Situated in Northwest Jerusalem is a high-tech industrial park named Har Hotzvim. Sometimes referred to as the “Campus of Science-Rich Industries,” the park contains local contingencies of the world’s biggest tech companies. What was odd to some, however, was the fact that it was named as such; as it turns out, “Har Hotzvim” is Hebrew for “stonecutter’s mountain.” It’s held that name since antiquity, and yet the reason why it was named that way isn’t exactly common knowledge. Now, with new findings from a recent excavation into the area, archaeologists now have evidence to suggest that the name “Har Hotzvim” may go back even farther than they once thought.
The ancient quarry was found on a roadside within Har Hotzvim. Experts analyzed what they found onsite, and found the quarry to be around 2,000 years old. This places the ancient quarry within Jerusalem’s Second Temple Period, a period which lasted between 516 BCE (before the common era) and 70 CE (in the common era); the period was associated with the construction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, which stood on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount after the first temple—sometimes referred to as Solomon’s Temple—was destroyed in a siege by the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
The current size of the quarry is believed to be only a segment of the full site; as it stands, though, the current site already covers 600 m2 (0.15 acres). The research team, however, believes the original site to be around two to three times larger than what was already excavated.
Dr. Moran Hagbi, an archaeologist from the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA), said that “[the] large-scale building projects in ancient Jerusalem, such as the Temple Mount, required a vast amount of building materials and the ability to organize and coordinate the quarrying and transportation of thousands of building blocks to the ancient city,”
In the site, they discovered massive building blocks in “various stages of working,” with some measuring 1.5 m × 2 m (5 ft × 6.6 ft) in size. Some of these massive blocks were about to be detached from the unearthed bedrock in the quarry, and were said to be transported back to the ancient city that once stood in Jerusalem for construction.
Hagbi continued: “For us, this quarry presents a golden opportunity: because some of the stones were left in situ in this way, we can copy ancient technologies and experiment with them in order to recreate the processes by which the building stones were quarried.” Hagbi and team plan to do this by performing studies using replicas of stonemaking tools found in previous excavations.
IAA general director Dr. Eli Eskozido believes that the new find gives the city a rare opportunity to research and understand the processes involved in construction during the time of antiquity “in a symbolic way” as it stands to be compared to Jerusalem’s technological advancement, given the place where the 2,000-year-old quarry was found. “Before any development project begins in Jerusalem, our archaeologists are called upon to excavate and examine any ancient finds, for the sake of future generations.”
(For more archaeology news, check out Modern Sciences’ piece on an archaeological dig in Syria that yielded what could be the world’s oldest war memorial.)
References
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (2021, September 5). Second Temple period quarry uncovered in Jerusalem. Gov.Il. https://www.gov.il/en/departments/general/second-temple-period-quarry-uncovered-in-jerusalem-5-september-2021
- Sci-News. (2021, September 27). Israeli Archaeologists Uncover Second Temple Period Quarry. Sci-News. http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/second-temple-period-quarry-10108.html
