Have archaeologists stumbled on a Second Temple-era version of Jerusalem's famed Mahane Yehuda market?
A rare object used to measure volume that dates back some 2,000 years that was recently unearthed by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the City of David National Park gives credence to the theory that researchers have uncovered the city square that served as a marketplace in the Second Temple era.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
Researchers suggest that the office of the "Agoranomos" – represented the official in charge of weights and measures in the city of Jerusalem.
Professor Ronny Reich, who is studying the artifact, explained that the stone "standard of volumes" table unearthed in the City of David still bears two of the original deep cavities, each with a drain at its bottom.
"The drain at the bottom could be plugged with a finger, filled with a liquid of some type, and once the finger was removed, the liquid could be drained into a container, therefore determining the volume of the container, using the measurement table as a uniform guideline. This way, traders could calibrate their measuring instruments using a uniform standard," Reich noted.
Reich explained that the "standard of volumes" was a rare find, as only two similar tables have been excavated in Jerusalem to date: one in the Jewish Quarter in the 1970s, and the second in excavations in the Shuafat neighborhood in the north of the city.
Archaeologist Ari Levi of the Israel Antiquities Authority, one of the directors of the Pilgrims Road excavation, said that the Pilgrim's Road project has turned up "a great number of stone weights measuring different values. The weights found are of the type which was typically used in Jerusalem. The fact that there were city-specific weights at the site indicates the unique features of the economy and trade in Jerusalem during the Second Temple period, possibly due to the influence of the Temple itself."
