Space Network News Jerusalem-based news website highlighting positive and inspiring stories & news

BY Itzhak Rabihiya

Stone table top used to measure liquid volumes located in large courtyard in City of David’s Stepped Street, which archaeologists believe was the central market.

A rare Second Temple measuring table was recently discovered in the City of David, and it is causing archaeologists to identify an ancient Jerusalem square as the city’s 2,000-year-old central market, according to Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Ari Levy – publish the times of Israel.

In conversation with The Times of Israel on Monday, Levy said the stone table would have belonged to the market’s manager, or agoranomos, who was in charge of the weights and measures of commodities traded in the shuk.

The measuring table was found in a broad paved central square still undergoing excavation, alongside dozens of stone measurement weights. The sum of the parts has led the IAA archaeologists to conclude that this area of the Stepped Street, a paved 2,000-year-old pilgrims’ path that connects the Siloam Pool with the Temple Mount, would have served as ancient Jerusalem’s main market.

“The volume standard table we’ve found, as well as the stone weights discovered nearby, support the theory that this was the site of vast trade activity, and perhaps this may indicate the existence of a market,” said Levy in a press release.

Today, the path is five meters (16 feet) under ground. Archaeologists and historians call the road that is being excavated under an East Jerusalem Arab neighborhood the “Stepped Street.” In more popular parlance it is called the “Pilgrims’ Path” or the “Pilgrimage Road.” In total, the path stretches some 600 meters long and is eight meters wide. Both sides of the street were lined with shops that were likely two stories high, said Levy during a recent visit there.

It was built starting in 20 CE by the Romans and completed under the governance of Pontius Pilate in about 30 CE. A recent study of 100 coins collected under pavement at the site appears to confirm this dating.

But the Romans, in destroying Jerusalem in 70 CE, covered up all their hard work just 40 years later. For the past decade, Jerusalem archaeologists have been excavating the dirt and debris that cover the near-mint condition Roman paving stones. Along the way, they’ve uncovered untold artifacts, such as this measuring table.

Only two other such measuring tables have been discovered in Israel: One in the 1970s in the Old City of Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter by Dr. Nahman Avigad, and the second during excavations in Shuafat in northern Jerusalem in 2007 under Dr. Rahel Bar-Natan. However, contemporary measuring tables are found in city centers throughout the Roman Empire that used the same system of measures for the volume of the liquids — likely olive oil or wine — as the one found in the City of David find, said Levy.

The fact that the measuring table is made of stone has nothing to do with Temple purity, said archaeologist Levy. Asked who this market manager would have been — Roman or Jewish — Levy laughed and said, “Until we find his identification card, we can’t know.”

Preliminary research into the table is being conducted by archaeologist Prof. Ronny Reich, an expert in ancient Jerusalem who was among the first to find portions of the sewer system which led to the discovery of the Pilgrims’ Path.

Describing the piece of the stone table top, Reich said in the press release, “We see two of the deep cavities remain, each with a drain at its bottom. The drain at the bottom could be plugged with a finger, filled with a liquid of some type, and once the finger was removed, the liquid could be drained into a container, therefore determining the volume of the container, using the measurement table as a uniform guideline. This way, traders could calibrate their measuring instruments using a uniform standard.”