{"id":49495,"date":"2023-09-07T09:23:58","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T06:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityofdavid.org.il\/?p=49495"},"modified":"2026-03-22T16:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T14:07:11","slug":"a-hanukkah-miracle-hasmonean-jerusalem-comes-back-to-life-eng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityofdavid.org.il\/en\/a-hanukkah-miracle-hasmonean-jerusalem-comes-back-to-life-eng\/","title":{"rendered":"A Hanukkah miracle – Hasmonean Jerusalem comes back to life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1\/12″][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”8\/12″][vc_column_text]Josephus wrote about Hasmonean Jerusalem, but only now are the remains of a building from this period of the city being revealed.<\/p>\n

Over the past few months, the remains of an impressive building from the Hasmonean period (2nd century BCE) are being uncovered in excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority at the Givati Parking Lot in the City of David, inside the Jerusalem Walls National Park. The excavations are funded by the Friends of the City of David.<\/p>\n

The wide walls of the building (over a meter in width) are built out of polished limestones that were laid using the “heads and stringers” method, a construction method typical of the Hasmonean period.<\/p>\n

Many pottery items were discovered inside the building, but it was mainly the coins that surprised the researchers: these testified that the building was built at the beginning of the 2nd century BCE and continued into the Hasmonean period, during which it underwent substantial changes inside.<\/p>\n

According to Dr. Doron Ben Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets, the directors of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “the importance of this discovery is mainly in light of the clear lack of buildings in the Hasmonean city of Jerusalem in the archaeological research, and this despite the many excavations that have been conducted there so far.”<\/p>\n

With the exception of the remains of the city’s fortifications that have been discovered in various parts of Jerusalem, pottery and other small findings, the city’s buildings themselves have not been uncovered yet, and this discovery bridges a certain gap in the settlement sequence of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

The Hasmonean city that we know well from the historical descriptions of Josephus and in the book of Maccabees, has suddenly become real.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”3\/12”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time: a structure from the Hasmonean period was discovered in archaeological excavations at the City of David in the Jerusalem Walls National Park<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":6100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[562],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archaeology-3"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHasmonean Jerusalem Comes Back to Life | City of David<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For the first time: a structure from the Hasmonean period was discovered in archaeological excavations at the City of David\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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