JERUSALEM: Israeli archaeoligists unveil segment of Jerusalem's anceint drain

Israeli archaeologists say they unveiled Jerusalem's drainage channel, from the Second Temple period, which also provided shelter for residents during the great Roman revolt. Israeli archaeologists said on Sunday (September 9) they have discovered a segment of an ancient Jerusalem sewer drain, dated from the Second Temple period. The Antiquity Authority said in a statement that the drain, a 70-metre-long tunnel, was the city's main drainage channel and was discovered during excavations in Jerusalem's Old City aimed at exposing the main road of Jerusalem from the time of the Second Temple Mount period. The statement said that according to the writings of Josephus Flavius, the residents of the city fled to this channel at the time of the revolt in order to hide from the Romans. Professor Roni Reich of the University of Haifa, one of the excavations director, in the last two thousand years the valley has become blocked with thick layers of alluvium and collapse, therefore the Israel Antiquities Authority was asked to excavate some 10 meters for the purpose of uncovering the main road of Jerusalem and the channel below it. "The earth opened suddenly, and we entered into it - into a very large tunnel. Actually, it's a constructed tunnel, which runs, we know today, from the Temple Mount area to the pool of Silwan, under the paved street, which we have not found yet. We'll dig here, and in three, four months probably, we'll reach it from above. So we know this is the main sewer - the main drainage system of the city," Reich said. Archaeologists at the site said the channel drained the rainfall of ancient Jerusalem, the Jewish quarter, the western region of the City of David and the Temple Mount. "It shows that the authorities of the city in those days took care of looking after the large amount of rain water, which in a paved, and stone city - built in stone city - had no other place to escape. Rather than fill up all the courtyards with water in the Winter - and now they led everything into the underground, and through this into the pool of Silwan and into the Valley of Kidron," Reich said. The channel is built of ashlar stones and is covered with heavy stone slabs that are actually the paving stones of the street. In some places the channel reaches a height of about three meters and is one meter wide. Reich added that other findings such as pottery shards, fragments of vessels, and coins from the end of the Second Temple period, prior to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 CE, were discovered inside the channel. He said the northern part of the channel, which is still unexcavated, apparently reaches the area of the Western Wall where in the past a large drainage channel was found that is the continuation of the channel that was exposed in the southern part of the City of David.

ITN Source | September 10, 2007

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