68 Scientific American, April 2022
Simon Norfolk (all photographs)Since the 1830s treasure hunters, religious enthusiasts and
scholars have flocked here to dig into the past of a place billions of
people hold sacred. Seeking tombs and riches, the early arrivals
created the field of biblical archaeology—the only discipline
founded on the idea that the tools of science can bolster rather than
undermine traditional faith. In time, they were largely replaced by
secular academics who were less devoted to upholding scripture
or finding treasure but who nonetheless considered the Bible to
be a tool as valuable as their spades.
Yet despite more than a century and a half of study, Jerusalem
has largely confounded researchers. Entire eras within its
5,000-year-long archaeological record were missing, from the
chapters documenting its early Judean roots to the later periods
of Persian, Hellenistic and Arab dominance. Scientists knew lit-
tle about the health of the city’s inhabitants, what they ate, who
they traded with, or how they influenced—and were influenced
by—their neighbors.
The major culprit for these gaps in knowledge is the old fixa-
tion by archaeologists on Hebrew scripture at the expense of mod-
ernizing their approach to reconstructing the past. Only very
recently have they adopted techniques such as radiocarbon dat-
ing, long considered standard practice by researchers working in
other parts of the world. Intent on finding storied remains of the
biblical era, they have been slow to undertake the arduous work
of sifting through garbage heaps to gain a fuller picture of every-
day life millennia ago.
Now Jerusalem scholars are racing to catch up with their col-
leagues by embracing new analytical methods and goals. Yet 21st-
century archaeology in a city shared by three faiths and contested
by two peoples is as closely tied to religion and politics as it was in
the 19th century—an arrangement that has cast a pall over the sci-
ence. Excavations in Jerusalem today are firmly under the control
of the Israel Antiquities Authority, a government organization that
grants no permits to Palestinian teams in the city and only rarely
approves them for foreigners. Fundamentalist Christian as well as
Jewish groups with overt religious agendas pour money into costly
digs. Israeli leaders regularly cite archaeological finds to strengthen
their claim to the Holy City, whereas a host of international orga-
nizations denounce any excavations—no matter how impeccable
the scientific method—in areas considered occupied.
“Truth springs up from the Earth,” according to the part of the
Bible that Christians and Jews call the Psalms and that Muslims
call the Zabur. But the truth emerging from this city’s past,
revealed by the latest analytical techniques, is as complicated by
the harsh realities of the present as it was when the first spade
struck into the ground. This is what makes Jerusalem a uniquely
challenging site for researchers. It is a rare crucible where reli-
gion, politics and science meet—sometimes to cooperate and
sometimes to collide.A distinguished AmericAn classical scholar named Edward Robin-
son started the biblical Gold Rush in the 1830s, at the dawn of
modern archaeology. Robinson was a devoutly Protestant aca-
demic who believed in the Bible’s inerrant truth. While on sabbat-
ical in Germany, he encountered the new fashion of biblical criti-
cism, which sought to apply logic and reason to scripture. Morti-
fied by what he considered to be heretical questioning of the truth
contained in the holy text, Robinson wanted to counter this grow-
ing tide of religious skepticism and secularism in the West. He
would do this, he decided, by using scientific methods to show that
the Bible accurately described real-world people, places and events.
Armed with the Good Book as his field guide and a thermometer,
measuring tape, telescope and three compasses as his tools, he set
out for Jerusalem to find what he called “indisputable remains of
Jewish antiquity.”
Robinson began by attempting to tie the current-day names ofAst fAll the discovery of A 2,700-yeAr-old toilet mAde heAdlines Around the world.
Its significance had less to do with long-ago plumbing than with the site of its discovery:
Jerusalem. No place on Earth has seen so much digging for so long as this ancient Mid-
dle Eastern city; on any given day, a dozen or more excavations are underway in what is
now a fast-growing metropolis. And no place attracts as much media attention for its
archaeological finds, no matter how mundane. Only here would an ancient
latrine seize the imaginations of millions.Andrew Lawler is a contributing writer for Science
and a contributing editor for Archaeology. His latest
book is Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of
the World’s Most Contested City (Doubleday, 2021).
Read more at http://www.andrewlawler.com