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Ronny Reich | |
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| Born | March 31, 1947 |
| Nationality |  Israel |
| Alma mater | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| Known for | Jerusalem archaeological excavation, Miqwa'ot study |
| Awards | Jerusalem Prize for Archaeology 2000 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Archaeology |
| Institutions | Department of Archaeology at University of Haifa |
| Doctoral advisor | Nahman Avigad, Lee I. Levine |
Ronny Reich (born 1947) is an Israeli archaeologist, excavator and scholar of the ancient remains of Jerusalem.
Reich studied archaeology and geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His MA thesis (supervised by Prof. Yigael Yadin) dealt with Assyrian architecture in Palestine (the Land of Israel), about which he later published several articles (concerning Ayelet HaShahar, Tel Hazor, the "Sealed Karum of Egypt", Beth-Zur, Tell Jemme, Ramat Rachel, Tel Megiddo and Buseira).
His participation in excavations in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, carried out between 1969 and 1978 and directed by Nahman Avigad, caused a shift in his scientific interests, from the Iron Age to the Early Roman period. He completed his Ph.D. thesis, "Miqva'ot (Jewish Ritual Baths) in Eretz Israel in the Second Temple and the Mishnah and Talmud periods", in 1990 under the supervision of Profs. Nachman Avigad and Lee I. Levine. The thesis is based on discoveries made during these digs. It turned out to be a groundbreaking study of a subject never before studied from an archaeological perspective.
Between 1978 and 1995 Reich worked for the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums (IDAM) as director of its scientific archives. In 1978 (before PCs were extant) he started the process of archiving archaeological information on the mainframe of the Ministry of Education and Culture. The first files he documented were of declared archaeological sites and lists of excavations. In 1986 he briefly served as the District Archaeologist of Israel's Central District. When Amir Drori took office as director general of IDAM, Reich assisted him in turning the department into an independent governmental authority, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
In 1989 Reich returned to archaeological field work, carried out at various Jerusalem sites:
In 1995 Reich became a faculty member of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, teaching classical archaeology. [1] He became associate professor in 2002 and full professor in 2006. Between 2002 and 2005 he served as the head of the department. Reich's lengthy activities in Jerusalem have made him a prominent scholar of the city's archaeology and history. For these contributions, he was awarded the 'Jerusalem Prize for Archaeology' by the City of Jerusalem in 2000. In 2012 he was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, Class I.
In addition to his two major fields of interest (ritual baths [2] and the archaeology of Jerusalem), he studied various aspects of daily life in Judaea in the late Second Temple period. These included studies on spindle whorls, stone vessels, ossuaries, inscriptions, [3] etc. Of particular importance is his study on the stone scale weights, which were in use particularly in Jerusalem.
Reich has faced scrutiny for his connection to the right-wing Elad association. [4]
Reich sees great importance in bringing his discoveries to the knowledge of the general public. From writing articles of popular nature, to writing articles for Hebrew Wikipedia, and particularly taking part in developing excavated sites for the public. He took part in the development of the Archaeological Park near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the Davidson Center for virtual imaging (including the construction of the on-line, real-time model of the Herodian Temple Mount, in collaboration with Dr. Lisa Snyder from UCLA, the first of its kind in Israel). More recently, he is involved in the planning of a visitors' center near the Gihon spring in the City of David.
Reich's main hobby is translating and publishing treatises on ancient architecture and art, plays and poetry into Hebrew. His translation of Vitruvius' De architectura (1997) was considerably successful. He also published these translations:
The term Pool of Siloam refers to a number of rock-cut pools on the southern slope of the Wadi Hilweh, considered by some archaeologists to be the original site of Jerusalem, located outside the walls of the Old City to the southeast. The pools were fed by the waters of the Gihon Spring, carried there by the Siloam Tunnel.
The City of David, known locally mostly as Wadi Hilweh, is the name given to an archaeological site considered by most scholars to be the original settlement core of Jerusalem during the Bronze and Iron Ages. It is situated on southern part of the eastern ridge of ancient Jerusalem, west of the Kidron Valley and east of the Tyropoeon valley, to the immediate south of the Temple Mount.
The archaeology of Israel is the study of the archaeology of the present-day Israel, stretching from prehistory through three millennia of documented history. The ancient Land of Israel was a geographical bridge between the political and cultural centers of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Despite the importance of the country to three major religions, serious archaeological research only began in the 15th century. Although he never travelled to the Levant, or even left the Netherlands, the first major work on the antiquities of Israel is considered to be Adriaan Reland's Antiquitates Sacrae veterum Hebraeorum, published in 1708. Edward Robinson, an American theologian who visited the country in 1838, published its first topographical studies. Lady Hester Stanhope performed the first modern excavation at Ashkelon in 1815. A Frenchman, Louis Felicien de Saucy, embarked on early "modern" excavations in 1850. Today, in Israel, there are some 30,000 sites of antiquity, the vast majority of which have never been excavated.
Eilat Mazar was an Israeli archaeologist. She specialized in Jerusalem and Phoenician archaeology. She was also a key person in Biblical archaeology noted for her discovery of the Large Stone Structure, which she surmised to be the palace of King David.
