Overview
- Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University announced on Monday that they uncovered massive charred wooden beams at the Givati Parking Lot in the City of David that show fire damage consistent with the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.
- Excavation directors say melted plaster from the burning building covered the collapsed roof beams and helped preserve the wood for about 2,600 years, leaving timbers in a condition rare for the region.
- IAA specialists report the beams contain an unusually large number of tree-growth rings and are now separating rings in the field so laboratory dendrochronology can attempt to narrow the destruction date, possibly to a window of roughly ten years.
- Excavators interpret the sealed ruins as a deliberate ‘landscape of memory’ where returning residents preserved visible traces of the destruction rather than fully clearing the site, a reading officials say adds cultural and emotional weight to the find ahead of Tisha B'Av.
- Israel’s Heritage Minister publicly framed the discovery as tangible evidence of an ancient Jewish presence in Jerusalem and calls for preservation, while definitive scientific dates and peer-reviewed results remain pending as ring-by-ring and lab analyses continue.