The excavations inside the Old City of Jerusalem at Jaffa Gate have exposed a water canal, 40 meters long (44 yards) and 1.5 meters (5 feet) high of an upper Jerusalem waterway from the 2nd and 3rd centuries C.E. The ancient precursor of today’s Old City road leading from Jaffa Gate to Mt. Zion was uncovered previously, precisely where an ancient and now-famous Mosaic map indicated it should be.
Dr. Ofer Sion, director of the archaeological works at the site, stated that the newly-uncovered section is part of a waterway that was once some 13 kilometers long, leading from Solomon’s Pools. At the end of the 19th century, the Land of Israel archaeologist and architect Dr. Conrad Schick (designer of the Meah She’arim neighborhood) described the location of part of the waterway. “His work gave some clues that led to this discovery.” During the course of the excavation the wall of the waterway was exposed when some of the large stones were removed revealing a perfectly-designed waterway, with a flat stone roof on top. People can walk inside it, bent-over, for a length of 40 meters.”
Originally, water was supplied to Jerusalem chiefly from the Gichon Spring. Just over 2,000 years ago, however, with the population of the city growing, a new source was sought. King Herod began work on large projects bringing water from the Hevron Mountains, using the power of gravity, to Solomon’s Pools just south of the city. From there, two waterways channelled water to the city: The upper channel brought water to the King’s palace, Hezekiah’s Pool and other areas in the higher levels of the city, while water on the lower waterway went to the Holy Temple on the Temple Mount and the lower areas. The now-revealed section is part of the upper channel. The excavations are being conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority as part of a “rescue” operation, customary in Israel before major construction work, prior to the replacement of underground infrastructures there.
The Black Stone is broken into a number of fragments, with varying accounts putting the number at between seven and fifteen, held together by a silver frame. There are differing accounts of how the damage occurred. According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, the damage occurred during a siege in 638. The editors of Time-Life Books state that the damage occurred during a siege launched by a general of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (646-705). Other sources, including the 2007 Britannica, state that the damage occurred as the result of a theft in 930 CE, when Qarmatian warriors sacked Mecca and carried the Black Stone away to their base in Ahsa, in medieval Bahrain. According to the historian Al-Juwayni, the Stone was returned twenty-two years later, in 951, under somewhat mysterious circumstances; wrapped in a sack, it was thrown into the Friday Mosque of Kufa accompanied by a note saying “By command we took it, and by command we have brought it back.” Its abduction and removal caused further damage, breaking the stone into seven pieces.
The Black Stone has been described variously as basalt lava, an agate, a piece of natural glass or most popularly a stony meteorite. A significant clue to its nature is provided by an account of the Stone’s recovery in 951 AD after it had been stolen 21 years earlier; according to a chronicler, the Stone was identified by its ability to float in water. If this account is accurate, it would rule out the Black Stone being an agate, basalt lava or stony meteorite, though it would be compatible with it being glass or pumice.
It has been suggested that the Black Stone may be a glass fragment from the impact of a fragmented meteorite some 6,000 years ago at Wabar, a site in the Rub’ al Khali desert some 1,100 km east of Mecca. The craters at Wabar are notable for the presence of blocks of silica glass, fused by the heat of the impact and impregnated by beads of nickel-iron alloy from the meteorite (most of which was destroyed in the impact). Some of the glass blocks are made of shiny black glass with a white or yellow interior and gas-filled hollows, which allow them to float on water. Although scientists did not become aware of the Wabar craters until 1932, they were located near a caravan route from Oman and were very likely known to the inhabitants of the desert. The wider area was certainly well-known; in ancient Arabic poetry, Wabar or Ubar (also known as “Iram of the Pillars” was the site of a fabulous city that was destroyed by fire from the heavens because of the wickedness of its king. If the estimated age of the crater is accurate, it would have been well within the period of human habitation in Arabia and the impact itself may have been witnessed. However, a recent (2004) scientific analysis of the Wabar site suggests that the impact event happened much more recently than first thought and might have occurred only within the last 200–300 years.
A warning for an apocalyptic situation could result from the next earthquake to hit Israel in which millions of apartments and thousands of public buildings could collapse. According to the ACBI, a strong earthquake could lead to tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of homeless. Earthquakes have occurred in Israel on the average of once every 80 years in recent centuries.
In addition to the major Biblical earthquakes, two major earthquakes occurred in Israel during the last two centuries. The first earthquake, in January 1837, killed some 5,000 people, destroyed the city of Tzfat and damaged nearby Arab villages, while the second one, in July 1927, killed over 500 people, and caused heavy damage in Jericho, Shechem (Nablus), Jerusalem and Hevron. An earthquake centered in Lebanon was felt in Israel and Syria.
