When The Stones Speak

How can you test a people’s story against time, politics, and stone? In this book, the author argues that the City of David—an archaeological ridge just south of Jerusalem’s Ottoman walls—offers unusually direct evidence that Jewish history in Jerusalem is not merely literary memory but material fact. The core claim is bold and simple: when you align bedrock, inscriptions, and ritual infrastructure with biblical and extra-biblical texts, you recover a lived city that anchors Jewish indigeneity—and you watch how that evidence gets contested in courtrooms, newsrooms, and international bodies.

You enter a narrative that braids discovery with struggle. You meet 19th- and 21st-century diggers—Charles Warren, Eli Shukron, Ronny Reich, and Dr. Eilat Mazar—whose trenches traced tunnels, pools, palatial walls, and streets that pilgrims walked toward the Temple. You also meet donors, lawyers, diplomats, and adversaries: Baron Edmund de Rothschild (who bought the land so later archaeology could even happen), Supreme Court justices, UN officials, U.S. political officers, NGO activists, and local leaders who saw in every trench either a bridge to the past or a threat to the present.

The claim and how it’s built

The book builds its case on three pillars—texts, stones, and people—and shows them converging south of the Old City. Texts include the Hebrew Bible, inscriptions like the Siloam Inscription (late 8th century BCE), and external records (Merneptah Stele, Taylor Prism). Stones include Warren’s Shaft, Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the Pool of Siloam, the Herodian Pilgrimage Road, and a monumental structure that Eilat Mazar argued matches a 10th-century BCE royal complex. People include the workers and residents whose lives, seals, and coins reveal administrative, ritual, and everyday rhythms (for example, the Yehuchal ben Shelemiah bulla and rebel prutot stamped “Year Four – For the Freedom of Zion”).

Each line of evidence stands on its own; together they form a composite argument. When you can read an inscription cut into stone that narrates tunnelers meeting underground—and then walk that tunnel—text and trench reinforce each other with uncommon clarity. (Note: this kind of tight fit between artifact and narrative is rare in Near Eastern archaeology; here, the matches are unusually specific.)

Why the evidence triggers conflict

Because stones can legitimize stories, they become targets. Minimalist scholars questioned chronology and scale, proposing a “low chronology” that shrank Davidic Jerusalem to a village; political denialists asserted Jews have no ancient ties to Jerusalem at all. The book shows how skepticism turns from a refining scientific tool into a rhetorical weapon when it ignores inscriptions and contexts, or when bulldozers remove Temple Mount fill without archaeological oversight (as in 1999), forcing salvage analysis later through the Temple Mount Sifting Project.

At ground level, the stakes are personal and dangerous. Excavations sparked threats, arson of Arab supervisors’ cars, worker blacklists, and even attempts to assassinate City of David director David Be’eri (“Davidleh”). In courts and media, opponents alleged tunnels undermined homes. Diplomats weighed in; headlines spiked. The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed claims as baseless (Sept 21, 2009; Justice Edna Arbel), praised the excavation’s global value, and fined petitioners—yet the PR war continued.

What you’ll discover in the story

First, you’ll see how 19th-century forays (Charles Warren following the Gihon Spring) moved biblical Jerusalem south of the familiar Old City and how the Siloam Inscription fused text with engineering. You’ll then watch modern archaeologists extend that map: Eli Shukron and Ronny Reich uncover the Pool of Siloam and Pilgrimage Road; teams crawl the drainage channel to feel the flagstones above; a golden bell emerges from silt near the Western Wall foundations, chiming with Exodus imagery.

Second, you’ll learn why land deeds matter. Rothschild’s Ottoman-era purchases and careful documentation gave later archaeologists legal standing to protect and study the site, avoiding the fiascos of unsanctioned digs (e.g., Montagu Parker’s bribed tunneling under the Dome of the Rock). Ownership created continuity; it also created long-term battles over forged transfers and competing claims, especially after 1948–1967.

