In Archaeological Excavations
High quality, meleke limestone has been found wherever excavations in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre have reached bedrock. Beginning in about the seventh or eighth century BCE, the area where the church is now located was a large quarry, with the city of Jerusalem lying to the southeast. Traces of the quarry have been found not only in the church area, but also in excavations conducted nearby in the 1960s and 1970s by Kathleen Kenyon in the Muristan enclave of Jerusalem's Christian Quarter, and by Ute Lux, in the nearby Church of the Redeemer. Meleke stone was chiseled out in squarish blocks and partially cut ashlars still attached to the bedrock after being left by the workers were found. East of St. Helena's Chapel in the Holy Sepulchre Church, the quarry was over 40 feet deep and the earth and ash therein contained Iron Age II pottery, from about the seventh century BCE.
According to Virgilio C. Corbo, professor of archaeology at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem, the quarry continued to be used until the first century BCE, at which time it was filled, and covered with a layer of reddish-brown soil mixed with stone flakes from the ancient quarry. It became a garden or orchard, where cereals, fig, carob, and olive trees were grown. It also served as a cemetery, and at least four tombs dating from this period have been found, including a typical kokh tomb thought to be that of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.
A salvage excavation conducted by the Israeli Antiquities Authority in June 2006 in the Sanhedriya neighborhood of Jerusalem exposed another ancient masonry meleke quarry. Larger than the area excavated, the quarry abutted onto the southern end of the Second Temple-period Tombs of the Sanhedrin, between which extensive ancient quarries had previously been discovered.
The quarry seems to have been in operation in the Roman period, though precise dating was difficult because the quarrying debris was devoid of coins and potsherds, and modern debris had entered the site. A few pottery fragments from the end of the first century BCE to the first century CE found on the bottom of the quarry units formed the basis for the dating put forward, and the quarry's proximity to the Sanhedrin tombs of the Second Temple period has also led archaeologists to assume it was in use during that time.
The exposed quarry is just one of a number of ancient quarries discovered in the Sanhedriya-Mahanayim region whose stones were utilized in the public construction of Jerusalem.
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