Archaeology Versus Written Sources: the Case of the Persian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614

Yuri Stoyanov / London Various aspects of the last great war of late antiquity between the Byzantine and Sasanian empires have attracted increasing interest in the last thirty years or so, and research into the history and archaeology of the early seventh century East Mediterranean has made some substantial progress. While work on the written sources has continued to illuminate the political, religious and military dimensions of the conflict, the study of the archaeological evidence has produced quite a few surprises. They challenge strongly some of the versions of events presented in the written records and the resultant later historiographic reconstructions. The Persian conquest (614) and following occupation of Jerusalem (614628) presents one of the most telling and enigmatic cases in which the archaeological evidence forcefully contradicts the claims and chronologies of contemporaneous written sources. Thus they undermined their credibility, leading to a long-overdue re-assessment of the religious-political agendas of their authors and the circles among which they were circulated. The seventh century was watershed in Byzantine religious and political history, presenting the empire with a series of massive crises. Its beginning brought internal turbulence and insecurity and throughout much of its course the empire found itself under unremitting military pressure virtually on all fronts. The military conflicts started with the advent of the century, when taking advantage of the political instability in Constantinople after an imperial coup dtat in Constantinople in late 602, the Sasanian ruler Khosrow II (590628) intervened militarily in the subsequent political struggles. His intervention was to evolve into a large-scale invasion of imperial territory, encroaching upon Byzantine Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Anatolia. The enthronement of Heraclius (610641), initially failed to turn the tide of the Persian invasion: after conquering Damascus in 613 and Jerusalem in 614, the Sasanian troops pressed on with the occupation of Egypt between 616 and 621. Advancing through Asia Minor the Persian forces eventually approached the Bosphorus, setting the stage for a direct frontal assault on Constantinople. The threat made all the more dangerous as it was planned in alliance with the Turkic Avar khaganate. The Avar power base lay to the north of the Danube but concurrent with the Persian advance Avar forces had been pursuing far-ranging incursions across the imperial Danube frontier and deep into the Balkans towards Constantinople.
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These plans for a joint attack on and siege of Constantinople proved abortive and the total fiasco of a Persian-Avaro-Slav military offensive against the imperial capital in 626 resulted not only in the withdrawal of Persian and Avar forces but also signaled a turning point in the long war. By that time Heraclius increasingly effective tactic of outmaneuvering Persian armies in Asia Minor and (with the crucial assistance of the forces of his ally, the Western Turkic Khaganate) Transcaucasia, as well as expanding his campaigns deep into Sasanian territory, was beginning to change the course of war. Heraclius victory over a Persian army at Nineveh in late 627 triggered intense political turmoil in Persia. Khosrow II was dethroned and executed and amid the ensuing lasting Sasanian dynastic crisis Heraclius was able to procure a victorious truce, providing for the Persian evacuation of the occupied imperial territories. The prolonged military conflict between Heraclius and Khosrows armies represented the concluding chapter of four centuries of intermittent warfare between the Sasanian and the Roman, and later, the East Roman and Byzantine empires. The military and political collisions between the two empires were also marked by periodically resurgent religious rivalry, which was to intensify further during the exhausting and wide-scale Byzantine-Sasanian hostilities under Heraclius and Khosrow II. Christians throughout the Byzantine Empire and its Persian-occupied territories were disturbed and dismayed by the news and circulating stories (some of which were disseminated by Constantinople imperial propaganda) of the Persian seizure and sack of Jerusalem and reports of the apparent desecration and destruction of churches and monasteries within and around the Holy City. Understandably, most alarming for the Christian world were the reports that the Persian invaders set the Holy Sepulchre itself afire. The Persian expatriation to the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon of church treasures and relics, including the reliquary of the True Cross on which Jesus was supposed to have been crucified (and by then associated with Roman Christian imperial victory ideology), were inevitably extremely traumatic for Christian sensitivities and fomented apocalyptic expectations. While differing in some details and in their chronology of events, the Christian narratives of the Sasanian capture of Jerusalem1 provide poignant and graphic accounts of massive Persian destruction of churches and monasteries in Jerusalem and its environs. They included also information about indiscriminate massacres of the Christian population and the deportation of large groups of Christian survivors, led by the Jerusalem Patriarch Zachariah, to Ctesiphon. While some historians have accepted uncritically the veracity of these accounts, the progress of archaeological work in Jerusalem and the Jerusalem area since the end of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine has been accompanied by an increasing awareness that the veracity of the written sources regarding some of the most dramatic stages of the ancient and medieval history of Jerusalem needs to be constantly re-assessed against the background of the archaeological evidence, already existing or newly made available.
