A Journey Underneath Jerusalem from the City of David Down to the Gihon Spring

hello tamara hi daron how are you good to see you it's a kind of a crispy cool day here in jerusalem in the city of david hello to our friends out there from around the world it's nice to have you back with no masks on our faces in israel yeah definitely not hi guys um i'm really excited because i'm going to get to see some things that even i haven't seen and you guys are going to be able to experience to touch the field to see all the things that i'm really excited to show you so let's get started yeah let's go let's go we're going to be heading deep deep underneath the ground so put on your jackets and let's do it let's go back in time okay so we're gonna squeeze through this little gate here [Music] so this room isn't this beautiful yeah how old is it this is around 100 years old this is one of the first homes in the city of david and look beneath their feet is the staircase that's going to go down to the most important place in all of biblical jerusalem can you imagine if someone found beneath your floor the entrance into the most important place in biblical jerusalem wow so can you explain to me kind of where we are sure i don't understand so yeah let's look at this picture okay so here we have the city of david modern day okay you can see the temple mount the city of david is beneath this hilltop right over here and we're so if you if you peel away the silt top and go back in time it would have looked like this okay okay what time period are we talking so this goes this picture goes back to the time of solomon and david around 2900 years ago we're right over here underneath one of these homes oh my god really the home here is exactly where home would have stood and beneath this home was a secret shaft that went down down down down down to the water that was outside the city walls why was it outside the city walls that's where the water was and all they could do was find a secret shaft to go outside the city walls down to get to their water because otherwise the city would have survived no question back in the ancient day what did you need to survive you needed water you had to have your water and so the only water in all of jerusalem is down the staircase okay let's go let's go come on ladies first come on with us hey tomorrow look at this look at this these pictures here yeah what is it so these are pictures of the city of david that go back decades oh wow and the area we're standing in now would have been looking just like this as they ducked up down oh my god it's completely daring yeah there was nothing here back in that time it's not incredible it was before civilization came to this area okay i recognize that all right here we go so how many years are we going back in time so we're going back in time 4 000 years 4 000. yeah this is all the way back to the time of abraham and melchizedek if you look in the bible in the book of genesis okay abraham meets a king called the king of shalem okay and people now believe and it's accurate based on the timing of the city that shalem was jerusalem the word jerusalem was or shalom eer shalom the city of shalom so jerusalem is shalom and melkit said it would have been the king and abraham would have met him here and what we're going to see now goes back all the way to the time of abraham oh my god we could date it back that far we could date and we found the chisels that they used to make these and they were bronze chisels really 1850 bce wow all right so now we're walking down the stairs to the belly of the earth yeah this is so steep oh my god so you know why this is so steep tomorrow i have no idea why is it so steep well did you ever see indiana jones you know how indiana jones has to climb up these ladders and there's pits beneath him yeah this is so steep because it actually was a retractable staircase the people in the city could pull this back and if we were trying to capture the city there's a bottomless pit right below us look over here can you believe it oh my god that was meant that if someone tried climbing up the staircase you pulled up the stairs and they're standing here over a massive crevice they have to take their whip and you know swing over the edge oh my god so this is exactly like an indiana jones like movie now where we are right now okay you have to imagine go back four thousand years your water is outside the city walls are you gonna get it well you didn't have iron all you had was bronze very soft material and you would say okay how are we going to get it let's start digging through the earth so you'd start digging through the earth through the stone you would do it your kids would continue your grandkids four or five generations later people managed to go through the earth all the way underneath the ground to the water oh my god you can see the chisel marks this is incredible exactly these are the actual marks isn't that amazing those are the actual chisel marks from 4 000 years ago why would they have bothered with doing all this this is an incredible amount of work to be able to build something like this so you know i think the only answer is this was what kept them alive this was the only thing keeping them alive and that's why they built it meaning this is what brought them underneath the ground to their water and if there was an enemy attacking above them they could secretly go beneath the enemy's feet like you're walking right now and go down to their water source and so when your life is at stake you build something like this you can see the curvature of the chisel marks yeah and once we get to the bottom the chisel marks are heading towards us which means there were two teams one at the water one at the top of the mountain and they met right here wow i didn't know that and how they did it we're not even sure seriously yeah your head yeah they were shorter than i am hello you guys made it with us all right uh so the bible talks about king david and how king david conquered the city and it says like something strange it says he conquered the city through atsino what is it anybody out there know what it's right hebrew hebrew translation what does it mean today well in modern hebrew it means water pipe right and here we are standing in an ancient water pipe that's true that's true it's just incredible i can't believe it like they this entire system was a water water system in ancient days it was what it was was the people inside the city would come down via this system