Elevator Project in Yerushalayim Leads to Surprising Finds

YERUSHALAYIM (AP) — Installing an elevator doesn’t normally involve a 2,000-year plunge into an ancient city’s history. But in Yerushalayim, even seemingly simple construction projects can lead to archaeological endeavors.

Archaeologists from the Hebrew University say they have made numerous discoveries, including an ornate first-century villa with its own mikveh, after a project began to increase access for disabled people to the Kosel.

The villa, located footsteps from where the Bais Hamikdash stood, was uncovered during several years of salvage excavations in the Jewish Quarter of Yerushalayim’s historic Old City. Archaeologists perform salvage excavations to make a scientific study of ancient artifacts and buildings before they are removed to make way for modern construction.

To access the Kosel, visitors typically have to descend 142 steps, or take a long detour around the city walls to one of the nearby gates.

In 2017, the Jewish Quarter Reconstruction and Development Company got the green light to begin construction of two elevators to let visitors make the 26-meter (85-foot) descent with greater ease. The location was a narrow sliver of largely undeveloped slope abutting the existing staircase on the eastern edge of the Jewish Quarter.

“The Western Wall is not a privilege, it’s elemental for a Jew or for any person from around the world who wants to come to this holy place,” said Herzl Ben Ari, CEO of the development group. “We have to enable it for everybody.”

However, like modern development projects in other ancient cities, such as Istanbul, Rome, Athens and Thessaloniki, archaeological finds slowed progress to a crawl.

“This plot of land where the elevator is going to be built remained undisturbed, giving us the great opportunity of digging through all the strata, all the layers of ancient Jerusalem,” said Michal Haber, an archaeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Five years into the undertaking, the archaeological work is nearing completion, but the elevators are only expected to be brought online in 2025.

During their dig, the archaeologists carefully peeled back successive layers of construction and debris that had accumulated over two millennia, over 9 meters (30 feet) in total. Historical waypoints included Ottoman pipes built into a 2,000-year-old aqueduct that supplied the city with water from springs near Bet Lechem; early Islamic oil lamps; bricks stamped with the name of the 10th Legion, the Roman army that besieged, destroyed and was afterwards encamped in Yerushalayim two millennia ago; and the remains of the Judean villa from the final days before the ancient Jewish Temple’s destruction in the year 70.

Archaeologist Oren Gutfeld said they were surprised to uncover traces from Yerushalayim’s reconstruction as the Roman city of Aelia Capitolina in the 2nd century.

Fragments of frescoes and intricate mosaics from the villa indicated the wealth of the home’s occupants. But upon reaching bedrock, Gutfeld and Haber’s team made one last find: a private mikveh hewn into the limestone mountainside and vaulted with enormous dressed stones.

Haber said the most significant thing about the mikveh was its location overlooking the esplanade of the Bais Hamikdash.

“We are in the wealthy neighborhood of the city on the eve of its destruction,” she said.