Remarkable discoveries in archeology often happen by pure chance. In 1989 a deserted area outside Jerusalem's Jaffa Gate was excavated to build an underground parking garage. To the amazement of everyone, the bones of several hundred fairly young people were discovered in a previously unknown cave about 40 feet belowground. The bones lay in a pile, making his huge tomb different from others found nearby, where people had been laid to rest in spearate tombs or upon shelves cut into rock.
Then more clues emerged as the rubble was cleared. At the entrance to the tomb appeared a small Christian chapel of a style used in the seventh century A.D. It had a simple marble altar and a mosaic floor with three crosses. Even more astonishing, a Greek inscription in the floor read, "For the redemption and salvation of those, God knows their names." About 30 unused oil lamps decorated with crosses or palm leaves were also discovered there.
Why would so many people, some wearing pendants shaped like crosses, be buried in such a jumble? yet another clue came when coins were found. None were dated later than A.D. 610. History records that jerusalem was overrun in 614 by the Persians, who were enemies of the Christian empire known as Byzantium. According to writers of the time, the Jews of Jerusalem, who had been very cruelly treated by their Christian rulers, bought Christian captives from the Persians and killed them at the Pool of Mamilla. The pool was very near the tomb dug up accidentally in our day.
