In June of this year their ancient masonry was uncovered when a bulldozer clearing a road on a hill near the walled Old City of Jerusalem fell into a hole, revealing a cavern 15 feet (5 meters) below.  The chamber was one of several stretching over an area measuring one-fourth of an acre. Most rooms were filled almost to the ceiling with the factory's leftovers - broken dishes, stone shards and rounded stone knobs.

Temple rituals would have been conducted with the vessels made in this factory.   The ceiling of the white-walled chamber was marked by patches of soot, a sign the ancients often worked by candlelight.  Jon Seligman, a Jerusalem archaeologist, said he believed the cavern was dug in the first century BCE and served both as a quarry and a factory. Masons cut stone blocks from the walls and ceilings, freeing up raw material while carving out a new workroom. As they cleared out a new chamber, the masons threw stone chips into the previous room.

The floor was visible only in the room that the bulldozer struck, suggesting that it was the most recently used.  To make a bowl, masons rounded a piece of stone and cut handles into it, then spun it on a lathe to chisel out the center.  A tap on the bottom popped the core out, leaving a hollowed out bowl or mug. The mugs and bowls were then carted by horse or mule to the Temple located about one mile away.  Their products would have also been purchased by many Jewish residents of the walled Old City who adhered to strict ritual purity in their homes.  Seligman said dishes similar to those found in the cave have already been unearthed in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter and match descriptions of holy vessels in rabbinical writings of the time.

The factory is the largest discovered in Israel, surpassing a quarry found 15 years ago in a nearby village and showing how widespread the stone industry was at the time.   Seligman said he didn't expect to find any vessels intact, because workmen would have removed the finished products. But broken and unfinished bowls littered the floor of the cave.   The unfinished work apparently was a sign that masons had to abandon the factory quite suddenly when Jews were expelled from Jerusalem after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE.

The Second Temple, completed in 515 BC, stood in Jerusalem for nearly 500 years and was the center of Jewish religion and ritual. Jews were required to make annual pilgrimages to the site, where animal sacrifices were offered and prayers chanted. It was built on the site of King Solomon's Temple, destroyed in the Babylonian conquest of the Holy Land in 587 BC. 

Source: Associated Press article 06/24/99