An Early Iron Age Moat in Jerusalem between the Ophel and the Southeastern Ridge/City of David

Abstract

Excavations on Jerusalem’s Southeastern Ridge, in the GivꜤati Parking Lot excavations, have exposed a man-made ditch, some 30 m wide and at least 6 m in depth, close to the hill’s summit. This paper presents the technical features of the ditch, including the rock scarps that delineate it from the north and south, as well as an enigmatic installation composed of a series of intertwined channels. Through comparison with data from previous excavations farther east, it is clear that this ditch traversed the entire width of the ridge, creating a disconnect between the Southeastern Ridge and the Ophel. Although the initial cutting of the ditch cannot be determined, it is clear that by the Late Iron IIA, the ditch served as a moat between the acropolis—possibly including the Temple Mount—and the city. This continued until the Late Hellenistic period, when construction activities backfilled the ditch, leading to its disappearance from the cityscape.

Keywords:

• Jerusalem
• Iron Age
• Moat
• City of David

Acknowledgements

The excavations at GivꜤati Parking Lot are conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University (Licence Nos. G11-18, G10-19, G11-20, G3-21, G1-22 and G7-23). The excavations are financed by the El-Ad Foundation. Y. Gadot and Y. Shalev serve as the excavation directors. D. Gelman, M. Zindel, M. Hemmed and O. Bejarano were the Area 70 supervisors. Other members of the team are: S. Bailey and M. Hacohen (assistant area supervisors) and V. Assman (surveyor). A. Reʾem, N. Sapir, Y. Baruch, O. Lipschits, K. Gur-Arieh, M. Ganon, U. Dasberg and M. Baruchi provided support in the orgenisation and logistics of the GivꜤati Parking Lot project. J. Uziel edited an earlier version of the article and offered invaluable comments. Our thanks are extended to them all.

Disclosure statement

The authors report that there are no conflicting interests to declare.

Notes

1 The geographical terms used with regard to Jerusalem are complicated and generate confusion. This paper uses the terminology proposed by Kenyon that describes the various features objectively: the Southeastern Ridge is used to denote the hill commonly referred to as the City of David/Silwan; the Central Valley is used for the feature otherwise known as the Tyropoeon Valley; the Ophel is used here as a modern geographical term in relation to the topographical saddle connecting Mount Moriah and the Southeastern Ridge, without linking it to the location of the biblical Ophel (see Franklin 2014 and references therein).

2 Knauf (2000), Finkelstein, Koch and Lipschits (2011) and Naʾaman (2023) have argued that the ancient core was located on the Temple Mount and north of the Ophel, leaving the Southeastern Ridge outside the city. As further addressed below, we believe that the Southeastern Ridge is in fact the location of the ancient settlement (see, e.g., Geva and De Groot 2017; Gadot and Uziel 2017).

3 The debate about the size of the city during the Iron Age, which took place in the mid-20th century CE, is a case in point. While some scholars claimed that Jerusalem was restricted to the Southeastern Ridge since this is the area where actual finds were reported, others claimed that the Western Hill must have been part of the city (Avi-Yonah 1956: 157–160; Avigad 1983). Only the excavations below the destroyed houses of the Jewish Quarter following the 1967 war settled this debate (and see summary in Geva 2003: 505–522).

4 The sealing of the ditch and its significance for the political history of Jerusalem will be discussed in a future article.

5 Avner (2008) assumed that these were related to stone quarrying, but their function and date should now be reconsidered, in light of Installations 7744 and 7702.

6 We wish to thank one of the anonymous readers for this calculation.

7 Another possibility is that the ditch functioned as a siege ramp, like the one surrounding Tell eṣ-Ṣafi/Gath (Maeir and Gur-Arieh 2011). This possibility, however, seems less likely. For one thing, this ditch is not dug in earth fill like the one at Gath, and for another, there would be no real need to cut such a moat if the besieging army were located on the higher ground to the north.

8 Mazar and Mazar (1989) argued that this structure was a gate. However, since so little of the structure was unearthed, we prefer a more general definition of the building as a public structure (Winderbaum 2022: 159–160).

9 Wall 50, the northern wall of the Large Stone Structure according to E. Mazar, was originally discovered by Kenyon and was published by Steiner, who interpreted it as a fortification wall dating to the Middle Bronze Age (2001; and see above).

10 Note that Regev et al. (2017) suggested an alternative scenario in which the Spring Tower was built at the end of the 9th century BCE.

11 The proposition that the lack of architecture in Iron IIA Jerusalem is an indication for the nomadic nature of its elite, as suggested by Ben Yosef (2019), now appears to be unnecessary, as there is sufficient positive evidence for the use of architecture and landscaping projects for royal propaganda.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yuval Gadot

Yuval Gadot: The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University

Efrat Bocher

Efrat Bocher: The Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, and the Ancient Jerusalem Research Center, Jerusalem; email: [email protected]

Liora Freud

Liora Freud: The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University; email: [email protected]

Yiftah Shalev

Yifat Shalev: Israel Antiquities Authority; email: [email protected]