BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

What’s New in Biblical Jerusalem?

Looking back at a decade of discoveries

Jerusalem is one of the most excavated places in the world. Since Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) first appeared in 1975, its readers have had a front-row seat to some of the most fascinating discoveries from the Holy City. Over the past 50 years, we have treated BAR readers to exciting stories and scholarly debates over what archaeologists excavated in biblical Jerusalem and what their discoveries might mean for our understanding of the biblical past.

For the Spring 2025 issue of BAR, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, three prominent Israeli archaeologists summarize and put into context the most consequential archaeological finds of the past decade. They are Yuval Gadot, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University; Yiftah Shalev, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA); and Joe Uziel, head of the Dead Sea Scrolls Unit at the IAA. This trio is well positioned to report on the archaeology of biblical Jerusalem, since Gadot and Shalev co-direct the Givati Parking Lot excavation in the City of David, while Uziel has excavated several areas in the City of David and the Western Wall Tunnels. From the much-contested tenth century BCE, which saw the emergence in Judah of a centralized state, to the Babylonian destruction of biblical Jerusalem in 586 BCE, which resulted in the exile of many Judahites, Gadot, Shalev, and Uziel highlight discoveries that have changed how we see Jerusalem’s development throughout the Iron Age (c. 1200–586 BCE).

In the early tenth century, the city was supposedly ruled by the biblical kings David and Solomon. Several monumental structures across the City of David signal the prosperity of biblical Jerusalem and the ambitions of its rulers. The Stepped Stone Structure (see above), sometimes identified with the biblical Millo (2 Kings 12:20), and the Large Stone Structure, sometimes identified with David’s palace, are among the major construction projects dating from that era.

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In 2019, archaeologists excavating in the Givati Parking Lot detected a ditch running in the east-west direction along the western slope of the City of David (see below). “For four years, we excavated through more than a thousand years of accumulated debris—from the Abbasid back to the Hellenistic period—before we finally came down to bedrock. We now believe this trough is not a natural valley but a manmade ditch, measuring nearly 100 feet wide and 30 feet deep, that extended across the entirety of the northern part of the City of David,” report Gadot, Shalev, and Uziel. This discovery confirms the original theory of British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon that the more elevated area of the Ophel and the Temple Mount lay outside the city walls, to the north of the City of David, which was apparently separated by a moat protecting biblical Jerusalem from the north.

As biblical Jerusalem expanded during the ninth and eighth centuries as the thriving capital of a small kingdom, the city was involved in regional trading networks and further developed its administrative system. Both trends are well attested in rich finds of pottery vessels and clay bullae near the city’s ancient water source, the Gihon Spring.

The article also summarizes the discovery of a purported biblical “chamber” (2 Kings 23:11; Jeremiah 35:2–5), as previously reported in the Spring 2024 issue of BAR: “Building 100, a luxurious, two-story reception hall that we excavated along the western slope of the City of David, is a fine example of both elite architecture and the city’s westward expansion. Although the building continued in use until the Babylonian destruction, new radiocarbon dating confirms it was first constructed in the ninth century, with a substantial renovation in the mid-eighth century.”

Gadot, Shalev, and Uziel then consider discoveries from the seventh and early sixth centuries, when Jerusalem became one of the wealthiest and most important cities of the southern Levant. By that time, Building 100 likely functioned as a royal reception or banqueting hall. Archaeologists uncovered signs of luxury, including a terrazzo-style plaster floor, a set of fine drinking vessels (see above), and a collection of precious ivory inlays that once decorated the hall’s furniture.

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The authors finally report on archaeological discoveries at several sites in Jerusalem’s immediate hinterland that produced very fine material bearing witness to the city’s growth and wealth. “Such finds indicate Jerusalem’s wealth in the seventh and sixth centuries and perhaps its control over nearby desert trade routes that connected South Arabia with the Mediterranean.”

To explore these and other recent discoveries from biblical Jerusalem, read Gadot, Shalev, and Uziel’s article “A Decade of Discoveries in Biblical Jerusalem,” published in the Spring 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Subscribers: Read the full article “A Decade of Discoveries in Biblical Jerusalem” by Gadot, Shalev, and Uziel in the Spring 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Related reading in Bible History Daily

Locating Jerusalem’s Millo

Did I Find King David’s Palace?

Biblical “Chamber” Identified in Jerusalem?

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Lifestyles of Jerusalem’s Rich and Famous

Fragments of Luxury: The Jerusalem Ivories

Did I Find King David’s Palace?

The Millo: Jerusalem’s Lost Monument