The Burnt House, AD 70
The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is preserved in a single burnt basement, down to the household's name and the last moments in it.
Confirmed by the groundExcavated siteAD 70
The basement of a priestly household destroyed in the Roman sack: ash, collapsed walls, a stone weight inscribed "of Bar Kathros" — a priestly family named in rabbinic sources — an iron spear, and the bones of a woman's arm reaching toward a doorway.
…the days shall come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.
- Found
- The Jewish Quarter, Old City of Jerusalem, 1970 — Nahman Avigad's excavation
- Now held at
- In place, open as a museum, Jerusalem
- How it reached us
- Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
What it shows
The house dates and identifies itself; it bears on the destruction of the city, not on any prediction of it.
How historians use it
One of the best-preserved first-century domestic contexts in Jerusalem.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
- Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (1983)
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.