The Ancients - The Origins of Jerusalem

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

One of the oldest cities in history, and revered by religions across the world - what do we know about the origins of Jerusalem?In this episode, Tristan is joined, once again, by Professor Jodi Magness to talk us through the origins of this important city. Looking at evidence from Egyptian New Kingdom texts, the Hebrew Bible and other surviving literary accounts - where does the archaeology align with these sources, and what can it tell us about Jerusalem that these fascinating sources are unable to?For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, well, it's a big topic with a big name back on the podcast. A stalwart of the ancients who's been on the pod before to talk about topics varying from king herod to jewish burial at the time of jesus to masada i am of

course talking about the university of north carolina's professor jodie magnus jodie she's back on the podcast today to talk all about the origins of Jerusalem. Yes, that's right, the origins of Jerusalem. We're going back to the Bronze Age. We're going to be looking at what the archaeology is revealing about this renowned city's earliest history and whether this archaeology corroborates with the surviving literary accounts, for instance, from New Kingdom Egyptian texts and, of course, from the Hebrew Bible. Where does the archaeology align with the literature and where is it a bit more dubious? Well, Jodie explains it all. She is a force of nature and I really do hope you enjoy this episode. So without further ado, to talk all about the origins of Jerusalem. Here's Jodie.

Jodie, welcome back. Always a pleasure having you on the Ancients podcast. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back. And for quite a topic, we've always had you for the big hitting topics. Our last one on King Herod was incredibly popular. And now the origins of Jerusalem. This just feels, from an outsider, from a Joe Bloggs looking in, quite a prickly, quite a tricky topic for an archaeologist to sink your teeth into. Right, yes. So a little bit of background. This is part of the subject of a book that I have just written, I just finished a sabbatical, and my sabbatical project was a trade book on Jerusalem, basically the history and archaeology of Jerusalem, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. And the manuscript is now out for review, so I'm waiting to hear from the publisher. But it's a book that the editor

at Oxford tried to persuade me to write for years. Really, literally, he was on my case for a very long time. And I resisted. And I resisted because anybody who knows anything about the history and archaeology of Jerusalem would never agree to write a book like this because it's such a huge topic. And to try and convey the complexity to a non-specialist readership, which is what this is intended to do, is really, really challenging. And also, there's so much to know about Jerusalem, it's really almost impossible for any one person to master it all. And, you know, I've worked in Jerusalem pretty much my entire academic career.

at all. And, you know, I've worked in Jerusalem pretty much my entire academic career. But I will admit that there are some periods, you know, of time that I'm comfortable with, and I feel like I know, you know, pretty well, but then there are many others that I do not. So this book is intended to cover the history and archaeology of Jerusalem from its beginnings up to the Crusades, through the Crusades, including the Crusades. And yeah, I know. And so anyway, I eventually, for various, you know, without going into it all, the editor wore me down and I agreed to write the book and I signed a contract. And so that was my sabbatical project. So what we're going to be talking about today is actually an early chapter in the book, which deals with the origins of the city of Jerusalem. But it's a book that ended up, I'm actually very happy with the product. And I hope that, you know, I hope that editor is too, we'll see. But it also turned out

to be more detailed than I would have originally conceived of for a trade book. And that's simply because you can't get into the history and archaeology of Jerusalem without getting into the weeds. It's impossible. And I think some of that might come through in our conversation today. So I, you know, I tried my best in the book to sort of explain things to, you know, to readers. There's going to be a lot of illustrations, but it's not like an easy light read. It's a read for people who really want to understand the city of Jerusalem and the background to, you know, why do we have so many controversies about Jerusalem? Why do people fight over this, you know, poor mountain city? So hopefully readers will come away, you know, with some sort of sense of that. Well, I'm glad that we can focus on this also for the podcast today, Jodie, and thank you for explaining that straight away. And kind of leading on from that, when looking at Jerusalem's earliest history, for archaeologists, I'm looking for,

