June 27, 2013 •
By Jewish Press Staff
This ceramic oil lamp and two cooking pots were found in a cistern in
Jerusalem and date back to the first Jewish revolt against the Romans
(A.D. 66-73).
Archaeological excavations near the Western Wall have
unearthed three complete cooking pots and a small ceramic oil lamp that are the
first pieces of evidence of the Jewish famine during the revolt during the
siege of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.
The Israel Antiquities Authority is digging up history in
excavations of the drainage channel that runs from the Shiloah Pool in the City
of David to Robinson’s Arch, at
the southern end of the Western Wall.
“This is the
first time we are able to connect archaeological finds with the famine that
occurred during the siege of Jerusalem at the time of the Great Revolt,” said excavation director Eli
Shukrun.
The complete cooking pots and ceramic oil lamp, discovered
inside a small cistern in a drainage channel, indicate that the people went
down into the cistern where they secretly ate the food that was contained in
the pots, without anyone seeing them, and this is consistent with the account
provided by Josephus,” he
explained.
In his book “The
Jewish War,” Josephus describes the Roman
siege of Jerusalem and in its wake the dire hunger that prevailed in the
blockaded city.
In his dramatic description of the famine in Jerusalem he
tells about the Jewish rebels who sought food in the homes of their fellow Jews
in the city. Josephus said that the Jews concealed the food they possessed for
fear it would be stolen by the rebels, and they ate in hidden places in their homes.
“As the
famine grew worse, the frenzy of the partisans increased with it…. Nowhere was there corn to be
seen, men broke into the houses and ransacked them. If they found some, they
maltreated the occupants for saying there was none; if they did not, they
suspected them of having hidden it more carefully and tortured them,” Josephus wrote.
“Many
secretly exchanged their possessions for one measure of corn-wheat if they
happened to be rich, barley if they were poor. They shut themselves up in the
darkest corners of the their houses, where some through extreme hunger ate
their grain as it was, others made bread, necessity and fear being their only
guides. Nowhere was a table laid…”
The artifacts will be on display in a study conference on
the City of David next Thursday
