The Changing Character of Iron Age Jerusalem as Revealed in the Ophel Excavations

ABSTRACT

Excavations by Benjamin and Eilat Mazar on the Ophel – south of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount – have yielded important and substantial remains from the Iron Age. This area stands close to where the biblical text locates the Israelite royal precinct, about which we know almost nothing archaeologically. Aspects of these remains have been presented and discussed in recent publications by Eilat Mazar, Ariel Winderbaum, Israel Finkelstein, and the present author. Winderbaum’s work adds significant new information. The present paper critically evaluates Winderbaum’s conclusions, against the backdrop of Mazar’s and Finkelstein’s conclusions, and offers a significantly different reconstruction of the area’s Iron Age history, particularly in relation to the 11th, 10th and 9th centuries bce.

KEYWORDS:

• Ancient Israel
• Jerusalem
• Ophel
• Iron Age
• 10th century bce
• 9th century bce
• 8th century bce
• fortifications
• royal buildings

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I prefer a chronology that sets the Iron I/IIA transition within the first half of the 10th century bce, the Early to Late Iron IIA transition in the later 10th to early 9th centuries bce, and the Iron IIA/IIB transition in the later 9th to early 8th centuries bce. For latest discussions of radiocarbon-based chronology, see Mazar and Streit 2020; Toffolo et al. 2022; Boaretto 2022; Webster et al. 2023; Doumet-Serhal et al. 2023.

2 I wish to express my gratitude to Ariel Winderbaum for providing unpublished information on Mazar’s Ophel excavations, and for clarifying certain issues. Pending the final publication, analysis of the Iron Age pottery is included in Winderbaum’s 2021 dissertation. I should also like to express gratitude for the efforts of the late Eilat Mazar in bringing to light important vestiges of Iron Age Jerusalem on the Ophel and on the summit of the southeastern hill, and for beginning the process of publishing that vast corpus of material in a timely and efficient manner.

3 Mazar and Lang 2018b, 336–65. E.g., floor L13-086 abuts W13-235b; pebble floor L13-086 abuts W13-076 and W12-205 in room 1 of Unit I; thick earth-and-plaster floor L13-107 abuts W13-076, W12-205 and W13-051B, in room 2 of Unit I; pebble floor L12-216b abuts W12-205, north of room 1 in Unit I; floor L13-097 abuts W13-072b in Phase 1 of Unit II; floors L13-085 and L13-081 abut W13-080 and W13-072b, in Phase 2 of Unit II; floor L13-460 abuts W13-417, in Unit III.

4 Gadot et al. 2023 have claimed that a rock-cut moat 30 m long, 9 m deep, and with its floor at c. +695 masl, had been dug across the summit north of Kenyon’s Site H during Iron IIA and served to isolate the settlements on the Ophel and City of David. Natural bedrock along the eastern crest from Sites H to R is between c. +696 masl and +695 masl, i.e. level with the bottom of the supposed moat. Thus, any moat cannot have extended this far east. Most likely in our view, as excavations by Gadot et al. have revealed, a section of the high western scarp was reduced by several metres sometime in Iron II in order to facilitate access from the Central Valley up onto the saddle, from which both the City of David and the Ophel could be reached. However, this cutting applied only to the western part of the saddle and was aimed not at dividing the Ophel from the City of David but at formally unifying them.