Third, you’ll see strategy at work. When litigation paused parts of the Pilgrimage Road excavation, the team pivoted to the Herodian drainage channel—smaller, safer, and politically harder to stop—ultimately exposing the Western Wall’s bedrock foundations and forging an archaeological connection between the City of David and Mount Moriah. Donor timing proved decisive (seed funding of ~$1.04M in 2008; later scale-ups by Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Larry Ellison, Eugene Shvidler, and Jan Koum).

Why it matters to you

If you care about how societies prove identity, the City of David is a masterclass. You learn to separate evidence from narrative spin, to build alliances across law, engineering, and media, and to anticipate that every trench can become political theater. You also glimpse limits: archaeology can show presence and continuity; it cannot by itself adjudicate modern sovereignty or ethics (the book makes this explicit). But it can cripple myths that deny a people’s past.

Finally, the book gives you human anchors: the Zenati family of Peki’in, whose synagogue inscription mirrors their oral history of continuous Jewish presence, and “Huweida,” whose journey from dialogue to rejectionism illustrates how contested memory hardens politics. Between them, you see why stones become symbols—and why telling their story clearly, with rigor and empathy, changes what people believe is possible in Jerusalem. (If you’ve read Neil Asher Silberman or Finkelstein, you’ll recognize the minimalist–maximalist debate; this book aligns with evidence-forward maximalism while urging methodological care.)

To understand why Jerusalem’s ancient center sits south of today’s Old City walls, you begin with Charles Warren. In the 1860s, Warren followed the Gihon Spring into Mount Ophel and uncovered a man-made tunnel, a vertical shaft (later “Warren’s Shaft”), and a water system that made the eastern slope defensible and livable. This physical plumbing of a hillside suggested that biblical Jerusalem—the City of David—wasn’t under the Ottoman Old City at all. It was just below it, on a narrow ridge overlooking the Kidron Valley.

The smoking gun came later: the Siloam Inscription, discovered in 1880 in paleo-Hebrew, narrating two teams of tunnelers meeting in the rock—an uncanny echo of the biblical account of King Hezekiah diverting the spring (late 8th century BCE). When you pair a carved first-person inscription with the tunnel itself, you get an unusually tight loop between text and stone. (Parenthetical note: this inscription, now in Istanbul, is a cornerstone in biblical archaeology because it is contemporaneous, not a later copy.)

Scaling up the city’s footprint

Fast-forward to 2005, when Dr. Eilat Mazar opened a trench above the stepped stone structure. She uncovered massive walls on bedrock, a twenty-foot-thick fortification-like section along a cliff, and a proto-Ionic capital suggestive of royal architecture with Phoenician influence. The pottery beneath and within the build matched late Iron Age II horizons; a radiocarbon-dated olive pit (Oxford) anchored the construction near ca. 1000 BCE. Then came a clay bulla: “Yehuchal son of Shelemiah,” a name in Jeremiah, found in a sealed context. The evidence converged on an elite construction in the time-range of David and Solomon.

Mazar argued you are looking at a royal complex—consistent with 2 Samuel’s description of a palace built with Tyrian craftsmen. Her claim electrified the public and infuriated skeptics. The find wasn’t just an old wall; it was a challenge to reigning academic fashions that had minimized 10th-century Jerusalem’s scale.

The minimalist pushback and evolving data

Minimalists, identified with scholars like Israel Finkelstein, responded with a “low chronology,” re-dating key pottery types and arguing that monumental architecture belonged to later centuries. They warned against “Bible-in-one-hand, spade-in-the-other” correlations, emphasizing caution (a valuable methodological guardrail). But as radiocarbon datasets multiplied and broader digs in the Givati Parking Lot refined ceramic sequences, even some institutions associated with minimalist readings acknowledged larger, earlier urban complexity.

The book shows why you should hold two ideas at once: skepticism keeps you honest, and hard artifacts can force paradigm shifts. Here the assemblage—architecture on bedrock, 10th-century ceramics, radiocarbon dates, and named seals—makes it harder to treat David’s Jerusalem as a mere hill hamlet. (Compare with Khirbet Qeiyafa’s fortified plan and radiocarbon dates, which elsewhere nudged debates on 10th-century state capacity.)

