24 September 2007
A quarry which supplied the stone used for the construction of the second Jewish Temple has been discovered in an area north of Jerusalem, an Israeli archaeologist said on Sunday. The pit was unearthed two months ago during inspections ahead of construction work at a site some three miles north of Temple Mount, Yuval Baruch of the country's antiquities authority told journalists. Temple Mount, constructed by King Herod, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. and its only remaining vestige, the Western Wall, is considered Judaism's holiest site.
"We have uncovered the quarry where the blocks used for the construction of the Second Temple were extracted some 2,000 years ago," Baruch said. The quarry is located in the Jewish Orthodox neighbourhood of Ramat Shlomo in east Jerusalem. "We immediately understood the exceptional importance of this quarry, and from a historic point of view this is a sensational discovery," he said. The quarry's white rock, which resembles marble, and its huge five-to-seven tonne blocks "are unprecedented and similar to those of the Western Wall," he said. Tools and coins from King Herod's time were also found at the site.