Tony Robinson, the Time Team presenter, wrote a book called Archaeology is Rubbish. He wasn’t disowning the discipline that had given him a career after Blackadder. He was making the observation that most of the artefacts pulled out of the earth are the debris and detritus left behind by those who have gone before us.
That’s why drains and dumps are treasure troves for archaeologists. A recently announced broken piece of rubble from just such a drain in Jerusalem may be the find of 2025 for Bible archaeology!
The Jerusalem channel
Over the past few years archaeologists have been excavating underground in the city of Jerusalem. The discovery of a wide road leading up from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple has been the focus of an enormous archaeological tunnel excavation. In use during the first century, it was revealed as part of the accidental discovery of the original Pool of Siloam in 2004. The pool was actually a baptistry during the time of Jesus and the stepped road would have functioned as a ritual route to ascend from baptism up to the Temple courts.
Alongside the road is a drainage channel. Wastewater would have flowed down this channel from the Temple courts into the Tyropoeon Valley. Jews had hidden in the channel during the rebellion against Rome in 70AD. That rebellion led to the destruction of the city and expulsion of the Jews. The devastation by the Romans would have destroyed the Jerusalem known by Jesus and the wide stepped street and drainage system were all buried beneath the rubble. A disaster for the local people was simultaneously fortuitous for later archaeologists.
The golden bell
In 2011 a golden bell was found, measuring half an inch in diameter, that would have once been attached to the hem of a priest serving in the temple. Shaped like a tiny pomegranate seed, the artefact was perfectly preserved. There was a small hoop to enable it to be attached to the hem of a garment. It was hollow and still preserved the clapper that created a metallic ringing sound when shaken. The bell was an example of what God had instructed the Israelites to make for the priestly clothing (Ex.28v33). The sound of its ringing would have been heard by the people at the time of Jesus, as a priest made his way up the stepped road to the Temple. Just imagine, one day a bell had slipped from the garment and washed into the drain. Two thousand years later it would be a priceless artefact.
A message to a king of Judah?
The latest discovery from Jerusalem’s drains is a fragment of a cuneiform text – pictured above. This is much older than the time of Jesus. An inscription is always an exciting discovery for archaeologists. The document is a tax demand from the King of Assyria to the King of Judah. Measuring just an inch long it would have once been part of a longer piece of correspondence. Written in Akkadian, it must belong to the First Temple period which would predate the destruction of the city by the Babylonians. The most likely candidates for the king referred to in the inscription are Hezekiah, Manasseh or Josiah. The fragment is broken so the identity is unclear. It was in the central drainage channel and shows just how long such a sewerage system had been in use through the history of Jerusalem. The historical moment of the inscription would correspond to something like the time when King Hezekiah was paying tribute to the King of Assyria (2 Kings 18v13-14).
Even the drains of Jerusalem are producing treasure to help us understand the world of the Bible. Time and again they give tangible evidence for the reliability of the Bible’s history. And there can be no doubt there is a lot more treasure yet to be found in these sewers of the past!