A continuous thread of discovery

If you zoom out, you see continuity between Warren crawling a spring tunnel, Mazar’s palace trench, and modern teams squeezing under Robinson’s Arch to feel flagstones from below. The same ridge keeps yielding finds that map onto biblical, Second Temple, and later periods. The picture that emerges is not proof-by-assertion; it’s a mosaic. Each tessera—Warren’s Shaft, Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the Siloam Inscription, Mazar’s walls, bullae—adds resolution to an ancient urban landscape that had been buried beneath centuries of collapse and fill.

For you, this chapter of the story offers a method. Start with topography and water, overlay inscriptions and stratigraphy, and demand converging lines of evidence. When stones, names, and dates align, you’re not just telling a story; you’re walking inside it. That’s the City of David’s unique power—and why its discoveries provoke devotion and doubt in equal measure.

Archaeology in Jerusalem does not happen on neutral ground; it stands on deeds, courts, and neighborhood trust. Baron Edmund de Rothschild understood this a century ago. Under Ottoman rule he bought parcels around the City of David with meticulous documentation, later transferring them to communal institutions. Those deeds—mundane but indispensable—created legal continuity that allowed scientific work to proceed responsibly decades later.

Rothschild didn’t act in a vacuum. He hired Raymond Weill, whose digs exposed monumental tombs and the Theodotus inscription—the oldest known synagogue dedication in Jerusalem’s Second Temple era—offering physical proof of organized Jewish worship in the city. In contrast, the Montagu Parker expedition (1909–11), which bribed a Dome of the Rock caretaker and tunneled recklessly, sparked riots and diplomatic scandal, souring local trust. The lesson is stark: ownership and permits confer legitimacy; shortcuts endanger lives and evidence.

The long tail of contested ownership

Ownership in Jerusalem is never simple. Figures like Mohammed Gozlan, who once sold land and served as caretaker, later asserted claims enabled by forged documents and chaotic transitions during Jordanian rule (1948–1967). When David Be’eri returned to steward sites, he faced legal knots born from those decades. The book tracks how archival diligence, title defense, and transparent processes aren’t just paperwork—they are the foundation for credible archaeology and community relations.

From legal theater to legal vindication

In the late 2000s, activists and several families alleged that excavations undermined nearby homes, producing fissures and collapses. The Israel Antiquities Authority and engineers countered: the modern supports sat on bedrock; the drainage channel excavation was akin to cleaning a culvert without disturbing the street above; many cracks predated the digs. Crucially, not one claimant allowed engineers to inspect their property, while press tours proceeded. The case climbed to Israel’s Supreme Court.

On September 21, 2009, the Court (Justice Edna Arbel) ruled the petitioners had offered no evidence linking damage to the excavation, fined them for baseless claims (HCJ 1308/08), and recognized the site’s national and international importance. This wasn’t just a win; it was a legal statement that archaeology—properly engineered and supervised—serves the public interest. (Note: court praise of scientific value is uncommon; here it shaped later government partnerships and donor confidence.)

Diplomatic spillover and narrative management

The dispute attracted UNRWA, which claimed a school floor collapse stemmed from the digs—despite the building’s distance and lack of foundations. A U.S. consular political officer (“Connor”) visited and queried whether the project inflamed tensions. The team preempted a potential reprimand by enlisting Michael Oren to draft a factual memo: maps, distances, engineering details, and an open invitation for inspections. Later Wikileaks cables revealed the level of diplomatic interest in what seemed a local dispute.

If you manage contested heritage, this sequence offers a template. Secure clear title; document methods; invite inspection; litigate on evidence, not headlines; and anticipate diplomatic theater. Legal wins do not end narrative wars, but they anchor them to facts. That anchor proved critical for what came next: a strategic excavation pivot that created an “irreversible” archaeological link across Jerusalem’s holiest terrain.

A broken sewer in 2004 became a doorway into the Second Temple city. As a backhoe scraped earth, Eli Shukron spotted dressed stone steps and halted the machinery. Under the mud lay a monumental staircase, eventually exposed to nearly 180 feet wide, descending into the Pool of Siloam. Ronny Reich compared the grouped steps and platforms to mikva’ot, suggesting mass purification before pilgrims ascended toward the Temple—a ritual choreography embedded in urban design.

