2,000-year-old stairs unearthed in City of David excavation

A 2,000-year-old staircase has been unearthed during ongoing archeological excavations in the Jerusalem Walls National Park in the City of David conducted in cooperation with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the City of David Foundation.

The stairs, constructed out of hewn stone in the shape of a pyramid, are situated next to a Second Temple-era street used by worshippers making their way from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple. Dozens of intact clay, stone, and glass vessels were found at the foot of the staircase.

Israel Antiquities Authority archeologists Nahshon Szanton and Dr. Joe Uziel, who are directing the dig and who presented the newest findings last Thursday at a conference about research on the City of David, noted that no similar structure had been discovered at any excavation in Jerusalem.

"And even outside [Jerusalem], to the best of our knowledge," Szanton and Uziel said.

"For that reason, it's difficult to say with certainty what [the stairs] were used for," the researchers added.

The working assumption in the Antiquities Authority is that the stairs functioned as a formal podium.

Szanton and Uziel said that it would be "very interesting" to learn what had been said from atop the stairs 2,000 years ago. "Maybe messages from the government were delivered here, possibly news and juicy gossip."

The street where the stairs were discovered was unearthed in a well-preserved condition a few years ago. It has yet to be excavated in its entirety, but it appears to traverse a 2,000-year-old rainwater collection pipe that was uncovered in the Old City in recent years.

The street was built from immense stone paving slabs in the first 30 years of the first century C.E. and comprised one of the major construction projects of Second Temple period.

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