Monastery of the Virgins

The large number of Christian religious finds from the site have prompted its identification with a monastery described by a pilgrim, Theodosius the archdeacon, in his De Situ Terrae Sanctae, a work of the early 6th century.

The building identified as the Monastery of the Virgins was unearthed in Area XV[2] of Mazar's excavations of the Ophel on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Carried out between 1968 and 1977, the excavations revealed that a crowded residential neighbourhood stood in the area to the immediate south of the Temple Mount enclosure during Jerusalem's Byzantine period.

Built on top in the remains of a large Second Temple Period building and an older burial cave, the house featured three stories of which the basement and ground floor were well preserved.

[2][4] The excavation of the building yielded earlier Iron Age II shards, including a LMLK seal and the head of a fertility figurine.

These include fragments of marble chancel screens, an altar table and a Second-Temple era stone ossuary in use as a reliquary and containing a skull.

[7] Several fragments of a chancel screen depict two deer, Christian symbols of faith and devotion mentioned in Psalm 42:2,[9] facing a cross planted on the Hill of Golgotha.

[13] The large number of Christian items found in the structure have led to its identification with a monastery described by Theodosius the archdeacon in his De Situ Terrae Sanctae ('On the Topography of the Holy Land').

As population density in Jerusalem grew, the needs of numerous pilgrims to the holy city led to a reduction in the monastery's area in favour of public facilities.

Thirty well-preserved rooms were found on its ground floor, as was a red cross painted on a lintel in the building, and large watering pool on the outside.

The monastery had been built over the remains of a large Second Temple-era building which had stood adjacent to a major entrance to the Herodian Temple Mount.