The pool’s discovery answered a long-standing question about John 9’s Siloam and clarified how pilgrims moved. But a bigger question loomed: could archaeologists trace the entire route from pool to Temple? Above the suspected road stood modern homes and thick fill. Excavating top-down would require expensive supports and would ignite legal fights. Shukron proposed a different test: crawl below.

Crawling the drainage, feeling the stones

A small team—including City of David director David Be’eri and donor Eugene Shvidler—squeezed into a cold, muddy Herodian drainage channel that paralleled the road. In the dark, they felt flagstones just above their heads—the underside of the Pilgrimage Road. The channel preserved human traces too: two intact clay jars, interpreted (with Josephus as guide) as provisions of Jews who hid in the sewers during the Roman siege before being discovered and killed. You don’t just infer a tragedy; the jars sit where hands left them.

Shvidler saw the site’s global potential and backed the excavation. His bet forced the team to think at scale: shoring up homes, building visitor routes, and reimagining how to reveal a city within a living neighborhood. He also predicted audience demand—millions, not hundreds of thousands—an intuition that later proved right.

Pivoting to the drainage channel

When the Supreme Court temporarily suspended parts of the Pilgrimage Road dig amid litigation, the team pivoted to the drainage channel—technically safer and politically harder to halt. The goal: expose an unbroken, ~2,000-foot artery running from the Pool of Siloam toward the Temple Mount. Doing so would create a physical, scientifically documented connection between the City of David and the Western Wall foundations.

Engineering ingenuity made it feasible. Ventilation was poor; spoil removal was slow. An additional entrance via the Givati Parking Lot—secured after preventing its sale to the Palestinian Authority—solved airflow and access. Engineer Moishe Laor designed a rolling-bag track system so filled sacks could glide to the exit, dramatically accelerating throughput. Seed funding of about $1,040,000 kept crews in the field six days a week; the 2008 financial crisis loomed, adding urgency.

Reaching bedrock foundations

The payoff was historic. Excavators reached the Western Wall’s foundation stones sitting on Mount Moriah’s bedrock. For the first time in modern archaeology, the City of David and the Temple Mount were linked underground by a continuous Herodian system you could traverse. Visitors could now start where pilgrims purified, walk the drainage’s cool corridor, and emerge beneath the retaining wall of Herod’s expansion.

For you, the lesson is strategic: when visible, high-stakes projects get entangled in politics, a smaller, technically unimpeachable project can lock in long-term gains. The drainage channel wasn’t initially as glamorous as the Pilgrimage Road, but it created the critical fact on the ground that later made reopening the larger dig both possible and defensible. And it turned a city’s ritual life—bathing, walking, singing—into a journey you can still trace with your feet.

Some artifacts do more than date a layer; they speak directly to you. The City of David yielded hundreds of small bronze prutot minted during the Great Revolt (66–70 CE), many stamped “Year Four” with a chalice and the legend “For the Freedom of Zion.” Archaeologist Ronny Reich called them “an email from two thousand years ago”—a deliberate message to posterity by rebels who feared defeat but wanted you to know they fought. Coins become testimony.

Then there’s the golden bell. Found by Eli Shukron in silt within the drainage tunnel, the tiny sphere still chimed. Its form echoes Exodus 28:34’s bells on the High Priest’s robe, and its proximity to the Temple Mount foundations ignited public imagination. Media carried the sound around the world—a rare case where a single artifact turned a technical excavation into a visceral encounter with ritual life.

Names, seals, and institutions

Bullae and inscriptions add people back into the story. The Yehuchal ben Shelemiah seal—found in a controlled context—ties a biblical official to the administrative life of late First Temple Jerusalem. An inscribed seal (“Ileana daughter of Gael”) from the Givati excavation, along with the earlier Theodotus synagogue plaque, populates the city with named actors, congregations, and bureaucracies. Names in clay aren’t myth; they’re signatures pressed by hands that handled papyrus and sealed orders.

Even destruction yields data. After the Waqf’s 1999 unsupervised bulldozing of Solomon’s Stables, tons of debris were dumped in the Kidron. The Temple Mount Sifting Project rescued artifacts from that fill—First and Second Temple period remains among them—turning loss into a distributed dig that enlisted volunteers and produced peer-reviewed material.

