9. Remaining a subject of immense speculation and doubt for centuries, the discovery of the Walls of Nehemiah demonstrated at least partial accuracy in the long-suspect historical account provided by the Bible
Known as the Babylonian Exile, following the conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by Babylon in 598 BCE, the Jews were forced into exile until they were given permission to return to Jerusalem by the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great after his own conquest of Babylon in 538. As described in the Book of Nehemiah, upon their return to Jerusalem, Nehemiah bemoaned that the walls “had been broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire”. Ordering his people to rebuild the wall “so that we may no longer suffer disgrace”, the building works were completed in just fifty-two days whereafter “when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid”.
The archaeological remains of Jerusalem have long been held as a litmus test for biblical historicity and, with no evidence of these walls found across centuries, the first-hand account written in the Book of Nehemiah was regarded dubiously. That was until Eilat Mazar and her team, who while excavating a stone tower unintentionally weakened its foundations, discovered a five-meter-wide wall whilst attempting to repair the damage. Accompanied by pottery dating from the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, including biblical names concurrent with the timing of the story, the discovery single-handedly affirmed the core narrative of an entire questionable section of the Bible.