The newer Siloam Tunnel, also known as Hezekiah's Tunnel, is a water tunnel that was carved within the City of David in ancient times, now located in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan in eastern Jerusalem. Its popular name is due to the most common hypothesis that it dates from the reign of Hezekiah of Judah and corresponds to the "conduit" mentioned in 2 Kings 20:20 in the Hebrew Bible. According to the Bible, King Hezekiah prepared Jerusalem for an impending siege by the Assyrians, by "blocking the source of the waters of the upper Gihon, and leading them straight down on the west to the City of David". By diverting the waters of the Gihon, he prevented the enemy forces under Sennacherib from having access to water.
Al-Marwani Mushalla, or Al-Marwani Mosque, is an underground vaulted prayer hall in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem. It is 600 square yards in area, and is located under the southeastern corner of the compound, 12.5 m (41 ft) below the courtyard, and features twelve rows of pillars and arches. In December 1996 the Jerusalem Waqf renovated the area. The area was known to the Crusaders as Solomon's Stables, and to earlier Muslims as the Old Mosque.
Warren's Shaft is a vertical shaft next to the Gihon Spring, the main source of water of Bronze and Iron Age Jerusalem, discovered in 1867 by British engineer and archaeologist, Sir Charles Warren (1840–1927). The term is currently used in either a narrower, or a wider sense:
Nahman Avigad, born in Zawalow, Galicia, was an Israeli archaeologist.
Beit She'arim or Besara was a Roman-era Jewish village from the 1st century BCE until the 3rd century CE which, at one time, was the seat of the Sanhedrin. The village was later known as Sheikh Bureik, and was depopulated in the early 1920s as a result of the Sursock Purchase.
Ophel, also Graecised to ophlas, is the biblical term given to a certain part of a settlement or city that is elevated from its surroundings, and probably means fortified hill or risen area. In the Hebrew Bible, the term is used in reference to two cities: Jerusalem, as in the Book of Chronicles and Book of Nehemiah, and Samaria, mentioned in the Books of Kings. The Mesha Stele, written in Moabite, a Canaanite language closely related to Biblical Hebrew, is the only extra-biblical source using the word, also in connection to a fortified place.
A number of archaeological excavations at the Temple Mount—a celebrated and contentious religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem—have taken place over the last 150 years. Excavations in the area represent one of the more sensitive areas of all archaeological excavations in Jerusalem.
Leen Ritmeyer is a Dutch-born archaeological architect who currently lives and works in Wales, after having spent 22 years (1967–89) in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem during the Second Temple period describes the history of Jerusalem during the Second Temple period, from the return to Zion under Cyrus the Great to the siege and destruction the city by Titus during the First Jewish–Roman War. During this period, which saw the region and city change hands several times, Jerusalem was the center of religious life for all Jews; even those who lived in the diaspora prayed towards Jerusalem on a daily basis and made pilgrimages during religious festivals. Under Hasmonean and Herodian rule, Jerusalem served as a royal capital and the seat of all major national institutions. In Jerusalem, the Pharisees of Second Temple Judaism developed into the Tannaim and Judaism's post-Exilic religious identity as it continues today, and the Hebrew Bible was perhaps canonized, although exactly when this occurred remains disputed. It was also in Jerusalem during the later stages of this period that Christianity was born.
The Broad Wall is an ancient defensive wall, located in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. The wall was unearthed in the 1970s by Israeli archaeologist Nahman Avigad and dated to the reign of King Hezekiah.
The stepped street, as it's known from academic works, or the Jerusalem pilgrim road as it has been dubbed by the Ir David Foundation, is the early Roman period street connecting the Temple Mount from its southwestern corner, to Jerusalem's southern gates of the time via the Pool of Siloam. It was used by ritual processions ascending from the pool to the Temple, Judaism's holiest site. The stepped street was built at the earliest during the 30s CE, with the latest coin found under the pavement dating to 30–31 CE, during the governorship of Pontius Pilate of New Testament fame.
The Jerusalem Water Channel is a central drainage channel of Second Temple Jerusalem, now an archaeological site in Jerusalem.
Eli Shukron is an Israeli archaeologist employed by the Israel Antiquities Authority. He has made several significant finds from the period of the Second Temple of Jerusalem.
The Monastery of the Virgins is a structure uncovered during Benjamin Mazar's excavations south of Jerusalem's Temple Mount. The large number of Christian religious finds from the site have prompted its identification with a monastery described by a pilgrim, Theodosius the archdeacon, in his De Situ Terrae Sanctae, a work of the early 6th century. The building was constructed in the 4th century on the remains of an earlier Herodian building identified with the Second Temple courthouse, and was destroyed during the Persian sack of Jerusalem in 614.
The Israelite Tower is an archaeological site in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter. The site features remains of the city's Iron Age fortifications which were later incorporated into the Hasmonean city walls. It was excavated by Israeli archaeologist Nahman Avigad during the 1970s. Finds unearthed at the site attest to the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.
The Trumpeting Place inscription is an inscribed stone from the 1st century CE discovered in 1968 by Benjamin Mazar in his early excavations of the southern wall of the Temple Mount. The stone, showing just two complete words written in the Square Hebrew alphabet, was carved above a wide depression cut into the inner face of the stone. The first word is translated as "to the place" and the second word "of trumpeting" or "of blasting" or "of blowing", giving the phrase "To the Trumpeting Place". The subsequent words of the inscription are cut off. The third word (...לה), which is incomplete, has been interpreted as either "declare" or "distinguish", giving either: "to d[eclare ]" or "to d[istinguish ]", where the words in square brackets represent scholarly conjecture.
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