MORE EXCAVATIONS

Southland Times, Issue 18938, 11 May 1923, Page 8

MORE EXCAVATIONS

THE BURIED STRONGHOLD OF JERUSALEM. The buried stronghold of the City of David may soon be exposed, if various difficulties are overcome and if all the money available for explorations has not already been spent on Tutankhamen. How this may be brought about was discussed in a lecture at Manchester University recently by Professor Macalister, cf Trinity College, Dublin, the representative of the Palestine Exploration Fund, says the Manchester Guardian. He explained that the change of Government had made it possible to hope for great excavating activity in Jerusalem. Last year, France, America, the Zionist organisation, and Britain had proposed to direct their joint efforts towards solving the mysteries of Mount Ophel. Mount Ophel appears in the prophetical and later writings in the Old Testament, where it is variously translated as fort, stronghold, or hill. The word in Hebrew means tumour or swelling, and is used in connection with other towns besides Jerusalem ; Gehazi, for instance, hid spoils he had taken in the ophel of the city of Samaria. Probably the nearest one could get to its meaning was “acropolis,” and it consisted of a walled-in section of the town within the outer town walk. There had long been disputes among the authorities as to where precisely the ophel of Jerusalem was situated. The rubbish of centuries had obscured many of the old landmarks. Jerusalem was built on two long ridges of rock joined at their northern end, so that they resembled a pair of fingers. The modern city has crept to the north of the junction of these fingers, and the problem has arisen as to which finger held the old city. The western is slightly higher, but the eastern, being in touch with the Virgin’s Fountain, has the cnly water supply and is the now generally accepted site. This was important, as it was near the Italian excavations, and according to the Press, were disturbing Italy. The Italians, it was said, believed that the proposed excavations would take place on Mount Zion, and the traditional site cf the Last Supper, but Mount Zion lay on the western finger and would not, therefore, be affected. Five attempts since 1870 had been made on the ophel and each had produced interesting discoveries. As a result of them the question of the water supply and cf fortifications in Biblical Jerusalem was considerably cleared up. The last attempt, the most important, interrupted, unfortunately, by the war, had brought to light old Canaanitish, Hebrew, late Jewish, and Roman tombs, three of which were believed by the explerer to be royal. It had further yielded some architectural fragments, carefully stacked inside a cistern, the Greek inscription on one of them being especially interesting to scholars. Palestine was a land of scanty inscriptions and rifled tombs; every new find was thus invaluable to our knowledge of Biblical history. When the ophel cf Jerusalem is explored the tomb of David (known to have been rifled by Herod) might be found, and any number of additions made to the now shadowy background of the history of the kings.