Zvi Greenhut has his own time machine. Of course, in Israel, virtually everyone does. It’s called a shovel, and probably runs you about 10 shekels at the hardware store.
The Jerusalem native had been thinking about a career as a saxophonist until a four-day dig in the Negev gave him a thrill no Charlie Parker record ever could.
“You are going into the desert and have this connection with the past and you’re trying to reconstruct what was there 2,000, 3,000 years ago or more right there in that field,” he said, his enthusiasm apparent even 25 years after that seminal excavation.
“I cannot say my life is not interesting.”
Greenhut, an archaeological instructor in the Jerusalem district of the revered Israel Antiquities Authority, will give a free talk at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum on Tuesday, April 4. His appearance is sponsored by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Endowment Fund and the Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
And, if for just an evening, he’ll provide a look into a world where the archaeological find of a lifetime, more often than not, is unearthed not by ultrasonic detectors or cameras mounted within snaking fiber-optic tubes, but an errantly driven bulldozer.
That’s what happened in 1990, when a construction worker nicked the roof of a subterranean structure beneath a road in a Jerusalem park.
When Greenhut got to the scene, he discovered, buried beneath a Peace Park meant to foster goodwill between Jewish and Arab children, a tomb from one of the most contentious Jewish families of all time. It was the burial cave of Joseph, son of Caiphus, the high priest best known for handing over Jesus to the Romans.
“You wake up in the morning and you don’t know what the rest of your day will look like,” said the 47-year-old with a laugh.
In fact, Greenhut’s work has shown that many of Jerusalem’s archaeologists — and this is a city that is not lacking in archaeologists — didn’t know exactly what the eternal city’s past looked like, either.
One of his latest excavations was in Jerusalem’s “City of David,” a narrow strip south of the Temple Mount and the city’s oldest section. In biblical days, houses here overlooked the 65-yard-square Siloam Pool, a large, man-made structure that would have been teeming with Jerusalemites washing clothes, kibitzing or purifying themselves prior to a visit to the nearby Temple.
The surrounding neighborhood had long been believed to be a slum — in fact, in the miniature re-creations of Jerusalem on display in local hotels, it has always been portrayed as something of a shantytown.
But that’s not what Greenhut found. “They were very rich and high-status people who lived in a very nice place overlooking the Siloam Pool. That was a surprise,” he said by phone from Israel.
While unearthing momentous finds, Indiana Jones-style, is what the general public probably believes fuels an archaeologist, the Israeli says he instead savors solving the mysteries of ancient Jerusalemites’ everyday lives.
His most recent excavation was at a site called Motza, which is on the western periphery of Jerusalem. He uncovered hundreds of grain silos that would have held far more grain than the local people could have consumed — meaning ancient Israelis were able to amass a surplus.
In fact, his discovery of a scepter dating from around the seventh century BCE reading, in Hebrew, “The standard-bearer,” illuminates our understanding of the Judean Kingdom even more. This staff, a symbol of central authority likely wielded by a high official, means that Motza wasn’t just a farm town with a surplus of grain, but part of a centrally organized infrastructure of grain-
producing and transporting regions meant to keep the kingdom well-supplied.
“I am a Jerusalemite, a native, and I have had the great chance to work in Jerusalem almost all of my life,” said the archaeologist of his chosen profession.
“I have also had the privilege of finding some very famous things,” he pauses for effect, “which made life interesting.”
Zvi Greenhut will deliver the Helen Diller Family Annual Lecture Series “Jerusalem in Biblical Times” 7 p.m Tuesday, April 4 at the Legion of Honor Museum, 34th Avenue and Clement Street, S.F. Information: Contact Judy Bloom at (415) 512-6263 or [email protected].