PALESTINE RESEARCH PARTY’S SIGNIFICANT FINDS AT JERUSALEM

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6812, 16 January 1929, Page 5

PALESTINE RESEARCH PARTY’S SIGNIFICANT FINDS AT JERUSALEM

The present expedition of the Palestine Exploration Fund, like that of 1927 is being directed by J. W. Crowfoot, director of the British School of Achaeology in Jerusalem, with the asistance this season of Dr E. L. Sukenik, the archaeologist of tho Hebrew University. The steep cliff was laid bare on the western edge of the ridge of Ophel, and marks the true beginning of the Tyropean valley. Lying three or four meters east of the modern pathway, tho cliff has been scraped, except in one place where the natural face has been left untouched. The small section of tho old city wall was discovered further south of the old city gate and tower which were found in i 027 on a broad ledge below the cliff. The way in which the stones of tho ncwly-discovcred section arc bonded, leads the excavators to believe that flic wall goes back to tho period oi the Hebrew monarchy, a belief corroborated by the large number of potsherds of this period, several hundreds in all, found buried iu a deep hole in the neighbouring rock. Between the scraped cliff and the city wall, a fine cistern six meters deep was found, but the construction of its walls shows that tho cistern was built no later than the Hellenistic period, and may therefore go back to the time of Nehcmiah, the prophet who in his little book left the earliest contemporary account of the topography of Jerusalem at a definite stage in the city’s history. During the excavations in 1927, the Palestine Exploration Fund Expedition discovered a sixth century Byzantine street. The present campaign has traced -a continuance of iit together with three or four Mosaic floors be-

longing to houses which abutted on tlu street.

Beneath the rock surface a number of subterranean chambers have already been cleared. Several of these were cut as cisterns, but the most interesting group is a series of connected chambers which were certainly cut for some other purpose.' Five rooms in this complex have already been cleared in part or wholly; they were used down to a late date in the medieval Arab period and the small objects found in them consequently throw no light upon the original purpose for which they were made, although the possibility is not excluded that they may have been ex cavated to serve as tombs.