The magnificent Maccabee mansion found under a home
The eye-catching gold ring on Miriam Siebenberg’s finger is a replica of a 2,000-year-old bronze key-on-a-ring excavated from underneath her home in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter. What did the key open? Siebenberg can only guess.
The ring was just the first indication that Theo and Miriam Siebenberg’s house, built on a hill in 1970, was sitting above an archeological site like a tiny cherry atop a layer cake filled with tantalizing ancient relics.
Underneath the four-story modern house, 18 years of digging revealed what Siebenberg calls “the perfect continuation of Jewish history in one place.” The base layer has emptied burial caves from the era of King David and King Solomon some 3,000 years ago.
Above that are the remains of a Hasmonean mansion inhabited by children of the Maccabees – the heroes of Hanukkah fame — who ruled Judea from 142-63 BCE after liberating it from the Syrian-Greeks.
This once grand abode is the showpiece of the subterranean museum that Biblical Archaeology Review called “an engineering and structural marvel,” open for group tours by appointment.
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