Archaeologists have reconstructed how Babylonian invaders burned down a building in Jerusalem more than 2500 years ago, using chemical clues in the debris.
The building was destroyed as part of the Babylonian conquest of the Kingdom of Judah, which is presented as a turning point in the story of Judaism in the Hebrew Bible.
Beginning in 601 BC, Judean kings launched a series of unsuccessful rebellions against the Babylonians, who had taken control of the region under King Nebuchadnezzar II. This culminated in 587 BC, when the Babylonians besieged the Judean capital of Jerusalem for about a year and a half.
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When the city finally surrendered in 586 BC, the Babylonians destroyed much of the city. But the historical record of this is poor. “The Babylonian chronicles from these years were not preserved,” says of Tel Aviv University in Israel.
As a result, the Hebrew Bible is the only account. It claims comprehensive devastation, Shalom says: “There was a violent and complete destruction, the whole city was burned and it stayed completely empty, like the descriptions you see in Lamentations about the city deserted and in complete misery.” Famously, Solomon’s Temple was destroyed.
Shalom and her colleagues are excavating a site called Building 100 on the south-eastern hill of ancient Jerusalem. “We don’t have the whole site, but just the part we do have is already one of the largest buildings in the city at the time,” says Shalom. It is at least 10 metres by 17 metres, with three rooms arranged in a row. There may be more of the building to the north of the known rooms.
The building was constructed from finely hewn stones called ashlars. It had two storeys, and the upper level had an unusual plaster floor. The team has also found imported ivory and the remains of jars that held spiced wine. “The people here were rich and could get their hands on very unique commodities,” says Shalom.
It was obvious from the debris and charred remains that the building had caught fire and the upper floor had collapsed. To reconstruct what happened, Shalom and her colleagues used two techniques. One, based on the absorption of infrared light, enabled them to estimate to what degree a piece of debris or sediment had been heated. Similarly, archaeomagnetism revealed whether items that contained magnetic minerals had become hot enough to reorient the magnetic compounds to a new magnetic north.
These analyses show that several fires were lit in the building. The team didn’t find any evidence for extra fuel, says Shalom, probably because the building already contained a lot of wooden furniture and other flammable material. In addition, the arsonists probably ignited the beams that held the second storey, she says.
Burning the beams meant the upper storey collapsed – probably all at once, according to previous by some members of the team. “Many of them recorded the same magnetic north in the location where they were found,” says Shalom. This implies they were still joined to each other when they fell.
The collapse of the upper floor would have quenched the fires, which weren’t particularly hot, staying below 400°C. However, the extent of the debris suggests people went back in and knocked down any remaining walls. “I’m not sure it would collapse so completely as we found it without help,” says Shalom.
While Building 100 was thoroughly destroyed, many other preserved buildings in Jerusalem show little or no sign of damage. In a study published in March, . “The picture is not actually that uniform,” she says. “You’re not really finding this picture of complete devastation everywhere that you’re digging.”
Shalom suggests that the Babylonians didn’t destroy indiscriminately or comprehensively. Instead, “they targeted the more important, the more famous buildings in the city”, as a way of sending a political message that the Judean elite had failed and resistance to the Babylonian Empire was futile. On this view, it was a symbolic act designed to break morale – and it hit home. “2600 years later, we’re still mourning the temple,” says Shalom.
Journal of Archaeological Science
