Page 20 - TORCH Magazine #15 - February 2020

JERUSALEM'S PILGRIM ROAD
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CUFI.ORG.UK
In 2019 Israel unveiled one of the most incredible archaeological discoveries to date, the ancient “Pilgrim Road” in
Jerusalem.
Amazingly, the road was discovered after a sewage pipe burst in the middle of the Silwan neighbourhood in 2004. As workers dug
down to replace the underground pipes, they stumbled across some ancient stairs that led to the incredible discovery. The Pilgrim Road was built and used during the time of Jesus and was the main thoroughfare for Jewish pilgrims some 2,000 years ago, connecting the Siloam Pool to the Temple Mount.
The road is believed to have been constructed under Pontius Pilate and took 10 years for the Romans to build, opening around AD 31. When it was completed, its length was more than a third of a mile long and measured 26 feet wide. More than 10,000 tons of limestone were used in its construction.
Jews made pilgrimage to Jerusalem each year to observe the Biblical feasts of Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles). It is estimated that more than two million people walked the road during the feasts in Biblical times.
Their journey to the Temple began at
the Pool of Siloam, a giant mikveh, or ritual bath, which was the size of two Olympic swimming pools. Jews would wash there to purify themselves before going up the road to the Temple to offer sacrifices. The pool is also where Jesus healed the blind man as recounted in the Bible (John 9:1-12), and, yes, Jesus walked this ancient road too.
In Jesus’s time, however, it would have been four or five times wider than what has been recovered at present and the road would have been lined with shops, stalls and other buildings.
“This is where the beating heart of Jerusalem is. We’re talking about the Pool of Siloam, we’re talking about Mt. Moriah, the Temple Mount. We’re talking about the City of David. The Pilgrimage Road links them all together,” Zeev Orenstein of the City of David Foundation told CUFI.
The full width of the road has not fully been unearthed because of the challenges archaeologists face when excavating the
site. One obstacle with excavations within Jerusalem is that Israel’s capital is a living city. The archaeological layer they are working on