The Israel Antiquities Authority announced, Thursday, "Impressive and fascinating evidence of the battlefield and the breaching of the Third Wall that surrounded Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple period." The find was discovered, last winter, in an excavation the authority is conducting in the downtown Russian Compound, where the new campus of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design is to be built.
During the course of the excavation archaeologists discovered the remains of a tower jutting from the city wall. Opposite the tower’s western facade were scores of ballista and sling stones that the Romans had fired from catapults towards the Jewish guards defending the wall, who were stationed at the top of the tower. The excavation findings will be presented next week, at the "New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Region” conference.