An enormous building that hosted public functions and perhaps city government meetings in ancient Jerusalem is reopening to the public some 2,000 years after its construction.
The newly excavated structure, located next to the Israeli capital’s Western Wall, consists of two identical, elaborately decorated halls where dignitaries may have gathered while visiting the city and the Second Temple, reports Rossella Tercatin for the Jerusalem Post.
“This is, without a doubt, one of the most magnificent public buildings from the Second Temple period ever uncovered outside the Temple Mount walls in Jerusalem,” says excavation leader Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah in a statement.
British archaeologist Charles Warren first identified the building in the 19th century. Excavations and efforts to fully recover the structure moved forward in starts and stops over the next 150 or so years. Though archaeologists previously believed that the public center was built under the Hasmonean dynasty (roughly 143 to 37 B.C.), they now say that it dates to between 20 and 30 A.D.
As the Times of Israel’s Amanda Borschel-Dan reports, experts arrived at the more recent date range after pulling up some of the building’s ancient flooring and performing carbon dating on organic materials. They also found coins and pottery pieces that held clues to the timing of construction.
Weksler-Bdolah tells the Times that the team didn’t completely excavate the site because they wanted to preserve other structures in the area, which is tightly packed with historically significant ancient architecture.
