The Burnt Beams of Jerusalem

Of all Jewish observances, the commemoration of the ninth day of the month of Av is the saddest—and one that reflects the passage of sadness through time. On this day, Tisha B’Av, Jews mourn not only the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome in 70 C.E., but also the even more ancient destruction by Babylon in 586 B.C.E. It was therefore all the more striking that this year, mere days before Tisha B’Av, Israelis unearthed a remnant of that earlier event. The Times of Israel reported:

Archaeologists have discovered wooden beams believed to have been burned during the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE….The beams, made of sycamore wood, were unearthed during a recent dig at the Jerusalem Walls National Park in the City of David….Researchers posited that they served as the roof of an inner courtyard in a building from the First Temple period.

During the destruction of the Temple, the beams likely collapsed onto the floor and were covered by the plaster cladding of the building’s walls, melted by the fire, excavation co-director Efrat Bocher said….

“We are just before Tisha B’Av,” Bocher said. “This discovery makes you feel that you are witnessing the very moment of destruction, the moment when it all happened. It’s deeply moving.”

That the wood survived the events of 586 B.C.E. is interesting. What is more interesting is that the beams are still there: that Jews who returned from Babylon 40 years later to rebuild the city left them there deliberately. The official website of Ir David, the City of David excavation project, continues the story: