The excavation of an old abandoned building near the city’s Tower of
David Museum could have found the remains of a palace where the trial
described in the New Testament took place, reports the Washington Post.
Scholars
are almost certain that the trial took place at Herod’s compound,
thought to be on the western side of the city, where the museum and an
Ottoman-era prison that is beneath it stand. The trial is described as
having happened “near a gate and on a bumpy stone pavement”, reports the
Washington Post, and those details fit with previous archaeological
findings near the prison.
“There is, of course, no inscription
stating it happened here, but everything — archaeological, historical
and gospel accounts — all falls into place and makes sense,” Shimon
Gibson, an archaeology professor at the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte, told the paper.
Because the path that Christian pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem
take, the finding could fail to change the way that they walk the city
immediately. But the Tower of David Museum have begun to draw up plans
for a tour around the find, and hope that it will become a standard
attraction for Christian’s in the future.
The excavation of the
site began 15 years ago, as part of plans to expand the museum. As
archaeologists dug beneath the old abandoned building next to the
museum, they found the suspected remains of the palace.
The
remains were discovered beneath a prison that was used when the city was
controlled by the Ottomans and the British. Archaeologists had long
known that prison was there — but not what lied beneath it.
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