Eli Shukron

Eli Shukron is an archaeologist who, according to a 2021 summary by Ronny Reich of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, excavated with Reich in the City of David in Jerusalem from 1995 to 2010. In 2012 the Israel Antiquities Authority, announcing a find, named him as director of the excavation on its behalf. The first volume of Reich and Shukron's final report, "Excavations in the City of David, Jerusalem (1995-2010)," was published in 2021 by Eisenbrauns of University Park, Pennsylvania.

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At the Gihon Spring

Reich's summary reports that they dated a fortified passage at the Gihon Spring to the Middle Bronze Age II, and a reference article on Jerusalem reports that their excavations showed the first fortifications in and around the spring to be of the Middle Bronze Age of the Levant. Reich also reports that a radiocarbon study published in 2017 proposed an Iron Age II date for the fortification instead, from samples taken at its base.

Scripture credits Hezekiah, king of Judah (716-687 BC), with making "the pool and the tunnel to bring water into the city" and with channeling the Spring of Gihon "down to the west side of the City of David" (2 Kings 20:20; 2 Chronicles 32:30). In a 2011 article in the journal Tel Aviv, Reich and Shukron argued from new data from their excavations near the spring and at the tunnel's northern end that its completion should be moved back several decades, to the early 8th century BC or before, which would place it before Hezekiah's reign; the debate over its date is set out at Hezekiah's tunnel.

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The stepped pool and the street

In the same summary Reich writes that they uncovered the east side of a large stepped pool, which they identified as "the Siloam Pool mentioned in the New Testament." Reich also reports that they uncovered parts of a paved, stepped street of the first century AD climbing from the pool, which he calls "certainly the city's main street," and the city's main drainage channel, which runs beneath its whole length.

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The Bethlehem bulla

In a press release of May 2012, which was not a peer-reviewed publication, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced that a bulla measuring about 0.6 inch (1.5 cm) had been found while soil from its excavations in the City of David was being sifted. The Israel Antiquities Authority's 2012 announcement reports three lines of ancient Hebrew script on it bearing the name Bethlehem, and Shukron's reading that in the seventh year of a king's reign a shipment was sent from Bethlehem to the king in Jerusalem, though which king, Hezekiah, Manasseh or Josiah, is unclear. The Israel Antiquities Authority dated it in 2012 to the late eighth or seventh century BC, when, it said, administrative bullae sealed tax shipments to the Kingdom of Judah, and quoted Shukron: "this is the first time the name Bethlehem appears outside the Bible, in an inscription from the First Temple period"; these were press statements, not a peer-reviewed study.

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The rock-cut rooms

Shukron is also the first-named author of a 2024 report in the journal 'Atiqot on finds from a series of rock-cut rooms on the City of David's eastern slope; the rooms are described at Temple Zero. The 'Atiqot report reads its finds as reflecting "their function as a cultic complex, likely constructed in the Middle Bronze Age, with its final stage in Iron Age IIB."