Jerusalem in Brief (No. 12)
Approaching Jerusalem's third birthday, a lecture on Macalister and Duncan's excavations, and a note on Birket al-Hamra
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Milestones: Approaching Jerusalem Turns Three
Approaching Jerusalem was founded in June 2022. Publishing this newsletter has since become staple of my life’s cadence. When I took on this task, I had no idea how it would be received. Substack was still a relatively small platform, and the topics I discuss are fairly niche and somewhat technical. I’m thankful to say that today this newsletter has more than 650 subscribers with signs of sustained growth and interest in historical Jerusalem.
I have many dreams about what this space could become. For the foreseeable future, dissertation writing precludes my ability to devote as much time to development as I would like. In the meantime, I’m sincerely grateful for your readership and to those of you who are paid supporters. If you enjoy this material and want to participate in its continued publication, consider upgrading to a paid subscription or just leaving a small one-time token of your appreciation. Thanks for three good years, and here’s to many more.
Internet Standout
Garth Gilmour gave a lecture this past January about his work on the excavations of Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister and John Garrow Duncan, which took place from 1923-1925. The Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) who hosted the event has recently made a free recording available. Gilmour’s lecture provides some interesting results of his research, which involved digging through unpublished material from Macalister and Duncan’s excavations in the PEF archive. He began the project in the late 1990s and published a final report of the excavations earlier this year.
Gilmour unfortunately did not encounter any of Macalister or Duncan’s field notes in the archive, but he did find some items of significance which he describes in the lecture. They include: a variety of stamped pottery handles, incense burners, opaque red glass, and a potsherd with two incised figures that he identifies with YHWH and Asherah. The lecture concludes with some reflections on the broader context of Macalister and Duncan’s excavations. It is worth taking an hour (or a half hour on 2x speed) to watch.
I also wrote about some aspects of these excavations here and here if you’re interested in reading more.
Reflections
About a month ago, the Jerusalem Post shared a description of an exclusive visit to the City of David National Park with Ze’ev Orenstein, the Director of International Affairs for the City of David organization (El Ad). Though the article is rather mundane and very short, I was nevertheless surprised that it reflected popular historical interpretations which are now somewhat problematic (or at least complicated) in light of new excavation results.
The first example is the assumption that Birket el-Hamra (“the red pool”), the large pool that sits at the southern end of the Southeastern Hill, can be identified with the ancient Pool of Siloam mentioned in both the Gospel of John and the Mishnah (Sukkah 4:9-10). This understanding has been widely adopted in academic and popular circles on the basis of stone-paved steps which were partially uncovered on the northern side of the pool in 2004 (Reich, Shukron, and Lernau 2007; Reich 2011:225-236). It has been generally believed that these steps surrounded the pool on all sides. The second popular historical interpretation reflected in the JPost article is that this pool was utilized as a mass ritual bath for Jewish pilgrims who ascended from there to the temple. I myself have brought tour groups to these steps and discussed the significance of the pool from these points of view.
New excavations at Birket al-Hamra were initiated after a court ruling that recognized a controversial real estate sale from 2004 between El Ad and the Greek Orthodox Church, the previous landowners. This ruling led to the forcible eviction of the Sumrin family who had been farming the area since the British Mandate Period. Both the park and international media reported that the Pool of Siloam would be excavated in its entirety. Mature fruit trees in the pool were quickly removed, and large equipment soon began to extract debris. However, it soon became clear that the pool steps and floor of the pool were gone, presumed to have been robbed out in antiquity for construction use elsewhere.
The first preliminary results from excavations at the site were published last fall. They surprisingly demonstrate that the paved steps never descended into the pool to begin with, calling accepted interpretations of the pool into question. Instead, the stone steps end in a vertical wall (W.185) which is at least 3 m. in height and dropped straight in to the pool. Based on the height of the stone-paved steps, the excavators prefer to understand them as seats for spectating events in the pool rather than steps that facilitated ritual immersion. They offer the following tentative conclusion about the pool’s function:
“In light of the scarcity of historical and archaeological information, it is possible to suggest with due caution that initially this architectural complex was possibly used by Herod as a space in which he held games, competitions, and naval battles (naumachia) in honor of his patron Augustus, who, as Herod knew well, rose to prominence after his victory over Herod’s previous patron (Marcus Antonius) in the naval battle at Actium.” (Szanton, Vukosavović, and Berko 2024:39)
There is a striking dissonance between this new evidence and the apparent continued adoption of past interpretations by the City of David Park which are reflected in the JPost article. It is also surprising that (as far as I am aware) virtually nothing about the new excavation data has appeared in popular media (aside from a BAR article summarizing a different publication). This situation is strange given the potential for an attention-grabbing headline and what surely would be an easy story for any journalist covering this beat.
There are several possible narrative arcs: a new archaeological interpretation which casts the pool’s use/significance in a completely different light than previously thought, a cautionary tale against presuming that we can anticipate what material lies below the dirt, and the use of archaeology as a tool of control in a contested city, among others. It will be interesting to see both how this story surfaces in popular media and if the City of David Park continues to perpetuate interpretations which now seem to be problematic.
As the short published report quoted above reflects only preliminary archaeological results and excavations at the pool are ongoing, we should be cautious about adopting any new interpretations at this stage. Excavations will surely produce new data that will influence this conversation in unpredictable ways. In any case, this is certainly an excavation and overall context worth keeping an eye on.
Paid Supporters
Last Tuesday I hosted the most recent livestream for paid supporters. We discussed the necropolis of Jerusalem during the time of the Judahite Monarchy (Iron Age II Period), including the distribution of tombs, their architecture, and implications for the size of the city during that time.
The next event is scheduled for September 16 from 8:00-9:30pm ET. Paid supporters will receive a private link beforehand. They also get access to the archive of previous livestreams, which is currently about 15 hours of watch time.
This material was 100% human composed. AI was never utilized at any stage.
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