Street Used by Pilgrims on Way to Temple Mount

Stepped street leading to Second Temple

Archeologists have uncovered a street that was a central thoroughfare for pilgrims who 2,000 years ago walked from the Shiloach Pool to the Second Temple, approximately 550 meters (1,800 feet) to the north. The street was previously known to archeologists.

"In the Second Temple Period, pilgrims would begin the ascent to the Temple from here," said Haifa University Prof. Ronny Reich, who supervised the project with Eli Sukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority. "This is the southernmost tip of the road, of which a section has already been discovered along the western face of the Temple Mount."

Parts of the road, which is stepped and paved in stone slabs, was first excavated more than a century ago, and other sections were uncovered in the 1960s.

The current excavation has been concentrated in a very narrow strip, three to seven feet wide, in the western section of the road. Archaeologists removed the earth that had been filled in by previous excavators over the sections they already discovered.

The discovery of the entire street is the latest of several recent startling finds in the country, including a road possibly used by Abraham and an ancient synagogue with a replica of the holy Menorah used in the Temple.

The discoveries help counter growing claims by the Muslim world that the First and Second Temples never existed.