Ancient City of David To Be Re-Excavated

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A major new excavation will begin this summer in the oldest inhabited part of Jerusalem. Known as the city of David, the site is located on a dusty ridge south of the present Old City. The following article is by the man who is responsible for initiating the project and raising the money to finance it.—Ed.

Many of us deeply feel that our ancestral history is to be found in the pages of the Old Testament. In the Holy Land lie the tangible remains of our forefathers—a kind of ancient time capsule—linking us inseparably with our past. Like Schliemann digging for Troy with Homer as his guide, so we have dug for our past and our ancestors with the Bible as our guide.

It was inevitable that after the unification of Jerusalem, I rushed to Israel with my wife to wander through the Old City. We walked through the narrow, crowded streets filled with peddlers and shoppers, past the tumbled stones of destroyed synagogues, up to Mt. Scopus to gaze over the whole city—a unique mixture of both ancient and modern. Then we went to the dusty hill south of the Old City on which the original city of David is located, to the Jebusite town that King David conquered and designated the capital of my people.