for instance, like cross-referencing with archaeologists who are trying to dig in Rome and find the earliest layers over there. How easy is it for archaeologists to try and locate building structures from the earliest periods in Jerusalem's history? This is true. And you mentioned Rome, for example. So it's going to be true in the case of any city that has been occupied continuously for thousands of years, as Jerusalem has, as Rome has, as Athens has. It's going to be difficult in all of those cases to find traces of the earliest settlements. Because when you have that continuous habitation, the earliest levels tend to get, you know, dug up and chunked up and, you know,

so very little often survives of those. And it's also often difficult to reach those earlier levels because of the later overbuilding. Now in Jerusalem, the difficulty is complicated by the natural topography of the city. So Jerusalem is in a mountainous region and it's rocky. The mountains are rocky. And it's a hard rock, right? It's limestone and dolomite. And what this means is that when later people would come and build over the earlier remains, they would want to found their structures on bedrock, right? You want them to be stable.

So you dig your foundations down to bedrock. And that then disturbs and destroys the earlier remains. And also in a lot of cases, because the earlier buildings were founded on bedrock, a lot of times those buildings, or at least parts of them, get reused in the later buildings. So all of that makes it very difficult to find remains of the earliest settlement to the point where there's actually a debate about what did the earliest settlement look like because so little survived. So is it in fact a case where the absence of evidence is evidence of absence? So if you don't have these very early remains,

it means that there wasn't anything there or there was very little there. Or is it simply because of the way, you know, that later rebuilding destroyed earlier structures. And so this is part of the reason why you have a lot of disagreements among archaeologists about the extent of the earliest settlement in Jerusalem. Where was it? How big was it? That sort of thing. Okay, then. Well, good luck, Jodie. So what has the archaeology potentially suggested about Jerusalem's earliest settlement? What do we think we know? When are we talking about? Right. So before we get into that, and I realize your listeners may know some of this stuff because they immerse themselves

in the ancient world, but just to clarify a couple of terms. So in the Mediterranean world and the Near East, prehistoric periods have typically been divided into a sequence called the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, right? And those periods are then further subdivided. So Stone Age divided into the Early Stone Age, you know, the Middle Stone Age, the Late Stone Age, right, the Neolithic, and then Bronze Age, Early Bronze, Middle Bronze, Late Bronze, so on. And so we're talking now, when we talk about the earliest settlement in Jerusalem, we are talking about settlement in these prehistoric periods.

And in the area of Syria-Palestine, and let me just clarify so we don't get into politics, that when I use the term Palestine here, I'm referring to, I'm using the term in the British mandatory sense to refer to the territory covered by the modern states of Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, right? So when we talk about these periods in Syria-Palestine, roughly speaking, the Bronze Age begins around 3000 BC Age ends around 586 BC, which is when Solomon's Temple is destroyed and Jerusalem is destroyed by the Babylonians. So we're basically, if we're talking about Bronze Age, we're talking about around 3000 to 1200 BC, and then Iron Age about 1200 to 586 BC. And in terms of sort of historical periods, so to speak, the Bronze Age in this region would correspond to what's sometimes called the Canaanite period, meaning the period when the Canaanites

inhabited Canaan, right, what later becomes the land of Israel. And then the Iron Age after 1200 would be the Israelite period, which is the period when the Israelites come and settle in the country, right? So those are kind of the big parameters that we're talking about. Now, when we talk about the earliest settlement in Jerusalem, so let me clarify that when I say settlement, we're talking about the remains when we can tell that people actually lived in this. I realize now that I have to even back up before this, because I have to define where we're talking about in terms of the city of Jerusalem, so the sort of topography of the city. So if any of your listeners have ever visited Jerusalem

today, they're probably familiar with an area in the heart of the modern city that's called the Old City of Jerusalem, which is sort of an area within walls that forms a rough sort of square. And that area within the walls is called the Old City. Now, a lot of people who visit Jerusalem today think the Old City is the ancient city of Jerusalem, that that's ancient. But actually, the walls of the Old City today date to the Ottoman Turkish period, to the 16th century AD, which is fairly recent in Jerusalem's history. And that area within the walls, although some of that area was inhabited in antiquity, it doesn't necessarily delineate the original settlement in Jerusalem. In fact, the original settlement in Jerusalem,

