by Gil Zohar. The City of David marked its 13th annual archaeological conference last week (Sept. 6). The site, the most active archaeological dig in the country, has been in the news a great deal this past year due to the large number of discoveries there and the politics of the site, according to Prof. Ronnie Reich. The conference was dedicated in honor of the Haifa University archaeologist, who has been excavating at the City of David since 1975, and is now moving to a new and undisclosed position.

Amongst the year’s discoveries, he said, were the mysterious “V”-shaped markings chiseled in the bedrock. Reich and his assistant Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority turned to the public after being unable to determine the purpose of the grooves. More than 75,000 cyber-responses poured in over the Internet but the meaning of the cryptic markings remains unclear, Reich said.

Another key discovery of the last year was the determination that Herod the Great’s monumental Second Temple was not finished during the king’s lifetime but that work continued for decades, Reich added.

This year’s conference, the “bar mitzvah” or 13^th of the popular annual event, also marked the centenary of the City of David expedition – today considered a treasure hunt – by Montague  Parker and Pere L.-H. Vincent, noted Reich. Unlike John Lewis Burckhardt’s discovery of Petra in 1812, or Heinrich Schiemann’s uncovering of Troy in 1871, for four decades in the 19^th and early 20^th century excavators in Jerusalem failed to identify the site with the City of David, Reich continued. It was only in 1907 that F.J. Bliss connected the Virgin’s Pool with the Siloam Pool, he noted. Previously explorers, basing themselves on the accounts of the ancient Jewish writer Josephus Flavius, assumed the City of David was in fact located on Mount Zion, Reich said.

Undoubtedly the key discovery of the last year was the recent announcement of a 250 cubic meter rock-hewn cistern dating back some 2,700 years to the First Temple period. The excavation, during the course of which the reservoir was discovered, is part of an archaeological project to expose the entire drainage channel of Jerusalem dating to the Second Temple period.

The channel runs south toward the City of David and the Siloam Pool from a point beneath Robinson’s Arch near the Western Wall along a now largely filled-in valley that extends from north to south the length of the ancient city, parallel to the Temple Mount.

In his description of Jerusalem in the Second Temple period, Josephus refers to the valley by its Greek name “Tyropoeon,” which scholars interpret as the “Valley of the Cheese-makers.” Another interpretation identifies the valley with the “Valley of the Decision,” mentioned in the Book of Joel.

Reich and Shukron determined that the original water reservoir was made obsolete some 700 years after being dug when Herodian engineers built their new channel passing through the existing rock-hewn installations that were located along it.

According to Eli Shukron, “While excavating beneath the floor of the drainage channel a small breach in the bedrock was revealed that led us to the large water reservoir. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that a water reservoir of this kind has been exposed in an archaeological excavation. The exposure of the current reservoir, as well as smaller cisterns that were revealed along the Tyropoeon Valley, unequivocally indicates that Jerusalem’s water consumption in the First Temple period was not solely based on the output of the Gihon Spring water works, but also on more available water resources such as the one we have just discovered.”

According to Dr. Tvika Tsuk, chief archaeologist of the Nature and Parks Authority and an expert on ancient water systems, “The large water reservoir that was exposed, with two other cisterns nearby, is similar in its general shape and in the kind of plaster to the light yellow plaster that characterized the First Temple period and resembles the ancient water system that was previously exposed at Bet Shemesh.

“In addition, we can see the hand prints of the plasters left behind when they were adding the finishing touches to the plaster walls, just like in the water reservoirs of Tel Be’er Sheva, Tel Arad and Tel Bet Shemesh, which also date to the First Temple period”. Dr. Tsuk says, “Presumably the large water reservoir, which is situated near the Temple Mount, was used for the everyday activities of the Temple Mount itself and also by the pilgrims who went up to the Temple and required water for bathing and drinking.”

While nominally considered part of Jerusalem Walls National Park, the City of David is administered by the Ir David Foundation, also called the Elad Association, from the Hebrew acronym for: To the City of David, which encourages Jewish settlement at the site as well as archaeological excavations.