Archeologists uncover buried bit of Jerusalem Western Wall

Israeli archeologists in Jerusalem’s Old City on Monday unveiled a newly unearthed section of the Western Wall and the first Roman public structure ever discovered in the city, they said.

Archaeologist Joe Uziel said he and his colleagues knew the wall section was there and had expected to find a Roman street at its base.

“But as we excavated and excavated we realized we weren’t getting to the street. Instead we have this circular building,” he told reporters in English at the underground site.

“Basically we realized that we were excavating a theatrelike [Roman] structure.”

He said that carbon-14 and other dating methods indicated it came from the second or third centuries AD and appeared to be unfinished.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which conducted the 2-year dig, said that historical sources mentioned such structures but in 150 years of modern archeological research in the city none had been found.

The section of the 2,000-year-old Western Wall uncovered by the diggers is about 15 meters in width and eight meters high, with the stones very well preserved.

It had been buried under eight meters of earth for 1,700 years, the IAA said.

The Western Wall is the last remnant of the retaining structures which surrounded the second Jewish temple until its destruction by the Romans in AD 70.