the area that we are going to be focusing on today in our talk, is on a small hill that lies to the south of the old city and is completely outside the walls today. And that little hill is called the Southeastern Hill, or sometimes the Eastern Hill, or sometimes the Lower City, or sometimes the City of David. It comes to be called the City of David after, according to the biblical account, David conquers Jerusalem, it becomes the City of David. So that's this little hill, which is like a little spur to the south of the old city, and actually more accurately to the south of the Temple Mount, which is in the old city. And it's that little hill that was where the earliest settlement in Jerusalem was located. And that's what we're talking about here, right?

So the question of when Jerusalem was first inhabited really focuses on the remains that we have on that little hill. And when I say little hill, I mean, we're talking about an area that's less than 11 acres in size. So it's tiny. And one of the things that's interesting when we talk about, you know, early settlement in Jerusalem is why did people, the first people who settled in Jerusalem, settle on that little hill, right? Because Jerusalem's all, you know, all hills separated by valleys. They could have settled anywhere. They settled on that little hill. And the reason is because it is closest to the only real perennial source of water in the area. And that is a spring called the Gihon Spring, which comes out of the ground at the foot

of the eastern slope of the hill. And so to be as close as possible to the source of water, fresh water, the earliest inhabitants settled on that little hill. Now, when we talk about them, when did people first settle in Jerusalem? What archaeological remains do we have? Because again, we're in prehistoric periods here. So it's not like we have historians who are telling us about this. The earliest remains that we have of actual settlement, by which I mean remains of houses, right? People build houses and live there, date to the beginning of the Bronze Age, the early Bronze Age. So we're talking roughly about 5,000 years ago.

Now, before I go on, I will qualify that we do have scattered artifacts that have been found in Jerusalem that are earlier in date, indicating that people, somebody went through the area and it's possible that people, somebody went through the area. And it's possible that people already lived in, you know, Jerusalem before the early Bronze Age, but we haven't got remains of dwellings or tombs or anything like that that indicate it.

But there are earlier scattered artifacts, individual objects that have come up in, you know, excavations. And I mention this because just this week, I think, or last week, you know, excavations. And I mentioned this because just this week, I think, or last week, there was a newspaper article that a colleague of mine sent to me about a Neolithic arrowhead that was found in excavations on Mount Zion, which is on the next hill over in these ongoing excavations. So Neolithic, of course, is New Stone Age. So, you know, it's possible even that the original settlement in Jerusalem goes back even earlier than the Early Bronze Age, but the earliest remains that we have found in archaeological excavations are basically houses and tombs that date to the Early Bronze Age, and they focus on this little hill that I was talking about,

the Southeastern Hill, and always, I mean, from the Bronze Age and through the Iron Age, the focus of the settlement was always in the area around the spring and above the spring. That spring, that source of water was really the focal point of the settlement. And that's understandable in an environment where you don't have rain for at least half of the year, right? So for at least half the year, you have no rainfall at all. And so perennial source of fresh water, if you're going to have any kind of a concentrated settlement, is going to be a focal point. Hello, everyone. James Rogers here, the host of the Warfare podcast by History Hit.

I'm a war historian who works with the UN, NATO and governments around the world. Twice a week, every week, we bring you the defining wars of history and learn about the history of emerging wars. The passengers and crew of 149 were trapped, trapped and delivered into the hands of Saddam Hussein. We hear from the veterans who served. Guards there would grab a machine gun and fire at us as we went over and could see the splinters flying in all directions. Through to world-leading historians providing context to understand current conflicts.

