JERUSALEM AREA BY AREA - Jerusalem and the Holy Land - page 76

The Burnt
House w
Tiferet Yisrael Street. Map 4 D4.
Tel [phone]. l # 9am-4:20pm

Sun- Thu, 9am-12:20pm Fri. & 7
8 phone in advance.

In AD 70 the Romans took
Jerusalem and destroyed the
Temple and Lower City to
the south. A month later they A

rampaged through the wealthy
Upper City, setting fire to the
houses. The charred walls
and a coin dated to AD 69
discovered during excavations
show that this was one of
those houses.
A stone weight found among

Surviving walls of the Crusader-built St Mary of the Germans

St Mary of the
Germans e
Misgav la-Dakh Street. Map 4 D4.
# daily.

Beside the church is a flight
of steps down to the Western
Wall Plaza. These provide
wonderful views of the
Western Wall, the Dome of
the Rock and the Mount of
Olives behind.

A
the debris bears the inscription
“son of Kathros”, indicating
that the house belonged to a
wealthy family of high priests.
They are known from a sub-
sequent reference to them
in the Babylonian Talmud,
written between the 3rd and
6th century AD.
The rooms on view,
introduced by a slide show
with commentary, comprise a
kitchen, four rooms that may
have been bedrooms, and a
bathroom with a ritual bath. It
is believed that these formed
part of a much larger resi-
dence, but further excavations
cannot be undertaken as the
remains lie beneath present-
day neighbouring houses.
The entrance fee also
covers the Wohl Archaeo-
logical Museum (see p81) .

Immediately below the terrace
of Tiferet Yisrael's Quarter
Café are the original walls of
St Mary of the Germans. This
early 12th-century Crusader
church was part of a complex
that included a pilgrims' hos-
pice (no longer in existence)
and a hospital. It
was built by the
Knights Hospitallers
(see p49) and run
by their German
members. This was
in response to the
influx of German-
speaking pilgrims
unfamiliar with
French, the lingua
franca, or Latin, the
official language, of
the new Latin
Kingdom of
Jerusalem. Activity
ceased when
Jerusalem fell to the
Muslims in 1187, but
the church and the
hospital were again
used during the
brief period when
Jerusalem was once
more under Christian
rule (1229-44).
Today the church
is roofless. However,
the walls survive to
a considerable height,
showing clearly the
three apses of the
typical basilica plan
so widely used in the
Holy Land from early
Byzantine times.

Dung Gate r
Map 4 D5.

In old photographs the Dung
Gate is shown to be hardly
any larger than a
doorway in the
average domestic
house. Its name in
Hebrew is Shaar
ha-Ashpot, and it
is mentioned in the
Book of Nehemiah
(2: 13) in the Old
Testament. It is
probably named
after the ash that
was taken from
the Temple to be
deposited outside the city
walls. The Arab name is
Bab Silwan, because this is
the gate that leads to the
Arab village of Silwan.
The gate was enlarged
by the Jordanians in 1948
to allow vehicles to pass
through. It is now the main
entrance and exit for the
Jewish Quarter, but it still
remains the smallest of all
the Old City gates. It retains
its old Ottoman carved arch
with a stone flower above.

Dung Gate, leading
to the Western Wall

Jerusalem
Archaeological
Park t
See pp86-7.

The outline of rooms and some of the artifacts
unearthed at the Burnt House