down to the water source fill up their buckets put them on their shoulders and walk back up and david did something genius because it says in the bible in the second book of samuel chapter 5 that david is standing at the walls now where are the walls above us on the surface of the earth are the walls and the jebe sites yell at them they say david come over these walls the bible says david doesn't go over the walls he goes under the walls through this water system and uses it against them by then entering into the city from underneath the ground he infiltrated the water pipes and got through to the city through the water system he did like a commando raid a 4 000 year old commando raid that's crazy is it amazing these stones are smooth because people have been walking on them for so many thousands of years they've been worn smooth they must have really been in shape oh yeah i mean imagine walking down is one thing imagine walking back up here gets much much taller as well by the way look at that it's three floors high guys take a look at how deep this is so this is worn shaft okay so can you tell me a little bit about warren sure why he was sent here so warren was sent here by queen victoria okay the queen victoria who was looking for was he looking for treasure they were looking for treasure he was looking for the treasures of the bible in order to snatch them and bring them back to england and warren made his way into the water system the water below us and he climbs up the shaft and he actually discovers this system in around 1867 1868 and it gets his name warren from the name captain charles warren oh wow i heard there were other explorers here though there were and uh let's go see what they found okay for cavemen this is where they live the the earliest family in jerusalem this is the origin story of jerusalem this cave oh my god how what did you find here so people were living here and they had the spring all to themselves the spring of jerusalem just beneath us on the cliff face now we came through here we knew about this cave we knew it was an ancient cave we didn't know how old until a volunteer found a little cave inside this cave and in that little cave we took out vessels from the calcalithic period which is called today the stone age and it showed us that these stone age people were living here one day they left they never came back and we found their ikea dishes sitting here beneath the cave oh my goodness so this is the original caveman of jerusalem this is where it began this is truly where jerusalem began now let's go see some of the people who really were looking for this and were digging beneath the ground [Music] so we were talking about earlier how there were other explorers that came to jerusalem and i heard that one of these explorers was actually the inspiration for indiana jones that's true uh his name was montague parker he was the fifth earl of morley castle in england that still exists in fact his great-granddaughter was here at the city of david this week and montague parker he's not an actual archaeologist he is truly a treasure hunter he raises hundreds of thousands of pounds on the london stock exchange to find the treasures of solomon and payback as investors and keep a lot of the money for himself wow and he comes through and he actually see these buckets right here that's a bucket these are buckets left here by parker now why were they left here parker's digging and looking for treasure he's paying off bribing the ottoman authorities and he's looking and digging furiously comes to the city of david and all of a sudden his money runs out and the ottomans say you got to get out of here and they send soldiers to capture him and parker it says he left his buckets and his pipe and he ran to jaffa port gets on his boat and sails back to england now there's an amazing new york times article cover page may 1911 that says parker is trapped lost at sea possibly with the treasures of king david and king solomon including the ark of the covenant whoa oh my gosh and i'll tell you he surfaces in england with nothing and no one ever knows if he found treasure and hid it or if he didn't find treasure oh my gosh that's such a mystery that's so cool amazing the mystery continues well once we get up there you'll find out tomorrow careful these are all bags that are full of archaeological earth [Music] we're right here take care carefully carefully don't become part of the excavation okay now this whole area actually began because of this little hole in the ground with this bag in it and if you look out the bag you see a hole yeah what is okay so we know these holes this is used for grinding flour into making bread okay and we realized if they were grinding flour making bread where do you eat your bread in your house well we're right near the big pool with the spring who's eating they're making their pizza here we realized maybe there were people who were living near here and maybe we're next to their interests of their house so the israel antiquities authority which are the actual archaeologists here they were looking all the all around the room they see there's walls here this is an actual wall and they're looking for the entrance of of a home which just over here follow me they found and voila whoa the entrance to a home that is 4 000 years old an entire underground home could you imagine this this is the master bedroom for a family who lived here thousands of years ago oh my gosh and look at this tomorrow oh whoa oh that's like a shelf yeah they probably put their lamps here it's unbelievable look at this how old is this place well we know people lived here 2800 years ago and it's probably older than that and here you can see look at this oh look it looks like a water trowel it exactly this is a water trowel yeah and it's made of stone which back then the jewish people were were dealing with purity and impurity and stone did not receive impurities so they had a water trowel made of stone and where i'm standing inside here this is the ancient oven oh my gosh so they were cooking here and you want to see something incredible what do you see that black on the roof oh my gosh look there's the smoke that's the smoke oh my god from thousands of years ago when a family was living here cooking a little fire the children sitting around and could you imagine if you'd say to them 3 000 years later we and people from around the world will be looking at the black suit above us oh my gosh wow is this in the bible so this