Finland obviously couldn't join NATO, which makes the two Finnish leaders' statements about Finland deciding for itself whether it will join NATO. That makes those statements even more important. Subscribe to Warfare from History Hits on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And join us on the front lines of military history. and so therefore as the bronze age progresses jody do we therefore see more structures starting to appear going out spreading out from that small hill, from that original settlement, from around the Gihon Spring? Yes and no. So, you know, the remains of these early Bronze Age houses, for example, we have very little of those remains because for all the reasons that we talked about before. But also the remains from the rest of the Bronze Age and even into the early Iron Age are

pretty elusive and they don't necessarily spread out, but rather what we begin to get as the Bronze Age goes on, and particularly in the Middle Bronze Age, is the construction of monumental structures in the area around and above the spring. And so what you basically get, and this is going to be the characteristic feature of Jerusalem throughout the Bronze Age and into

at least the early Iron Age, is what looks like a fortified citadel at the top of the crest of the hill overlooking the spring, and then a series of large structures that connect that citadel to the spring. And the goal, of course, was number one, to protect access to the water in the spring, especially in times of war or siege, right? In times of peace, there's no problem getting to the water in the spring. But in times of siege, you would want to make sure that if you were up in the citadel on the crest of the hill, which is, of course, the natural strategic high point to be, that you're going to be able to get to the water in the spring in a protected way. So you're going to fortify the spring,

and that's what we see them doing with giant fortifications, and providing access, protected access to that water, and also building these fortifications around the spring so that your enemy can't get access to the water, right? these fortifications around the spring so that your enemy can't get access to the water, right? So that's really what Jerusalem looks like from the Middle Bronze Age, which we're roughly talking now, you know, somewhere, I'm going to really round out the numbers here for your listeners, 2000 BC, it's a little later actually, but nevermind, from the Middle Bronze Age and then into the Early Iron Age and, you know, even beyond that.

And so the city is going to look like a fortified, a small fortified citadel, right? It's not going to look like, when we think of city today, it's not going to look like a big city. That's what it's going to look like. And this is going to lead into one of the topics that I know you want to discuss, which is the sort of apparent discrepancy between these remains and the appearance of Jerusalem in, you know, the Bronze Age and Iron Age, the early Iron Age, and the sort of picture that we get from the biblical account, right? Or, and even from other ancient literary sources, right? So if we want to learn about Jerusalem in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, and we want to use something other than archaeology, you know, what kind of documents, what kind of written sources do we have?

So we actually have different kinds of written sources. And the earliest written sources that we have are not local, but they're Egyptian. So we have different sets of documents from the Bronze Age in Egypt, specifically the Middle Bronze Age and the Late Bronze Age. So from the Middle Bronze Age, the 19th and 18th centuries BC, we have a series of texts that are called the execration texts, which are basically curse tablets, if you wish. And these texts, in some of these texts, Jerusalem is mentioned, or it's thought that Jerusalem is mentioned. The name, it's not vocalized in Egyptian as Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, or whatever Yerushalayim, but rather as Rushalimum, and that apparently is Jerusalem. And it's described, Jerusalem is

described as having either two or one rulers. And so we have references to Jerusalem, to the city Jerusalem in the Middle Bronze Age in these Egyptian texts. Unfortunately, they don't really give us a lot more information about Jerusalem. I mean, other than indicating that there is a Jerusalem and that there are rulers, one or more rulers, but they don't really tell us a lot more about it. But from a little bit later, well, a little, I mean, four centuries later, but from the 14th century BC, we have a series of texts from Egypt that are called the Elamarna Letters, which come from a city, Elamarna, which was established by one of the Egyptian pharaohs, Akhenaten, as his capital city. Now, just a little backup here. So the capital cities of ancient

Egypt were typically either in Thebes or near Thebes. But Akhenaten was an Egyptian pharaoh who carried out a reform. He was a big devotee of the sun god, Aten. And he established a new capital city, which he named in honor of the sun god. And this site, which now is called Tel El Amarna, that's a modern name, was his capital city. And then after he died, his successors rejected this innovation of the worship of Aten, you know, as the sort of prime deity or only deity. And they went back to the traditional, you know, sort of Egyptian pantheon, and they moved the capital city back to its usual location. And so the importance of El Amarna is that it was occupied for only a very brief period of time, and therefore

everything that's dug up in that city has to date to that short period. So that's an archaeological treasure trove, because we can say everything in Elmarna dates to basically the middle of the 14th century BC. And Akhenaten, like other Egyptian pharaohs, was in contact with other rulers around the eastern Mediterranean. And these guys corresponded on little clay tablets. And we have the clay tablets of the correspondence from Amarna. And among them are tablets that were basically letters, because it's correspondence, that were sent to Akhenaten by the then ruler of Jerusalem. And this ruler of Jerusalem is a guy named Abihepa. And we have a series of letters that Abihepa sent to Akhenaten. And they're basically this guy, Abihepa was like, he was a real complainer.

