Extraordinary Biblical Find In Jerusalem

An underground drainage channel that archaeologists believe was an escape route that Jews used to flee the Romans in 70 AD has been found buried under the rubble of the Second Temple, which was destroyed by Roman conquerors in the Siege of Jerusalem.

The BBC News reports that scores of people are thought to have once taken refuge and actually lived in the tunnel until they were able to flee the city. The head of the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement that he thinks the tunnel, which stretches beneath the city to the Dead Sea, was Jerusalem's main drainage channel at the time of the Roman conquest. Several parts of it have been found intact.

"The channel...is covered with heavy stone slabs that are actually the paving stones of the street," said Eli Shukron of the Antiquities Authority in the official statement. "In some places the channel reaches a height of about three meters and is one meter wide, so that it is possible to walk in it comfortably. It was a place where people hid and fled to from burning, destroyed Jerusalem." Also discovered inside the tunnel were pottery shards and coins from the end of the Second Temple period. The tunnel is still being excavated.

The Second Temple, which stood between 516 BC and 70 AD, was the reconstructed Temple in Jerusalem and served as the center of Jewish worship. Solomon's Temple was also known as the First Temple; it was destroyed in 586 BC when the Jews were exiled into Babylonian Captivity. The First Temple was rebuilt 70 years later by Cyrus the Great in 515 BC. On Aug. 4, 70 AD, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple, which ended the Great Jewish Revolt that began four years earlier. All that is left of the Second Temple in Jerusalem today is the Western Wall, the so-called Wailing Wall. The Jewish fast Tisha B'Av is the annual mourning of the destruction of the Second Temple.