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 |  Subject: Evidence found of 2,000-year-old siege of Jerusalem  Thu Jun 27, 2013 11:22 am | |
| Evidence found of 2,000-year-old siege of JerusalemBy DANIEL K. EISENBUD06/27/2013 17:12Cistern found near Robinson's Arch contained an unprecedented discovery - three intact cooking pots and a small ceramic oil lamp. For the first time Thursday, the Israel Antiquities Authority unearthed a small 2,000-year-old cistern near the Western Wall that connects an archaeological find with the famine that occurred during the Roman siege of Jerusalem during The Great Revolt.
The cistern, found near Robinson’s Arch – in a drainage channel that was exposed from the Shiloah Pool in the City of David – contained three intact cooking pots and a small ceramic oil lamp.
“The complete cooking pots and ceramic oil lamp indicate that the people went down into the cistern where they secretly ate the food that was contained in the pots, without anyone seeing them,” said Shukron. “This is consistent with the account provided by Josephus.”According to Eli Shukron, excavation director for the IAA, the discovery is unprecedented.
Indeed, in his book The Jewish War, Josephus (also known as Joseph ben Matityahu), a Jewish scholar who witnessed and described the Roman siege of Jerusalem, detailed the resulting hunger that ensued.
In his account, Josephus wrote of Jewish rebels who sought food in the homes of other starving Jews confined to the city. Fearing these rebels would steal their food, many Jews used cisterns, similar to the one found Thursday, to conceal their meager provisions, and later ate in hidden places within their homes.
“As the famine grew worse, the frenzy of the partisans increased with it…” Josephus wrote in The Jewish War. “For as nowhere was there corn to be seen, men broke into the houses and ransacked them.”
He continued, “If they found some they maltreated the occupants for saying there was none; if they did not, they suspected them of having hidden it more carefully and tortured them.”
Josephus recounted that many Jews suffering from starvation would barter their possessions for small quantities of food to stay alive.
“Many secretly exchanged their possessions for one measure of corn-wheat if they happened to be rich; barley if they were poor,” he wrote. “They shut themselves up in the darkest corners of the their houses, where some through extreme hunger ate their grain as it was, others made bread, necessity and fear being their only guides. Nowhere was a table laid…”
The artifacts will be on display during a July 4 conference on the City of David, organized by the Megalim Institute. For more details about the conference visit the institute’s website at www.cityofdavid.org.il.
Earlier in the week, the IAA also unearthed a well-preserved section of an 1,800-year-old road in Beit Hanina, leading from Jerusalem to Jaffa, during a routine excavation prior to the installation of a drainage pipe in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood.
http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Evidence-found-of-2000-year-old-siege-of-Jerusalem-318002
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