So in most of the letters, he's complaining about, you know, he's being attacked and Jerusalem's vulnerable and he needs more help. And can you send me more troops? And, you know, blah, blah. Anyway, but it's very interesting because we can see that by this time, Jerusalem is basically like a little city state ruled by, you know, this sort of minor chief, you know, Abdi Hepa. And, you know, he's begging the Egyptian pharaoh for more help.

And this is consistent. So again, we're in the late Bronze Age at this point. And this is consistent with the sort of pattern of settlement that we have elsewhere in the country, by which I mean, you know, Palestine in the same period or Canaan in the same period, which is sort of this pattern of settlement of city-states that have a fortified citadel at their heart. Now, Jerusalem apparently was not one of the bigger city-states. I mean, we have bigger city-states in this period, and you only have to look at sites like Hazor or Megiddo or Lachish to see what a real big city-state with a big fortified, you know, citadel looks like. So Jerusalem really is not very impressive, but it was, it does fit this pattern of settlement of fortified city-states, you know,

in late Bronze Age Canaan. And we get the name of at least one of its, you know, one of its rulers, this guy Abdi Hepa. So we have, you know, we have the picture from these Egyptian documents, and then we have the sort of biblical picture, right? And so where does the biblical picture start to come in? It really starts to come in, I mean, there's a little bit before this, but it really starts to come in with David. So basically what happens with the biblical picture is that the Israelites, right, the Israelite tribes, so if we follow the biblical account, right, the Israelite tribes enter the country, not according to the biblical account, but, you know, according to scholarship somewhere around 1200 BC. So this great watershed from the Bronze Age to the Iron

Age, that's when the Israelite tribes enter Canaan, and they settle in the interior hill country. So basically the area stretching from Galilee, the hills of Galilee to the north, to the northern Negev in the south. And Jerusalem lies right in the middle of this hill country that the Israelite tribe settled. And we know that the Israelite tribe settled all around the area of Jerusalem. I mean, they literally surrounded Jerusalem. It's amazing, actually. I mean, you know, Saul built a palace for himself at a place called Tel El Ful, which is literally on the outskirts of the city of Jerusalem. And, you know, Shiloh was very close by where the tabernacle was housed for a while. I mean, they're literally right around the

city of Jerusalem. But according to the biblical account, Jerusalem, which was called Jebus, or Jebus, J-E-B-U-S, at that point. And the inhabitants of the city, according to the biblical writers, were Jebusites because they inhabited Jebus, right? Just as the inhabitants of Canaan were Canaanites, right? And the inhabitants of Israel were Israelites. Anyway, never mind. So according to the biblical account, when the Israelite tribes first entered the country and settled around 1200 BC, Jerusalem, this Jebusite city, was so strongly fortified that the Israelites were unable to take it. And so they settled the area all around it, but it remained this kind of foreign enclave in the heart of the Israelite settlement.

