Christian Press, Your Christian News Authority

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL (ANS) -- Upon entering Jerusalem's Old City through the Jaffa Gate, you are enveloped in the bustling and colorful David Street, lined with souvenir shops and local shopkeepers. Now, an archaeological dig has confirmed that this very street has been on the map, literally, for 1,500 years.

Remains of the 1,500 year old street (Photograph: Assaf Peretz, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority)

The existence of the road is confirmed on the Madaba Map, an ancient mosaic map of Jerusalem from the 6th century. It is located in a church in Jordan and is the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of Israel.

The Madaba Map describes Israel with an emphasis on Christian sites at a time when the country transitioned from paganism to Christianity. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is among the identifiable sites on the map. All of the churches on the map are portrayed with red roofs on the map.

Dr. Ofer Sion, director of this excavation, said that after digging through "a number of archeological strata" the team discovered meter-long flagstones of the ancient street.

"It is wonderful to see that David Street, which is teeming with so much life today, actually preserved the route of the noisy street from 1,500 years ago," Sion said.

During the Byzantine period (4th-7th centuries), Jerusalem was a Christian city. Thousands of Christian pilgrims came to Jerusalem to worship and many left written descriptions of the city and its holy places. The Madaba Map was one of them, showing the city walls, gates, the main streets and the churches. The main thoroughfare, the Cardo, was a colonnaded street that bisected the city from north to south.

The cistern that was exposed below the street, between David's Citadel and David Street (Photograph: Assaf Peretz, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority)

The flagstones found were cracked from the burden of centuries. Next to the road archaeologists also discovered a stone foundation which supported a sidewalk and a row of columns. Other artifacts discovered in the excavations include pottery vessels, coins and five small square bronze weights that shopkeepers once used for weighing precious metals.

During the Middle Ages, a very large building that faced the street was constructed on the stone foundation of the Byzantine period. Later, during the Mamluk period (13th to 14th centuries) rooms were built inside this structure, apparently used as shops and storerooms. Beneath this building, right below the street that runs between David's Citadel and David Street and leads to the Armenian Quarter, is a cistern, 8 x 12 meters and 5 meters deep, which supplied water to its occupants.