In the late Second Temple period, the western hill was Jerusalem's upper-class residential quarter. This is where the Hasmonean and Herodian palaces were located, and where Jerusalem's wealthiest Jews lived. In addition to offering a stunning view across the Tyropoeon Valley to the Temple Mount, the western hill remains cooler in summer thanks to its relatively high elevation. Although the Hasmonean palace has not been found, Avigad's excavations in the Jewish Quarter in the 1970s brought to light densely packed urban villas belonging to the Jerusalem elite. The largest villa, which Avigad dubbed "the mansion," covers an area of some 600 square meters. Each villa consisted of two or three stories of rooms (including a basement for storage) surrounding a central courtyard.
7.6 Mosaic floor and stone table from the Jewish Quarter. Courtesy of Zev Radovan/ BibleLandPictures. com.
Unlike contemporary houses in North America, which have large windows opening onto lawns and gardens surrounding the house, in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East houses focused on a central courtyard surrounded by rooms. This arrangement provided privacy for the house's residents, with windows and doorways in the walls facing the courtyard providing light and air to the surrounding rooms.
The urban villas discovered by Avigad were decorated in Roman fashion with mosaic floors, wall paintings (frescoes) in the Second Pompeian Style (a style popular in Italy in the first century C. E.), and stucco (plaster molded in imitation of marble panels and other architectural shapes). Some rooms had been repainted or remodeled more than once, to keep up with changing styles of interior decoration. The villas also were furnished elaborately with expensive Roman-style stone tables (carved of local Jerusalem chalk) and sets of imported Eastern Terra Sigillata pottery dishes. One family owned a beautiful mold-made glass vase that was signed by Ennion, a famous Phoenician master craftsman. (A complete glass vase manufactured in the same mold is in the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art [it was acquired on the antiquities market, so its provenance is unknown].) The discovery of the vase in the Jewish Quarter excavations provides a context for dating Ennion's products to the first century C. E.
The size and lavish decoration of these urban villas indicates that the residents were members of the Jerusalem elite. Clearly these wealthy Jews were “Romanized" — that is, they had adopted many aspects of the Roman lifestyle.
7.7 Ennion's glass vase from the Jewish Quarter, mold blown, signature inscription in Greek, Jerusalem, first century C. E. Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
At the same time, there is evidence that they also observed Jewish law. For example, the interior decoration is Roman in style but lacks the figured images that characterize Roman art (such as deities, humans, and animals). Instead, these wealthy Jews apparently understood the Second Commandment, which prohibits the making of images for worship, as meaning that it is forbidden to portray any figured images in art. Furthermore, each villa was equipped with one or more miqva'ot (ritual baths) and yielded large numbers of stone (chalk) dining dishes and other stone vessels, attesting to the observance of purity laws. Many Jews of the late Second Temple period believed that stone cannot contract ritual impurity (based on their interpretation of a biblical passage). In contrast, if a pottery vessel comes into contact with something that is ritually impure, it cannot be purified and must be smashed. Although stone is more difficult and therefore more expensive to work than pottery, the investment paid off for Jews who were concerned about the observance of purity laws and could afford to purchase stone vessels. The stone vessels found in the Jewish Quarter villas include knife-pared stone “mugs" — which are common at sites around Palestine
7.8 Stone vessels from the Jewish Quarter. Courtesy of Zev Radovan/BibleLandPictures. com.
And may have been used for ritual hand-washing before meals — as well as sets of more expensive lathe-turned dining dishes and large jars. The stone dining dishes might have been used for offerings of produce (Hebrew terumah) given to priests, which had to be consumed in a state of ritual purity. John (2:1—11) describes Jesus turning water stored in stone jars into wine at a wedding at Cana in Galilee: “Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons."
The archaeological evidence for purity observance suggests that some of the wealthy residents of the Jewish Quarter villas were priests, which is not surprising, as we know that priestly families (and especially high priestly families) were members of the Jerusalem elite. Avigad discovered additional evidence of priestly presence in a villa that he dubbed “the Burnt House." This villa is so called because the basement rooms (the only part of the house that survived) were covered with layers of ashy soot, from the destruction of the house by the Romans in 70 C. E. The vats, ovens, tables, and other installations suggest that this was a workshop, perhaps for the manufacture of a product used in the Jerusalem temple. A stone weight found in one of the rooms is inscribed with the name of a known priestly family — Bar Kathros — presumably the villa's owners. On a step leading down into the basement, Avigad found the skeletal arm of a young woman about 20 years of age, who was crushed when the burning house collapsed on top of her. These are the only human physical remains that have been discovered until now connected with Jerusalem's destruction by the Romans in 70 C. E.
7.9 Skeletal arm of a young woman in the Burnt House. Courtesy of Zev Radovan/ BibleLandPictures. com.
World History
