A scientific breakthrough has exposed the truth about a site in ancient Jerusalem, overturning expert opinion and vindicating the Bible’s account.
Until now, experts believed a stretch of wall in the original heart of the city was built by Hezekiah, King of Judah, whose reign straddled the seventh and eighth centuries BC.
He had seen his neighbours to the north, the Kingdom of Israel, destroyed by the ᴀssyrian Empire, and it was thought that he built the wall to defend against the invaders.
But now an almost decade-long study has revealed it was built by his great-grandfather, Uzziah, after a huge earthquake, echoing the account of the Bible.
The wall is in the City of David – the historic archaeological site that formed the original town of Jerusalem, according to the Bible.
Who was Hezekiah?
Mentioned in the books of Kings, Isaiah and Chronicles in the Bible, King Hezekiah is regarded as one of the greatest kings of Judah.
He is thought to have ruled between 715BC and 686BC following the death of his father King Ahaz. According to the Hebrew Bible he was 25 when he ᴀssumed the throne.
Following the death of the ᴀssyrian king Sargon II, Hezekiah took the opportunity to throw off the subservience of his kingdom to the ᴀssyrians.
He ceased to pay the tribute imposed upon his father and instead allied himself with Egypt.
Sargon’s son Sennacherib embarked on a series of attempts to suppress this rebellion which culmulated in the siege of Jerusalem.
Hezekiah’s reign is thought to have brought about a notable increase in the power of Judah in the region and it became an important state on the frontier between ᴀssyria and Egpt.
The Hebrew Bible also describes how Hezekiah made a miraculous recovery from a sickness after praying to God. He went on to live for another 15 years.
Joe Uziel of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said: ‘For decades, it was ᴀssumed that this wall was built by Hezekiah, King of Judah.
‘But it is now becoming clear that it dates back to the days of King Uzziah, as hinted at in the Bible.
‘Until now, many researchers ᴀssumed that the wall was built by Hezekiah during his rebellion against Sennacherib, King of ᴀssyria, in order to defend Jerusalem during the ᴀssyrian siege.
But using ancient tree rings from Europe, scientists were able to chart these fluctuations year by year.
Elisabetta Boaretto of the Weizmann Insтιтute said: ‘The resolution of c-14 was very bad – 200-300 years; it was impossible to distinguish anything else.
‘With the work we’ve done in the City of David, we succeeded to reach a resolution less than 10 years, which is really something very very new and dramatic.’
The scientists took their samples from organic artifacts found at four different excavation sites in the ancient heart of Jerusalem – sometimes called the City of David.
Among these were grape seeds, date pits and even bat skeletons.
All were cleaned, converted into graphite, then put into a particle accelerator at speeds of 3,000km per second to separate the carbon-14 from other organic material.
Measuring the carbon then revealed the sample’s true age.
Yuval Gadot of Tel Aviv University said the method had also pushed back the westward expansion of the city by five generations.
‘The conventional ᴀssumption to date has been that the city expanded due to the arrival of refugees from the Kingdom of Israel in the north, following the ᴀssyrian exile.
‘However, the new findings strengthen the view that Jerusalem grew in size and spread towards Mount Zion already in the ninth century BC.
‘This was during the reign of King Jehoash – a hundred years before the ᴀssyrian exile.
‘In light of this, the new research teaches that the expansion of Jerusalem is a result of internal-Judean demographic growth and the establishment of political and economic systems.’