And it wasn't until 200 years later, when David becomes king, or under David, that the Israelites were able to take Jerusalem from the Jebusites. And that conquest of Jerusalem is described by the biblical writers. And, you know, there's this sort of picture of Jerusalem being strongly fortified and the Jebusites mocking David and his army saying, you know, our city is so strongly fortified that even blind and lame people can, you know, ward you off, can keep you from conquering it. And somehow David manages to conquer the city. And that's a little bit of a different story. But at any rate, if you just take, you know, those sorts of the biblical picture, right, at face value, it suggests that Jerusalem was, at least around 1200 BC, was a strongly fortified city. And so then what you get

when people sort of take this account at face value is the expectation that this should have been some sort of major fortified city. And that's not what we have in the archaeological remains, right? The archaeological remains don't look like that. Right. So Jodie, yes, let's delve into that archaeology now. You're a force of nature, so I hate interrupting, but let's now focus in on that. What has the archaeology therefore revealed about this time at the end of the Bronze Age, the state of Jerusalem at this time? discrepancy between what the biblical account describes and what we have in archaeology. But even the archaeological evidence is extremely problematic for all the reasons that we discussed before. And so there is no consensus among scholars, among archaeologists, about exactly what remains we have in Jerusalem at that transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age,

right? Because we do have a series of ancient remains that date, depending on who you follow, either to the Bronze Age or to later in the Iron Age, post-David, post-Solomon. And so this is part of the problem. And I mean, I'm not sure if you took a vote or something, but it might even be that archaeologists are somewhat evenly divided on this. That is, you is, to what extent was Jerusalem kind of a bigger city or just a really almost dot on nothing? It's really widely variant. And the problem is the remains, again, are so chunked up and it's so hard to date. And a lot of the things get reused over time. And even when you get information from, for example, radiocarbon

dating, which we have recent radiocarbon dates for some of these things, that too is problematic. And so if you ask me, what did Jerusalem look like on the eve of the Israelite conquest? Well, first of all, I must say I have no dogs in this fight. Thank goodness I don't work in the Bronze Age or the Iron Age. I work in later periods. We have plenty of controversies about later periods, about the Roman period, the Byzantine period, the early Islamic period. But I have no dogs in the Bronze Age or the Iron Age. I work in later periods. We have plenty of controversies about later periods, about the Roman period, the Byzantine period, the early Islamic period, but I have no dogs in the fight about, you know, biblical Jerusalem, right? So if you ask me, I would just have to say, well, I don't really have any dogs in this fight. But I think that it would be fair to say that most of the remains, well, how shall I put this? That most of the

remains, these major kind of fortified citadel things that we have at the top of the remains, well, how shall I put this? That most of the remains, these major kind of fortified citadel things that we have at the top of the hill and, well, we don't even have really at the top of the hill. Never mind. On the slope of the hill and around the spring do go back to the Middle Bronze Age. So this series of this whole water system, right? And you know from reading, because I sent you a copy of the manuscript, so you know from reading the chapter, the water system is extremely complicated. It's got many different parts to it, and there are lots of debates about the date of each part and how each part function system, which include pools for storing water, which include channels for channeling the water into pools, which include tunnels that provide access to the water, which include fortifications around the water and going up the slope of the hill. So most of those appear to date, and I think it's reasonable actually, appear to date to the Middle Bronze Age,

right? Again, a little bit after 2000 BC. Now, there are people who would date them later, but to me, the evidence is still pretty convincing. It looks pretty convincing that these, and it's reasonable that they date to the Middle Bronze Age and they continued in use then into the Iron Age. So I would say that if you ask me, what did Jerusalem look like on the eve of David's conquest? Well, it certainly, in my opinion, included, I don't want to say certainly, I reasonably, in my opinion, included most of those components of the water system, fortifications, you know, associated with the water system going up the slope of the hill, you know, towards the citadel, what would have been a citadel on the top of the hill. the citadel, what would have been a citadel on the top of the hill. And then the main question becomes, and this is where there's a huge amount of disagreement, whether and to what extent there was settlement outside of that area. Do we have evidence of settlement outside of that area of the water system, either to the north of it and or to the south of it? And if so, was that enclosed within a fortification wall, a city wall, right? And we do actually have remains of archaeological remains of a fortification wall, mostly, mostly to the south of the water system on the east slope to the south.

