4,000-Year-Old Tombs Found Near Jerusalem Mall
Pastor Dale Morgan
4,000-Year-Old Tombs Found Near Jerusalem Mall*
Mati Milstein
for National Geographic News
November 24, 2006
Not far from Jerusalem, Israel's biggest shopping mall, builders
accidentally uncovered a 4,000-year-old cemetery last summer. This month
the ancient site began yielding jewelry, armaments, and ritual offerings.
The cemetery find suggests that the Canaanites—a Semitic people who
inhabited ancient Palestine and Phoenicia beginning about 5,000 years
ago—had a much more extensive settlement in the city than previously
thought (Jerusalem map and facts).
"Usually you find such sites completely looted, but here many of the
tombs were discovered with all the artifacts inside them," said Gideon
Avni, the Israel Antiquities Authority's director of excavations and
surveys. "This is one of the largest concentrations [of artifacts] from
this period."
Fittingly, the site was until recently the home of a sprawling, 1960s
model of ancient Jerusalem. The model was moved to the city's Israel
Museum in preparation for new construction.
Bronze Age Insights
Excavation team leader Yanir Milevsky says the new findings contribute
greatly to the archaeological knowledge of the village areas surrounding
Bronze Age Canaanite Jerusalem.
"Jerusalem's agricultural settlement area [during the Bronze Age—roughly
4000 B.C. to 1000 B.C.] was much wider than what we thought up until
now," Milevsky said.
The 30 to 40 excavated tombs are on the edge of the Bayit Vagan
neighborhood, overlooking Jerusalem's Emek Refaim ("valley of the ghosts").
"The cemetery sprawls over more than half an acre [0.2 hectare] and,
according to evidence at the site, burials there were carried out
primarily during the Bronze Age between 2200 and 2000 B.C. and 1700 and
1600 B.C.," Melinsky and colleague Zvi Greenhut said in a press statement.
The site's "shaft tombs"—tunnels dug into the bedrock leading to burial
caves—were common during these periods.
Among the wide variety of artifacts found are copies of Egyptian scarabs
used as talismans by the area's residents.
Avni says the scarabs might have arrived in Jerusalem via commercial
exchanges or with Canaanite tourists returning from Egypt.
"It's not uncommon here to find all kinds of ornamentation brought from
outside the region," he said.
Other objects found at the site include metal weapons, tools, and
jewelry as well as fully preserved earthenware vessels.
Burial Rituals
Sheep and goat bones found in the cemetery are believed to have been
used in burial rituals.
The animal remains and foodstuffs, likely stored in earthenware
containers, are known as "food for the dead" and were meant to serve the
deceased after their passing.
"This is another piece in the puzzle," Avni said. "The Emek Refaim area
was extensively inhabited during this time.
"We have evidence from the Mount of Olives area of similar tombs, and
the city proper—the City of David site—was inhabited. [Bayit Vagan] was
part of the peripheral network around Jerusalem."
Archaeologists say the site could be even larger than what has been
uncovered so far.
But no final decision has been made on how to handle the site once the
excavations ar complete. Artifacts will likely be moved to the Israel
Museum, Avni says, and the site itself would probably be reburied.