Archaeologists have discovered a quarry where stones were carved out to pave the streets of ancient Jerusalem in the days of Jesus Christ.
The stones were constructed to build ancient Pilgrim’s road, a 2,000-year-old stepped stone path where Jesus and his disciples are said to have roamed.
The Bible states that Jesus cured a blind man on the pathway, which also led to the ancient Jewish Temple where Jesus would have prayed.
The site was discovered in the southeast side of Jerusalem and extends about 37,600 square feet, making it one of the largest and most significant quarries ever found in Jerusalem.
The Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered numerous building stones at the site, that matched those found at another excavated site two miles away, named Pilgrimage Road, or Pilgrim’s Road.
The researchers found that the road, which once connected the City of David to the Jewish Temple, had paving slabs that were the same size and thickness as those at the building site.
They reported that the stone slabs at both sites also had identical markings from cutting trenches around the rock and extracting it from the ground.
‘It is reasonable to assume, with due caution, that at least some of the building stones extracted here were intended to be used as pavement slabs for Jerusalem’s streets in that period,’ the IAA’s co-leaders Michael Chernin and Lara Shilov said.
‘Amazingly, it turns out that the paving stones of this street are exactly the same size and thickness, and share the identical geological signature as the stone slabs that were extracted from the quarry now being exposed in Har Hotzvim.’