that was originally discovered by Kathleen Kenyon, the very famous British archaeologist in the 1960s, and then more sections of it were uncovered by an Israeli archaeologist, Yigal Shiloh, in the 1970s. And so if this wall indeed dates to the Middle Bronze Age originally, as both Kenyon and Yigal Shiloh thought, then it would indicate that by, you know, by the time David conquers Jerusalem, there was settlement outside the area of this fortified citadel somewhere on at least the southeast slope of the hill and presumably up to the crest of the hill. How much farther than that it might have gone, we don't know. There's also a whole problem with what's happening on the western side of this little hill, right? Because the settlement seems to go up to the crest, but then if you go down the west slope to the other side, what's going on there? It's very hard, very problematic. The west side is even harder because there the earliest

remains are buried way deep under later debris and accumulation, very hard to get to. And so that's about as good as we can say. So anybody who reads, eventually reads the chapter, assuming it's all published and, you know, accepted and published, will see, you know, why we debate, you know, why these debates are here, because there's just no consensus among archaeologists. And so Jodie, what does all this archaeology therefore suggest about the real important significance of Jerusalem at the time that David, I'm presuming we think David is a real person, that he is approaching the walls of this settlement? Look, so the importance of Jerusalem is really from what happens later. I

mean, pre-Israelite Jerusalem was clearly not a major player in, you know, the ancient Near East. And really, actually, you know, Jerusalem has always been a small, impoverished, relatively isolated mountain town. And, you know, the spring is what attracted settlement right from the start, the perennial freshwater spring. But it was never, you know, Jerusalem's not on a major trade route, and it never had big international relations. And so really, the importance of Jerusalem lies in eventually it becoming the dwelling place of the God of Israel, who, of course, is the God worshipped originally by the Israelites, and then the Jews, and then also the Christians and the Muslims, right? And so that's really what makes Jerusalem important. That's what makes it special. And so before that happens, Jerusalem is really just like any

sort of other relatively small and relatively unimportant Bronze Age fortified citadel kind of a thing. I mean, it's not important before David brings the Ark of the Covenant, you know, and plants it there, and then Solomon builds the temple, the first house to the God of Israel. So for us, and looking back in retrospect, it is interesting and important to understand the roots of the city, right, the origins of the city. And in fact, you know, scholars, some scholars have suggested that even before, you know, the Israelites come and David plants the Ark of the Covenant on, you know, what becomes the Temple Mount, that this concept of having a mountain, you know, with a spring of water gushing forth at the foot of it, that that already was kind of venerated

as a sacred spot by these early, you know, pre-Israelite peoples, because this is something very special. And, you know, the God of Israel is a celestial deity. He's a deity who dwells up in the heavens. And it is very typical for celestial deities to be worshiped on mountaintops because you want to get as close as you can.

Hence the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Mount Sinai, right? You think of things like that, think of the Olympian gods, right? On Mount Olympus. So it's typical for celestial deities to be worshiped on mountaintops. And so a lot of times you do have, you know, high points in antiquity, natural high points

associated with the worship of celestial deities. And to have this combination of a high point and then at the foot of celestial deities, and to have this combination of a high point and then at the foot of it, a gushing spring. So that's probably something that already was considered sacred by these pre-Israelite inhabitants of Jerusalem. And that tradition may well then have been absorbed, right, into the, you know, David and the Israelites, if we follow the biblical account, come and take over. And so they may then have simply absorbed this, right, this sort of tradition, oh, this is a mountain with the water, this is special, this is sacred, and it eventually becomes associated

with the God of Israel. So I mean, you know, that's something that could be interesting in terms of, you know, the importance of Jerusalem. But, you know, if we just look at Jerusalem at the archaeological remains from the Bronze Age, it's a minor player. I'm guessing, therefore, when you get to the time of King David and following the conquest of Jerusalem, that from an archaeological standpoint, you do start to see more and more archaeological remains appearing, surviving. That kind of corroborates with this time that Jerusalem starts becoming more significant, more important, a bigger player in the region? Yes and no. Yes and no in the sense that we do have a major structure above the spring,

