Mysterious ancient tunnel, possibly thousands of years old, discovered in Jerusalem |
An ancient tunnel, whose purpose and dating are still cloaked in mystery, has been discovered near Kibbutz Ramat Rachel in Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said Thursday.
The tunnel, which extends about 50 meters (164 feet), was unearthed during a salvage excavation ahead of the construction of a new neighborhood in the area (all construction projects in Israel are required by law to include archaeological surveys).
“At the beginning, we thought it might just be a natural cave, but then we realized that it could not be the case,” IAA co-director of excavation Zinovi Matskevich told The Times of Israel over the telephone. “A huge investment of manpower and resources went into building this tunnel.”
The tunnel includes a staircase and an entrance.
“We were not able to excavate it completely,” Matskevich said. “Even for us, it would be a tremendous amount of work. However, we dug some test pits and found that, in some places, the ceiling is almost five meters high, which is huge. So we started to ask ourselves, when was it done, and for what purpose?”
At this stage, however, the archaeologists have not been able to determine either with a good degree of certainty.
“We did consider this possibility that it was a modern structure, [connected] to the complicated history of........