From lab to legislature

These finds travel far beyond journals. When UNESCO passed a 2016 resolution using exclusively Arabic nomenclature for the Temple Mount/Western Wall and implicitly minimizing Jewish ties, the City of David’s artifacts became diplomatic packets. Congressional allies—Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Senator Ted Cruz—cited the archaeology in a bipartisan pushback; Israel froze cooperation with UNESCO. Diplomats toured with Zeev Orenstein, who built an international-affairs desk to walk ambassadors, senators, and opinion leaders through the stones themselves.

If you’re skeptical that artifacts can shift politics, watch how a prutah or bulla performs in a hearing room. When critics frame the City of David as a “settler project,” curators counter with eleven strata of civilizations exposed in the Givati area, underscoring that while the site is central to Jewish history, it is also a microcosm of broader Near Eastern continuity. The argument is not parochial; it’s civilizational. (Note: the book is unabashed about using public archaeology to rebut erasure; readers from heritage diplomacy will recognize this as “evidence-based advocacy.”)

Artifacts, then, talk in two registers: they clarify chronology and practice for scholars, and they humanize claims for the public. The best of them do both at once.

Skepticism is healthy in science; denial is not. The book draws a line between academic minimalism and political erasure. Minimalists like Israel Finkelstein pressed for a low chronology that shrank the United Monarchy and warned against correlating texts and trenches too quickly. Their pressure increased methodological rigor—demanding radiocarbon, sealed loci, and clear ceramic sequences (a good thing). But as some minimalist claims migrated into political messaging—especially during the Oslo years—they fed narratives that Jews had minimal or late ties to Jerusalem.

Political denialism goes further. Leaders including Mahmoud Abbas (drawing on earlier doctoral work), Yasser Arafat, Walid Awad, and Sheikh Ikrima Sabri publicly denied Jewish temples on the Mount or cast excavations as plots against Al-Aqsa. These claims ignored inscriptions like Siloam, synagogue markers like Theodotus, and seals like Yehuchal’s. The erosion of shared facts turned archaeology into a proxy war for legitimacy.

Street-level intimidation

Rhetoric translated into threats. In 2007, Raed Salah of the Northern Islamic Movement amplified the “Al-Aqsa is in danger” cry, claiming excavators tunneled under the mosque. Flyers named Arab workers; two Arab supervisors’ cars were torched; nearly 85 percent of Arab employees stopped coming out of fear. An attempted stabbing targeted David Be’eri at a wedding; security services later intercepted a Gaza-linked plot. Archaeology required not just permits, but protection.

Opponents used legal tools too. NGOs such as Ir Amim pursued injunctions alleging structural risk to homes while managing press narratives that emphasized “settlers undermining Silwan.” The team documented engineering precautions, invited independent inspections (declined by claimants), and kept excavation logs tight enough to withstand scrutiny when cases reached court. The 2009 Supreme Court ruling in favor of the excavations demonstrated how evidence can cut through theater—but only when the record is meticulous.

Lessons for contested projects

If you run any high-stakes project in a polarized environment, you need parallel playbooks: one for science, one for safety, one for law, one for communications. Train your team for rumor spikes; secure neighborhood relations; stage your public openings to diffuse flashpoints; and keep a dossier of hard facts—maps, distances, engineering reports—ready for diplomats and judges. Most of all, recognize how easily methodological caution can be hijacked into myth-making. The remedy isn’t counter-myth; it’s patient accumulation of checked facts presented accessibly.

The City of David’s experience shows you that stones alone don’t speak loudly enough in a storm. You have to amplify them—accurately and safely—so the public can hear.

Behind every dramatic discovery sits a funding spreadsheet and a media plan. In June 2008, with the drainage tunnel poised to start, David Be’eri and Doron flew to the U.S. seeking ~$1.04M in seed money. Meetings were bruising. A Wall Street prospect’s companion accused them of “displacing Arabs.” A major foundation said the project was “not worth it” amid bad press and would refocus on safer “Jewish identity” grants. Cash flow was tight; the 2008 financial crisis was approaching.

