You never know what you're going to find when digging in a 2,000-year-old city.
During a construction project at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Israel to install an elevator as part of an effort to increase access for disabled people, archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem made some new discoveries, according to the Associated Press.
The main finding of "an ornate first-century villa with its own ritual bath" was discovered during years of salvage excavations, which are performed before any modern construction so researchers and archeologists can remove the artifacts if there are any found.
Inside of the villa were "fragments of frescoes and intricate mosaics," but archaeologist Oren Gutfeld said the final find was a private Jewish ritual bath. Michal Haber, an archaeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, added that the location of the bath was important because it overlooked the Temple esplanade, and showed the wealth of the home owners.
"We are in the wealthy neighborhood of the city on the eve of its destruction," Haber said.
The Jewish Quarter Reconstruction and Development Company began the construction project in 2017 with the goal of building two elevators so visitors could get to the Western Wall much easier from the Jewish Quarter.
Previously, people would have had to walk down an 142-step staircase to make it down 85 feet from one location to the other. If they could not physically make it down the staircase, visitors would have to take a long walk around the city walls to an entry gate.
"This plot of land where the elevator is going to be built remained undisturbed, giving us the great opportunity of digging through all the strata, all the layers of ancient Jerusalem," Haber told the AP.
During the construction, archeologists found a number of other ancient artifacts in addition to the villa, including oil lamps and bricks from the Roman army.
"Historical waypoints included Ottoman pipes built into a 2,000-year-old aqueduct that supplied Jerusalem with water from springs near Bethlehem; early Islamic oil lamps; bricks stamped with the name of the 10th Legion, the Roman army that besieged, destroyed and was afterwards encamped in Jerusalem two millennia ago; and the remains of the Judean villa from the final days before the ancient Jewish Temple’s destruction in the year 70."
Related
Related
