When Miriam and Theo Siebenberg
purchased a plot of land for their new home in the Jewish Quarter of
Jerusalem’s Old City that Israel had just a few years before captured
from Jordan, they had no idea of the antiquity treasures dating back
from Jesus’ time and before that lay underneath.
Before the Siebenbergs built their
house in a neighborhood where archaeological finds were regularly
cropping up, Israeli Department of Antiquities inspectors examined the
site, but found nothing of historical significance that would have
stopped construction.
Descending into history at the Siebenberg House (Photos Credit: Tzuriel Cohen-Arazi/Tazpit News Agency)
In 1970, they moved into the new home and were soon to discover how wrong the inspectors had been.
At the time, archaeologists from the Hebrew University were excavating all around the Jewish Quarter.
“I went over one day and asked the archaeologists if they had checked the area where my house was,” Theo Siebenberg told the New York Times in 1985. “They said they had and that they were sure nothing was there.”
But to Siebenberg, that answer didn’t seem right.
“I would stand here and picture myself
in the Second Temple Period. The temple was just over there,” he told
the Times, pointing to the nearby Western Wall, the most holy site in
Judaism. “Why wouldn’t Jews have built here then? Every inch of land
near the Temple must have been very valuable.”
