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Iron Age II - King David and the First Temple Period
  • The Babylonian Conquest and the Destruction of the First Temple: The Megalim Institute
    The Babylonian Conquest and the Destruction of the First Temple: The Megalim Institute
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  • Arrowheads, found at the Israelite Tower in the Jewish Quarter by Professor Nahman Avigad in the 1960's. Courtesy of the Expeditionfor the excavation of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.
    Arrowheads, found at the Israelite Tower in the Jewish Quarter by Professor Nahman Avigad in the 1960's. Courtesy of the Expeditionfor the excavation of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.
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Iron Age II - King David and the First Temple Period

The Final Destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians

And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and encamped against it; and they built forts against it round about.  So the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king Zedekiah. In the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month, the famine was sore in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land. Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled, and went forth out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king’s garden… 


JEREMIAH 52:3–7

Less than ten years after the conquest of the city and the exile of its king, the new king, Zedekiah, rebelled against the Babylonians. The Babylonian army deployed opposite the city wall, and after a year and half of siege they entered the city and set it ablaze.

In the picture: Arrow heads found in excavations of the Israelite Tower in the Jewish Quarter, conducted by Prof. Nahman Avigad in the late 1960s. Some of these weapons were used by the city’s Judahite defenders and some by the Babylonian army.