Last week a team of archaeologists in Jerusalem claimed to have discovered part of a wall described in the book of Nehemiah in the Bible (Old Testament). The discovery in Jerusalem's ancient City of David resulted from a rescue to save a tower in danger of collapsing.
The leader of the dig was Eilat Mazar, head of the Institute of Archaeology at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem-based research and educational institute.
Artefacts including pottery shards and arrowheads (pictured) found under the tower suggested that both the tower and the nearby wall are from the 5th century BC, the time of Nehemiah, Mazar said this week. Scholars previously dated the wall to the 2nd century BC.
The findings suggest that the structure was actually part of the same city wall the Bible says Nehemiah rebuilt, Mazar said. The Book of Nehemiah gives a detailed description of construction of the walls, destroyed earlier by the Babylonians.
"We were amazed," she said, noting that the discovery was made at a time when many scholars argued that the wall did not exist. . "This was a great surprise. It was something we didn't plan."
The first phase of the dig, completed in 2005, uncovered what Mazar believes to be the remains of King David's palace, built by King Hiram of Tyre, and also mentioned in the Bible.
Ephraim Stern, professor emeritus of archaeology at Hebrew University and chairman of the state of Israel archaeological council, offered support for Mazar's claim.
"The material she showed me is from the Persian period," the period of Nehemiah, he said. "I can sign on the date of the material she found."
However some scholars doubt the dating of the find.
Israel Finkelstein, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, called the discovery "an interesting find.". However, he said that the artefacts do not confirm the wall's construction in the time of Nehemiah because they were not connected to the structural parts of the wall. This means the wall could have been built later.
"The wall could have been built, theoretically, in the Ottoman period," he said. "It's not later than the pottery - that's all we know," Finkelstein said.
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