Inside BAR

In about 1000 B.C. David, king of Israel, marched his army up a steep hill called Jebus by its occupiers and, on the summit, captured the Fortress of Zion, the citadel that the Jebusites had built several hundred years earlier. The 15-acre site then became known as the City of David. The name has survived for three millennia; it still refers to the same rocky spur, the most ancient Jerusalem.

In search of this earliest Jerusalem, Israeli archaeologist Yigal Shiloh has been excavating the City of David since 1978. Shiloh discovered a settlement dating back 5,500 years—far older than any previously discovered remains. He also uncovered part of the base of the Jebusite Fortress of Zion, as well as a tenth-century B.C. monumental stepped stone structure five stones high that supported the royal-administrative center of David and Solomon, and remains from many other layers of civilization. In “The City of David After Five Years of Digging,” BAR editor Hershel Shanks shares the often-spectacular findings of the City of David excavation team, recently published by excavator Shiloh.

Shanks’s book, The City of David, written before Shiloh’s excavations began, is a concise history and walker’s guide to the Biblical and archaeological history of this most ancient area of Jerusalem and is still widely read and referred to.