Holy lanDfillBIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 45
by Herod the Great in 19 B.C.E. These immense
building projects also included the construction of
a maze of drainage channels beneath the streets,
including one running from the Ophel ( just south
of the Temple Mount southward) to the Siloam Pool.
It makes sense that the procurators were the
inspiration behind the city’s waste management pro-
gram, as it promoted civic life in Jerusalem by keep-
ing the ever-growing city relatively clean. But why
Jerusalem? Garbage was a problem in all Roman
cities, yet we have no record of such operations
in other cities like Caesarea or Scythopolis (Beth
Shean). In Pompeii, garbage was simply discarded
into the sewage channels. So why did Jerusalem
receive this civic luxury?
We believe the Jewish population of the city, and
specifically their unique religious practices during
the first century C.E., may explain the presence of
the landfill.
For Jews observing purity laws, clay vessels had
to be broken and discarded, ritual baths (mikva’ot)
became a necessity, and so on (see “ ‘Pure’ Garbage—
Limestone Vessel Remains,” above). Could it be that
garbage was also considered ritually impure? We
have no direct evidence of this, but we learn from
later rabbinic sources that it was forbidden to dis-
card waste within the city’s walls, and that garbage
had to be taken out of the city.^6
It seems that the landfill expresses an intercultural
agreement between Jews and their Roman overlords.
On the one hand, the Roman procurators brought
with them knowledge and ideology of how a city
should run and operate. On the other hand, Jewish
leaders and local cultural traditions likely demanded
patterns of behavior that encouraged civic purity
programs in the growing city, such as garbage dis-
posal. Ultimately, we can conclude that the Jewish
concept of the ritual impurity of certain types of gar-
bage drove the need to place it outside of the city—a
task that was welcomed, organized, and performed
by the Romans. The landfill therefore appears to
CONTINUES ON PAGE 70“Pure” Garbage—Limestone Vessel Remains
D
uring the late Second Temple period (c.
first century B.C.E.–70 C.E.), Jews living
throughout Judea went to extraordinary
lengths to observe the Biblical laws relating
to ritual purity. Not only could people
become impure (e.g., from menstruation,
sexual relations, and contact with certain
animal remains and human corpses), but so
too could the food, drink, and utensils that
came into contact with ritual impurity.
Pottery is singled out in Leviticus 11:33 as a
material that was particularly susceptible to
impurity and which, once it had become
impure, had to be broken. By the late first
century B.C.E., many Jews began to believe
that stone was impervious to impurity. They
subsequently began to produce a “pure
alternative” to pottery—tableware and
storage vessels fashioned out of local, soft
limestone.* The Gospel of John relates this
phenomenon in the wedding at Cana
narrative: the six jars that held the water-
turned-to-wine are said to have been made
of stone, and we are told that this had
something to do with “the purity [laws] of
the Jews” (John 2:6).
More than a thousand fragments of
limestone vessels were unearthed in the
Jerusalem garbage dump. Although lime-
stone vessels have been found in the past
at hundreds of late Second Temple period
sites throughout Israel, the large number of
remains found in the dump allow us to see
how common the various types of stone ves-
sels were in ancient Jerusalem. We also com-
pared the quantity of “pure” stone vessels to
potentially “impure” pottery vessels. In oneexcavated section, we found that 99 percent
of the fragments were made of pottery while
only 1 percent were made of stone.—Yonatan
Adler, Ariel University*See Yitzhak Magen, “Ancient Israel’s Stone Age: Purity in
Second Temple Times,” bar, September/October 1998.
PHOTO BY PAVEL SHRAGO“PURE” STONE VESSELS. Among the surpris-
ing finds in the dump were limestone ves-
sels which had broken while being made
and subsequently been discarded before
they were finished. This is clear evidence
that limestone vessels where being pro-
duced by artisans within Jerusalem.