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Archaeological Discoveries: 2,000 Year Old Cookings Pots Uncovered in Jerusalem

(June 2013)

Three complete cooking pots and a small ceramic oil lamp were uncovered inside a small cistern in a drainage channel that runs from the Shiloah Pool in the City of David to Robinson’s Arch near the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City.

A small cistern belonging to a building was exposed in an archaeological excavation the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting near the Western Wall, in the vicinity of Robinson’s Arch. Inside the cistern were three intact cooking pots and a small ceramic oil lamp that date to the time of the Great Revolt. The vessels were discovered inside the drainage channel that was exposed in its entirety from the Shiloah Pool in the City of David to the beginning of Robinson’s Arch

According to Eli Shukron, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “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. The complete cooking pots and ceramic oil lamp 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”. 

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. His dramatic description of the famine in Jerusalem tells about the Jewish rebels who sought food in the homes of their fellow Jews in the city who concealed the food they possessed for fear it would be stolen by the rebels and they ate it in hidden places in their homes:

“As the famine grew worse, the frenzy of the partisans increased with it ... For as 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 ... 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.” (Josephus The Jewish War. Translated by G.A. Williamson 1959. P. 290). 


Sources:Israel Antiquities Authority