or one or more structures above the spring that may be connected with David. But in terms of expansion of the settlement, right, to the north and south of that original core of that citadel, there's really not a lot until we get to the later part of the Iron Age. So we get to the 8th century. And in the 8th century BC, so the Iron Age too, there's a huge expansion of the city. There's tons of archaeological remains. But from the time of David and even Solomon, there isn't that much unless we focus on this area immediately above the spring at the crest of the hill. And there what we have are the remains of a really giant monumental structure that it's been excavated by different archaeologists over the course of time, over many decades,

who've exposed different parts of it. And it's called the stepstone structure. And what it is, is a series of artificial built stone terraces. You have to imagine the east slope here above the spring is very steep. So it's a series of artificial built stone terraces that clearly were intended to support structures on this very steep slope. And these terraces, they're like terraced boxes, are covered then with a stone mantle, a stepstone mantle, and that's what we call the stepstone structure. And there is absolutely no agreement among archaeologists

about the date and the function, therefore the function, of this stepstone structure and this mantle and the terraces that it covers. So, you know, again, I think there's probably more or less an even division. Some archaeologists think that the terraced boxes are separate from the mantle. They were originally built, and then at some point later, the mantle was added over them. And there are other archaeologists who think that they both go together, right? And so then what is the date?

And then equally, the date ranges, depending on who you ask, with some archaeologists putting one or both of those structures as early as the 13th century BC, and some going as late as even the post-biblical period, actually, after 586 BC, depending on which part you're talking about. One of the people who excavated in part of the stepstone structure and some of the buildings above it was an Israeli archaeologist named Eilat Mazar, who died tragically of breast cancer at the age of 64 last May. This was a huge shock to the entire archaeological community in

Israel. But she had excavated part of it and again, parts of a huge structure above it, which she claimed was the Palace of David. She claimed that the stepstone structure and this huge building above date to the 10th century BC and were part of David's palace, or I guess really late 11th century. And that's gotten a lot of publicity, right? So is this in fact the Palace of David or not? If it dates earlier than its Jebusite, not from the time of David. If it's later, then it's not time of David. So, you know, there's been a lot of controversy about what exactly the date of the one that we've been discussing, which is sort of, you know, more about the time of David and Solomon rather than pre-David and Solomon. But in my opinion, and I go into this in that next chapter, in my opinion, if you evaluate the published archaeological evidence for the dating of the step stone structure and the structure above it, that evidence, which consists of pottery found

and associated with the construction, that evidence, in my opinion, indicates probably a 12th century BC date, which means that they would be Jebusite and not from the time of David. They would predate David. Now, that doesn't preclude David coming and reusing those structures, right? And that could then have served as his palace, but that's a whole nother right thing. But I don't think that, in my opinion, that archaeological evidence does not indicate that these were built in the time of David. That's just what I think.

Well, there you go. As you say, Jodie, that's the new chapter. That's going away now from the origins of Jerusalem. We'll have to do a separate podcast on that in due time about Saul, David, Solomon, and that next really interesting period in Jerusalem's ancient history. Last, but certainly not least, Jodie, as I said earlier, you force of nature, you great hero of the ancients podcast, the book that this is all part of that, you know, will still be a bit of time until it's released, but working title at the moment, it is called? Yeah, it's called, yeah, and so right, thanks for saying working title, because I don't know that this will be the actual title, but it's the one we've

been working with until now. Jerusalem Through the Ages, From Its Beginnings to the Crusades. Well, there you go. And it just goes for me to say, Jodie, as always, thank you so much for taking the time for coming on the podcast today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, there you go. There was ancient stalwart Professor Jodie Magnus back on the podcast today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, there you go. There was ancient stalwart Professor Jodie Magnus back on the podcast today to talk all about the origins of Jerusalem, a big topic. So I really do hope you enjoyed this episode. Jodie, as I mentioned in the podcast, she is a force of nature. She knows so much about the archaeology of this area of the world. So I really do hope you enjoyed it.

Great to get her back on the pod. Now, last but certainly not least from me, if you want more ancients content in the meantime, you know what I'm going to say. You can subscribe to our weekly ancients newsletter via a link in the description below. Every week, I write a bit of a blurb for that newsletter explaining what's been happening in Team Ancient History Hit World this week.

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