Until now, experts believed that the section of the wall in the original heart of the city was built by King Hezekiah of Judea, who ruled in the 7th and 8th centuries. Ave. me
He saw his northern neighbors, the Kingdom of Israel, destroyed by the Assyrian Empire, so it is believed that he built the wall to protect himself from invaders.
But nearly a decade of research has revealed that it was built by his grandfather Uzziah after a massive earthquake – which is in line with the biblical account.
The wall is located in the so-called City of David, a historical archaeological site where the Bible says the original city of Jerusalem was formed.
“For decades it was believed that this wall was built by King Hezekiah of Judea. However, it now appears that the eastern part of the wall, located in the City of David, was built earlier, during the time of King Uzziah, shortly after the great earthquake of Jerusalem, as mentioned in the Bible,” says Joe Uziel of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
In the Old Testament, the construction of this wall is described in the second book of Chronicles. It says: “Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem at the corner gate, at the valley gate, and at the corner of the wall, and fortified them.”
The research, which was a joint project of the IAA, Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science, revealed the origin of the ancient wall using radiocarbon dating.
According to the IAA, this period of history was previously considered a “black hole” for radiocarbon dating, due to the fluctuating amount of the isotope in the atmosphere at the time. But using ancient tree rings from Europe, scientists were able to detect these fluctuations in individual years.
The researchers took samples from organic artifacts found at four different excavation sites in the heart of ancient Jerusalem. Among them were grape seeds, date pits and even bat skeletons.
All of them were cleaned, turned into graphite, and then fired at 3,000 km/s into a particle accelerator to separate the carbon-14 from other organic matter. After measuring the carbon, the true age of the sample was revealed.
Yuval Gadot of Tel Aviv University says the method also allowed the westward expansion of the city to be brought forward by five generations.
“Until now, the usual assumption has been that the city expanded as a result of the influx of refugees from the Kingdom of Israel to the north after the Assyrian exile. However, the new findings reinforce the view that Jerusalem grew and expanded towards Mount Zion as early as the 9th century. Ave. me This was during the reign of King Jehoash – a hundred years before the Assyrian exile,” he says.
In light of this, the new research shows that the expansion of Jerusalem is the result of the demographic growth and the establishment of a political and economic system within Judea.
What’s more, it shows that the city was larger than previously thought during the reigns of David and Solomon.
“This study showed that in the 10th century Ave. In the time of David and Solomon, the city was spread over different territories and appears to have been larger than we previously thought. We can accurately identify specific buildings and associate them with specific kings mentioned in the biblical text,” says J. Uziel.
Adapted from the Daily Mail.
