'Jerusalem Through the Ages': A new detailed look at the city's history, archaeology - review

Jodi Magness, a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and professor at the University of North Carolina, is an archaeologist specializing in ancient Palestine – the area covered by modern Jordan, Israel, and the so-called “occupied” territories.

“I have participated in over 20 excavations in Israel and Greece,” she writes, “including co-directing the 1995 excavations in the Roman siege works at Masada.”

In the preface to her new book, Jerusalem through the Ages, Magness asks and answers the obvious question: Why is another book on Jerusalem needed? She points out that most of the books covering the city’s pre-modern history and archaeology are broad surveys written by non-specialists, or are edited volumes containing chapters by multiple specialists, or are studies by individual specialists focusing on a specific time frame or topic.

Why do we need another book about Jerusalem?

This volume differs because it presents a broad survey authored by a single specialist. She believes she has a responsibility to share with the public – as objectively as possible – the detailed and scientific information about Jerusalem’s history and archaeology that she has uncovered, or been given access to, and that this is what differentiates this book and gives it unique value. 

She hopes that every reader will learn something new about Jerusalem, not only because of the broad but detailed coverage but also because it includes the most recent archaeological discoveries, as well as her own original research. In Jerusalem through the Ages, she fully lives up to her aspirations.

By tracing the history of Jerusalem back to its very origins, Magness ventures far beyond the bounds of her normal specialty. After a brief description of the geological processes, starting millions of years ago, that resulted in the geographic features surrounding the current city, Magness places the first arrivals to Jerusalem at over 5,000 years ago. They settled, she tells us, on a small hill that forms a spur to the south of the Temple Mount. 

Her first, rather surprising, revelation is that the name “Jerusalem” does not mean “city of peace,” as it has come to be assumed, but rather “foundation of the god Shalem.”

Shalem was a pagan god in the Canaanite religion, mentioned in inscriptions and identified as the god of the dusk (Shahar was the god of the dawn). His name derives from the Semitic root S-L-M, which does include “peace” among its broad meanings.  

Shalem was perhaps worshiped on the rocky outcrop in the center of the Temple Mount, now enshrined as the Foundation Stone in the Dome of the Rock.

BEFORE GETTING down to a detailed archaeology-based history of the city, epoch by epoch, Magness turns to the sudden upsurge of scientific exploration into Jerusalem and its origins that followed Napoleon’s failed siege of Acre in 1799. 

From the 1830s onward, Western explorers and scholars started producing accurate maps, surveys, and drawings, as well as paintings and photographs, often impeded by local Arabs who resented their intrusion into holy places. Magness examines the work of a succession of 19th-century scientists who made the study of Jerusalem their specialty.

The main body of the book then follows the successive periods in Jerusalem’s history uncovered by modern archaeology: the Jebusite period a thousand years before the start of the Common Era, then King David’s Israelite Jerusalem, to be followed by the Judahite era, after which came the Jerusalem of the returned exiles from Babylon. 

Next came Jerusalem’s brief Hasmonean period, followed by Herod’s rule. Then, after the Roman conquest, came the Byzantine era, the early Islamic Jerusalem around 800 CE, and finally the Jerusalem of the Crusades. On September 30, 1187, Saladin, leading his Muslim army, broke into Jerusalem, which had been ruled by the Christians for nearly a century, and soon conquered it.

Though quite inconsistent with her subtitle – From its beginnings to the Crusades – Magness cannot resist appending a final chapter, an epilogue, covering the transfer of Jerusalem’s governance to Great Britain.

“On 11 December 1917,” she writes, “following the withdrawal of Ottoman forces, Gen. Edmund Allenby dismounted from his horse and entered the Jaffa Gate on foot to formally accept Jerusalem’s surrender to the British Crown.” The event was captured in iconic photographs, one of which is part of the chapter.

Indeed, the book as a whole is lavishly illustrated. Numerous photographs, maps, charts, and drawings accompany Magness’s quite fascinating journey through Jerusalem’s long and convoluted history. She further embellishes the volume with four suggested walking tours through modern Jerusalem that feature the many sites she has referred to.

She also includes a detailed historical timeline, starting with the Early Bronze Age when Jerusalem was first settled, to the end of the British Mandate in 1948. 

Jerusalem through the Ages is a wonderful survey of what became, uniquely, a holy city to three of the world’s major religions. Magness recounts her story through the fascinating prism of archaeology – and what a story she has to tell. This is a book to cherish. 

The writer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at: a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com.

• JERUSALEM THROUGH THE AGES: FROM ITS BEGINNINGS TO THE CRUSADES 
• By Jodi Magness
• Oxford University Press
• 624 pages; $35