is in the bible where imagine a family is living here the bible tells us in the book of kings in the book of isaiah that king hezekiah is ruling jerusalem yeah it's around 700 702 before the common era okay and sennacherib the largest king in the entire world of assyria comes to conquer jerusalem and as he gets closer and closer he sends messengers to jerusalem to dictate terms the people and the messengers of assyria even spoke judean hebrew and they say to the people listen did the gods of any of the people that we just pastored did their gods help them what makes you think your god's going to help you so just come out of these walls give each person a fig tree we'll give you a grapevine just give up your judaism and have they done that well the jewish people would that that's it for the jewish people that's it for the bible that's it for all the religions in the world that hold the bible sacred but the bible says not a single person left the walls wow and they had faith and they stood strong wow and the prophet isaiah tells the people you're going to be safe and the assyrians are killed it says in the bible by an angel of god that struck them dead and what's amazing is assyria has an inscription that's in the british museum that tells about this entire battle with jerusalem and they don't talk about the angel but they say as well jerusalem is the only place that was not conquered by these syrians wow so the 10 lost tribes that we know about it would have been the 12 lost tribes if the people had left the walls exactly wow could you imagine tomorrow a mother and a father and children sitting here and the mother and father hearing the words of the assyrian soldiers the largest army in the world just saying give up yeah oh my god but they stayed strong and we can see the life here that they were living that's right unbelievable and this is just the start i mean there's they're still excavating this place yeah we're excavating here look uh look over here just behind me there's a peck oh my gosh look at that and look at these shelves look at that i just look you can imagine them digging this out with something like this back right can't you it's unbelievable now i'll tell you you mentioned that they're still excavating yeah so look up over here don't fall in that pit look what you see right here oh wow look there's pottery i can even see the red look look look can you see it yeah that's incredible so tomorrow morning there'll be some excavators in here and they'll be piecing that together and figuring out who lived here what they were doing wow and what happened in the final minutes before they left this area but we know you know for all of our viewers one day you'll be allowed to come through here and so will we yeah and uh we'll see the mystery unfolding of the cave that goes back to the time of assyria and probably even before gosh i'm so lucky we're all lucky we can see our history thousands of years thousands of years later the water of the spring is really close to where we are right now it's just on the other side of this door right over here and the water is flowing and it used to fill this entire room why is it dry now so look first of all you have to understand we're inside a carved out section of a mountain in the ancient world it was open to the sky okay and the spring used to come here and fill the pool and people would stand here and throw down their buckets and pull them back up there was a fish market right above our heads which i'm going to hopefully be able to take us and go see and the life of jerusalem was in this area was right here at some point the water was diverted out of this room and put into another tunnel however this brings us back to one of the most incredible stories of the bible which is about king david's most well-known son solomon solomon now king david is an old man he's so old that they try to warm up his body with clothes and he can't get warm and his son solomon is only 12 years old so an older brother of solomon says i'm going to be king who is this little kid his name is adonia and he's about to steal the throne okay and batsheva solomon's well-known mother goes into david and she says david all the eyes of israel are on you you said solomon's going to be king right and one of his last commands david says bring solomon down to the water okay where he stands over the gikon spring and anoints them that's right here solomon is standing right here at the age of 12. they're pouring the oil over his hair and it's dripping and mixing with the water of jerusalem oh my god and this so this is the anointing pool of king solomon that is exactly this is where he begins this is where he became king there's only one place and this is the place oh my god yeah it's not amazing first book of kings chapter one so here we are at the water source our last stop that's true and yet not our last stop because our guests are going to join us again in the future and actually this is the first stop because this is where jerusalem began that's true so where are we jerome so we saw the pool of solomon that he was anointed on the water that we hear that water used to flow into the pool of solomon then what happened so king hezekiah who we heard was preparing for the assyrian assault diverts the water from that pool into this cave that we're about to see oh wow and he does that he saves the city because assyria couldn't capture the water source wow that's incredible so this this tunnel is the reason why jerusalem's alive today that's the this has always been the heart of jerusalem this was the secret of jerusalem and this is still flowing in the modern day for thousands of years while nations have risen and fallen this water's always flowing and flown in jerusalem it's seemed the jewish people exiled when the jewish people returned and it's waiting for everyone around the world to come and experience it themselves come take a look look at the water gushing beneath our feet wow so this is the gihon spring this is it this is where it all began this is the very very life source of jerusalem thank you for joining us there's lots more to explore so let us know in the comments below what you want to see us next and we'll take you there tomorrow this is a lot of fun yeah we'll see you tomorrow in jerusalem

Channel: City of David

Views: 803,398

Keywords: city of david, jerusalem, ancient Jerusalem, gihon, gihon spring

Id: izEvnrRua3Y

Length: 22min 13sec (1333 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 17 2022