Ancient Temple Factory Discovered

By SARI BASHI - AP

JERUSALEM (AP) - Two thousand years ago, masons working in an underground factory - a cluster of caverns beneath Jerusalem - carved stone mugs, dishes and wine jugs for priests serving in the nearby Jewish Temple.

Last week, a bulldozer clearing a road near the walled Old City of Jerusalem fell into a hole, unearthing the ancient masonry and providing physical proof of ritual purity laws described in the Bible.

The chamber, located 15 feet underground, was one of several stretching over an area measuring one-quarter of an acre. Most rooms were filled almost to the ceiling with the factory's leftovers - broken dishes, stone shards and rounded stone knobs.  Archaeologists said the discovery reaffirms the popularity of stone at the time of the Second Temple, especially among priests, because it did not have to undergo special purification rituals for use in the Temple. Unlike glass or ceramic, stone could not be contaminated by coming into contact with a dead body or a menstruating woman, both considered ritually impure.

The Second Temple, completed in 515 B.C., stood in Jerusalem for nearly 600 years before it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., and was the center of Jewish religion and ritual.

Jews were required to make annual pilgrimages to the site, where animal sacrifices were offered and prayers chanted. It was built on the site of King Solomon's Temple, destroyed in the Babylonian conquest of the Holy Land in 587 B.C.

Jon Seligman, a Jerusalem archaeologist taking reporters on a tour of the underground masonry Thursday, said vessels made in the factory were used in Temple rituals.

Bowls, dishes and other pieces found in the cave match descriptions of holy vessels in rabbinical writings of the time and are similar to pieces that have been unearthed in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter, he said.

Seligman said he believed the cavern was dug in the first century B.C. and served both as a quarry and a factory. Masons cut stone blocks from the walls and ceilings, to be used as raw material while carving out a new workroom. As they cleared out a new chamber, the masons threw stone chips into the previous room for use in fashioning vessels.

The floor was visible only in the room the bulldozer struck, suggesting it was the most recently used. The ceiling of the white-walled chamber was blackened by patches of soot, a sign the ancients often worked by candle light.

To make a bowl, masons rounded a piece of stone and cut handles into it, then spun it on a lathe to chisel out the center. A tap on the bottom popped the core out, leaving a hollowed-out bowl or mug.  The mugs and bowls were then carted by horse or mule to the Temple a mile away, or to Jewish residents of the walled Old City, who adhered to strict ritual purity in their homes.

The factory is the largest discovered in Israel, surpassing a quarry found 15 years ago in a nearby village and showing how widespread the stone industry was at the time.

Seligman said he didn't expect to find any vessels intact, because workmen would have removed the finished products. But broken and unfinished bowls littered the floor of the cave.

The unfinished work apparently was a sign that masons had to abandon the factory quite suddenly when Jews were expelled from Jerusalem after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple.

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