Then serendipity struck. An adventure-travel couple, Alan and Harriet, connected viscerally with the site’s people and said “done,” pledging the seed funds just before markets crashed. That gift started continuous excavation. Later, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson matched funding that reopened the Pilgrimage Road; Larry Ellison joined; Eugene Shvidler and Jan Koum backed major phases. Donor confidence tracked legal wins, engineering progress, and visible results.

Playing offense and defense with media

Media could amplify or inflame. When 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl arrived, the team accepted the risk, betting that powerful visuals would outweigh slanted framing. Interest surged, but so did the need to correct narratives. By contrast, the January 2011 coordinated release with Fox News and The Wall Street Journal showcased maps proving the drainage tunnel did not pass under the Temple Mount. The controlled rollout, timed with municipal support (Mayor Nir Barkat) and national diplomats (Ron Dermer; later Ambassador David Friedman), insulated the story from “if it bleeds, it leads” coverage.

Diplomatically, the team preempted crises. When a U.S. political officer (“Connor”) probed a UNRWA school collapse, Michael Oren’s memo reframed the issue with facts: distances, construction flaws at the school, and open invitations for inspection. That kind of rapid, precise briefing prevented a State Department rebuke and gave the Supreme Court space to weigh evidence, not headlines.

Turning projects into movements

Eugene Shvidler’s early prediction—“think a million visitors, not 250,000”—pushed the City of David to plan for a public audience proportionate to its significance. That meant engineering under homes, designing safe visitor routes, staging ceremonial openings (e.g., June 30, 2019 for the Pilgrimage Road) with senior U.S. officials in attendance, and building an international-affairs unit under Zeev Orenstein to host diplomats. The site became a place where you could watch archaeology, policy, and tourism reinforce one another.

For you, the takeaway is practical. In contested heritage, fundraising follows credibility; credibility follows transparent methods and smart storytelling. Pair your lab reports with human stories. Time your releases. Build alliances before you need them. And remember: one committed donor can change a project’s destiny when institutional funders hedge.

Amid coins and tunnels, people carry the heaviest truths. The Zenati family of Peki’in preserves an oral history of continuous Jewish presence in the Galilee. In their synagogue, an 1,800-year-old pillar inscription lists donors’ names—material culture dovetailing with memory. The family’s quiet continuity—through empires and wars—acts as a counterpoint to ideologies that sever Jews from their land. It’s one thing to read a chronicle; it’s another to meet Margalit Zenati, whose life is itself a living archive.

On the other side stands “Huweida,” once a dialogue partner at the University of Michigan, later a face of the International Solidarity Movement. In 2002 she helped stage a Bethlehem protest that placed Western students in the path of an ongoing operation—photographs designed for maximum outrage. Her rhetoric hardened toward maximalist positions (“return of all refugees”), rejecting partition and coexistence frameworks she had once explored. The author’s attempt to reason with her inside an IDF base ends with a gulf of irreconcilable narratives.

What stones can do—and can’t

Archaeology can authenticate presence, practice, and continuity. It cannot alone adjudicate sovereignty, borders, or rights. The book states this plainly: stones answer “Were we here?” and “How did we live?” They don’t decide “Who should rule now?” That humility matters if you want evidence to be trusted beyond your own camp.

Yet stones still shift politics because they stabilize memory. When UNESCO resolutions in 2016 adopted exclusively Arabic nomenclature for the Temple Mount/Western Wall, they weren’t just renaming; they were re-editing a shared past. The City of David’s response—walk diplomats down the Pilgrimage Road, show them rebel coins, let them hear a priestly bell—turned abstract claims into sensory conviction. Vice President Mike Pence later recalled details from such tours; Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen led a bipartisan pushback in Congress. Memory, made tangible, reshapes policy.

How you can apply this

If you work in contested spaces, pair your data with dignified human narratives. Invite inspection even from critics; don’t overclaim; acknowledge complexities. Build programs that let stakeholders touch, hear, and walk evidence. When people feel a site’s reality, they argue less about its existence and more about what to do next—where ethics and diplomacy finally belong. The City of David demonstrates that the most persuasive advocacy is patient, empirical, and deeply human.