Biblical Archaeology Review

However, she believes there was a Solomonic wall here: “The date of these earliest walls [SII], on the basis of the deposits against them, is, on the field estimate of the pottery, eighth century B.C. or earlier [emphasis supplied]. The interesting point is that these walls were constructed of re-used stones of the character identified as Phoenician at Samaria ... Solomon’s use of Phoenician masons is undoubted and it is a reasonable inference that, close at hand, there was a wall of the time of Solomon, from which the builders of the eighth century B.C.

Leen Ritmeyer, The Quest (Jerusalem: Carta, 2006), p. 168.

Kenyon, Digging Up Jerusalem, p. 117.

See Nahman Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1980), p. 28.

Ussishkin, “The Temple Mount in Jerusalem,” pp. 473–483.

For the initial publication of the cuneiform tablet, see Mazar, Horowitz, Oshima and Goren, “A Cuneiform Tablet from the Ophel in Jerusalem,” pp. 4–21.

In Eilat Mazar, Wayne Horowitz, Takayoshi Oshima and Yuval Goren, “A Cuneiform Tablet from the Ophel in Jerusalem,” Israel Exploration Journal 60 (2010), p. 5.

David Ussishkin, “The Temple Mount in Jerusalem During the First Temple Period: An Archaeologist’s View,” in J. David Schloen, ed., Exploring the Longue Durée (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), p. 480.

Eilat Mazar, “The Solomonic Wall in Jerusalem,” in Aren M. Maeir and P. de Mroschedji, eds., “I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times,” vol. 2 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), p. 775. See also Eilat Mazar, The Complete Guide to the Temple Mount Excavations (Jerusalem: Shoham Academic Research and Publication, 2002), p. 5.

However, she believes there was a Solomonic wall here: “The date of these earliest walls [SII], on the basis of the deposits against them, is, on the field estimate of the pottery, eighth century B.C. or earlier [emphasis supplied]. The interesting point is that these walls were constructed of re-used stones of the character identified as Phoenician at Samaria ... Solomon’s use of Phoenician masons is undoubted and it is a reasonable inference that, close at hand, there was a wall of the time of Solomon, from which the builders of the eighth century B.C.