Archaeologists Just Uncovered A One-Of-A-Kind Ancient Ritual Site

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Archaeologists Just Uncovered A One-Of-A-Kind Ancient Ritual Site

Archaeologists believe they’ve fully excavated eight rooms carved from stone, which were used for ritual practices during the eighth century B.C.

Evidence shows that the use of the rooms was discontinued during that time, which fits with a Biblical account of King Hezekiah’s reign.

The site is just a few hundred feet from the original Temple Mount.

King Hezekiah may have put an end to ritualistic worship outside the

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in the City of David in the eighth century B.C., but if so, he didn’t manage to erase all evidence of its existence. Archaeologists working with the Israel Antiquities Authority recently uncovered what they believe to be a site of ancient ritualistic worship for the first time in Jerusalem.

The team of archaeologists, working along the eastern slope of the city within the Jerusalem Walls National Park, uncovered eight rooms carved from

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—each seeming to have served a distinct purpose for the residents who made use of the site in ancient Judah. Those purposes were likely religious in some way, especially as the site sits just a few hundred feet from the Temple Mount.

In a study

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in the journal Antiqot, the researchers highlighted how, since 2010, they have excavated a site that was originally discovered in 1909 by a British explorer searching for the Ark of the Covenant—a site which had not previously been fully explored. They wrote that this new

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is the only known ritual structure from the ******* of its origin discovered in Jerusalem, and one of very few ever found in Israel.

The space, which spans a total of 2,350 square feet, features eight distinct rooms with specific uses like producing oil or making

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. One room also features a drainage channel, which could have been used as an altar. Mysterious V-shaped marks carved on one room’s floor led excavator Eli Shukron to suggest it served as a base for some sort of ritualistic installation.

An additional cave carved into the edge of the structure housed objects also dating to the eighth century B.C., including cooking pots, jars with ancient Hebrew inscriptions, loom weights, scarabs, stamped seals with decorative motifs, and grinding stones used for crushing

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.

The study authors believe that the site was used while the kings of Judah ruled in the eighth century B.C. “The structure ceased to function during the eighth century B.C., possibly as part of King Hezekiah’s religious reform,” the study authors wrote. “According to

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, Hezekiah sought to centralize worship at the temple in Jerusalem, abolishing the ritual sites scattered across the kingdom. The ****** describes how, during the first temple *******, additional ritual sites operated outside the Temple, and two kings of Judah—Hezekiah and Josiah—implemented reforms to eliminate these sites and concentrate worship at the temple.”

There’s a key clue that supports the

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. “When we began excavating the City of David in 2010, we discovered that the site had been sealed with fill from the eighth century B.C., indicating it had fallen out of use during that time,” Shukron said in a

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. “The standing stone we uncovered remained upright in its original place, and the other rooms in the structure were also well-preserved.”

There’s plenty to learn from the site and its artifacts. “This unique structure uncovered in the City of David is an exciting testimony to Jerusalem’s rich past,” Amichai Eliyahu, Isreal’s minister of heritage, said in a statement. “Such discoveries make our connection and historic roots—going back thousands of years—tangible in Jerusalem and other sites were the Jewish

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and belief system emerged.”

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