foundation walls and an underground sewage system that probably underpinned the sprawling palace built by Herod the Great, the eccentric king of Judea under the Roman empire.
But for the more than 1 million Christian pilgrims who visit Jerusalem each year, the site is especially significant because it could have been an important place in the life of Jesus.
“For those Christians who care about accuracy in regards to historical facts, this is very forceful,” said Yisca Harani, an expert on Christianity and pilgrimage to the Holy Land. “For others, however, those who come for the general mental exercise of being in Jerusalem, they don’t care as long as [their journey] ends in Golgotha — the site of the Crucifixion.”
Today, many Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem walk the Stations of the Cross, or Via Dolorosa, taking them from where it is believed Roman procurator Pontius Pilate held the trial and sentenced Jesus to death, to where Jesus was eventually crucified and buried. –Source: Washington Post
They knew it had been used as a prison when the Ottoman Turks and then the British ruled these parts. But, as they carefully dug down, they eventually uncovered something extraordinary: the suspected remains of the palace where one of the more famous scenes of the New Testament may have taken place — the trial of Jesus.
Now, after years of excavation and a further delay caused by wars and a lack of funds, the archaeologists’ precious find is being shown to the public through tours organized by the museum.
The prison “is a great part of the ancient puzzle of Jerusalem and shows the history of this city in a very unique and clear way,” said Amit Re’em, the Jerusalem district archaeologist, who headed the excavation team more than a decade ago.
For Re’em, the building has yielded a trove of thrilling discoveries from across the centuries — symbols etched into old jail walls by prisoners from the Jewish resistance fighting to create the state of Israel in the 1940s, fabric-dyeing basins from the era of the Crusades and the foundation walls and an underground sewage system that probably underpinned the sprawling palace built by Herod the Great, the eccentric king of Judea under the Roman empire.
But for the more than 1 million Christian pilgrims who visit Jerusalem each year, the site is especially significant because it could have been an important place in the life of Jesus.
“For those Christians who care about accuracy in regards to historical facts, this is very forceful,” said Yisca Harani, an expert on Christianity and pilgrimage to the Holy Land. “For others, however, those who come for the general mental exercise of being in Jerusalem, they don’t care as long as [their journey] ends in Golgotha — the site of the Crucifixion.”
Today, many Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem walk the Stations of the Cross, or Via Dolorosa, taking them from where it is believed Roman procurator Pontius Pilate held the trial and sentenced Jesus to death, to where Jesus was eventually crucified and buried. –Source: Washington Post
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