Archaeologists bringing Jerusalem's ancient Roman city back to life

If you look at a map of the Old City of Jerusalem, you'll notice something odd. While the vast majority of the Old City's streets form a crowded casbah of winding alleyways, there are a few straight-as-a-ruler streets that bisect the city from north to south and east to west. 

Excavation site in the Western Wall plaza, Jerusalem, where the remains of an ornate Roman street were discovered [Credit: Emil Salman]
The best known of these straight roads are Beit Chabad and Hagai streets, exiting through the Damascus Gate; David Street, exiting the Jaffa Gate; and the Via Dolorosa.  

Like the rest of the Old City's streets, these straight roads are narrow but, unlike the others, they preserve a historical skeleton of sorts that forms the basis of the Old City we know today. This skeleton was created, most archaeologists agree, not during Jewish, Christian or Muslim rule, but during the Roman period, when the city of Aelia Capitolina was built on the ruins of Jerusalem following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. 

Ironically, it is actually the streets of this imperial and pagan city - which supposedly left behind no cultural or spiritual heritage for modern Jerusalem - that have bequeathed to the city the skeleton structure that has survived to this day. 



It is known that the Roman city was established by Emperor Hadrian between 130 and 140 AD. After the Bar Kochba revolt of 135, Jews were forbidden to enter the city. Its most important inhabitants were the soldiers of the 10th Legion, who would remain encamped in Jerusalem for 200 years. 

Salvage operations 






This increasing number of Roman-era discoveries strengthens the notion that the Temple Mount, even after its destruction, did not lie totally barren, but was used for pagan worship rites. 

But not only the Old City and its immediate surroundings have turned up new findings from Aelia Capitolina. Excavations made a few years ago in the area near the Binyanei Ha'uma international convention center, carried out in preparation for the expansion of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, uncovered a large pottery-workers village that served as the legion's central clayware manufacturing plant. Along the route of Jerusalem's new light-rail, remains of a large water facility serving the legionnaires were discovered, and in the area of Shuafat, a Jewish settlement from the same period was discovered. 



"Similarly to the British Mandate, which lasted just 31 years but had a significant impact on modern Jerusalem, from the perspective of architecture, the Roman period established a whole new, imperial language that still holds sway today," archaeologist Dr. Guy Stiebel concludes. Stiebel even notes the irony of history: "Aelia Capitolina effectively saved Jerusalem. It raised her once again onto the stage of history. She returned like a phoenix from the ashes."  

Author: Nir Hasson | Source: Haaretz [February 21, 2012]

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