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This holds particular relevance for the seventh-century Christian reports of the Persian conquest of Jerusalem (the later Christian accounts are mostly derivative), given their inevitable wartime and religiously motivated bias, as well as the use of the standard topoi of East Roman/Byzantine anti-Sasanian polemic. Before the inauguration of the professional and systematic archaeological investigation of Jerusalem, a number of historians interpreted it as one of the crucial episodes of the massive political, socio-economic and religious transformation of the Near East. They believed that this began in the seventh-century initiated by the Persian conquests, which were seen as effectively marking the end of antiquity2. Accordingly, early seventh-century conquests in the Near East (and in Palestine, in particular) were regularly credited with the destruction and depopulation of urban centres and settlements, the decline of agriculture and trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. It led to the catastrophic undermining of the Graeco-Roman civilizational and cultural hegemony (in its Christian East Roman version) in the region, setting thus the stage for the Muslim Arab conquests which dealt the final, mortal blows3. The wide-scale destruction of Christian sacral architecture and the very structures of Christian life in Jerusalem as narrated in contemporaneous Christian narratives has been seen as having an wide-spread effect on other Christian centres and communities in Palestine4. Thus, the Persian invasion and occupation of Palestine were seen as not only causing wide-spread economic decline and social breakdown but also disrupting the rhythm and functioning of Christian religious life in Palestine, again anticipating the future grave challenges to Palestinian Christianity following the Muslim Arab conquests of the 630s. Until recently the archaeological investigations and publications on Late Antiqueand Early Mediaeval Palestine tended to accept the veracity and lead of written records. On a number of occasions evidence of destruction and the presence of ash layers at the relevant urban and rural sites (but without the necessary supporting pottery and numismatic data5 or presence of Sasanian artifacts) were ascribed to the Persian invasion in the early seventh century. While this tendency can be traced to archaeological publications regarding Late Antique- and Early Mediaeval Palestine in general, it has been particularly evident in the archaeological and historical treatment of Late Antiqueand Early Mediaeval Jerusalem. However, the sheer accumulation of archaeological work and evidence in and around Jerusalem (especially over the last thirty years) has severely undermined the credibility of the written sources alleging massive destruction and conflagration of Christian sacral architecture as well as residential areas in and around the Holy City. Despite this sustained work, no clear evidence of destruction and burnt layers has been unearthed and some of the earlier or more recent attributions of such levels to the Persian conquest have been persuasively disproved6. Indeed it is only one such ash layer (outside the northern wall of the Old City of Jerusalem and situated between Damascusand Herods gate) that can be tentatively attributed to the Persian siege of the Holy City7.
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Claims for evidence of damage and conflagration in the Byzantine levels to the south of the Temple Mount8 have been similarly refuted by archaeological work demonstrating the continuity of occupation of the relevant residential area throughout the seventh century and beyond9. The same continuity of undisrupted settlement applies to other residential areas in the Old City of Jerusalem, which would have suffered heavy damage if one takes the written reports of its Persian capture at face value10. The most dramatic discrepancy between documentary sources and the accumulating archeological evidence concerns the dramatic narratives of the large-scale destruction and burning of Christian sacral architecture described in some detail in the written records. These details appeared convincing enough for a long time but the publication of archaeological reports on excavated ecclesiastical compounds in Jerusalem and its hinterland have demonstrated the lack of definite evidence of substantial damage or traces of burning datable to the period of the Persian conquest. This applies to a number of church sites, which according to the written accounts suffered heavily during the sack or were destroyed. This discrepancy is particularly striking in the case of the churches within the walls and immediate vicinity of the Old City and sites such as the Church of St Stephen (located to the north of the Old City walls), the Churches of Eleona and Gethesemane (situated on the western slopes of the Mount of Olives), the New Church of the Theotokos (the Nea, built by Justinian in the sixth century), the Church of the Probatica (erected to the north of the Temple Mount), the Church of the Holy Zion on Mount Zion, etc11. Archaeological work at two other Mount of Olives ecclesiastical sites and the Monastery of St George in the Givat Ram area (to the west of the Old City) has produced some evidence of destruction levels which can possibly be attributed to the early seventh century, but the data is by no means unambiguous and can invite other interpretations12. Significantly, the thorough archaeological exploration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which according to written sources was set aflame and suffered massive damage has been unable to reveal any traces of such substantial damage and destruction (or indeed indications of the extensive repairs alleged in the written accounts)13. What is more, as with the residential compounds, the ecclesiastical sites tend to demonstrate patterns of continuous use throughout the seventh century and into the Early Islamic period, without any evident major disruptions. Hence, the abandonment of monasteries and churches and the resultant detrimental effect on Christian life and worship, sometimes postulated on the basis of documentary sources, also cannot be supported by the archaeological record14. On the other hand, archaeological work within the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem has to some extent confirmed the claims of written records that its Christian population suffered heavy losses at the time of the Persian conquest of 614. This was evidenced by the mass burial sites around the Holy City, which, with varying degrees of certainty seem to be datable to the early seventh century15. However, generally archaeological investigations demonstrate that the impact of the Persian conquest of Jerusalem on its
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urban and ecclesiastical infrastructure and the continuity of settlement in the city and its hinterland was far less disruptive than the catastrophic picture elaborated in documentary sources16. If the actual effect of the Persian capture of Jerusalem was so minimal in contrast with the dramatic and violent accounts of the written sources, this raises the question why the latter chose to exaggerate so inordinately the extent of the destruction and damage wreaked on the ecclesiastical and residential compounds of the city. The answer seems to lie in the nature of the written sources: they served in effect as weapons in the propaganda war the court of Heraclius was waging against the Sasanian adversary which intensified further in the 620s. The Byzantine counter-offensive in Sasanid-controlled territory resorted to some retaliatory destruction of Zoroastrian fire-temples17 and was accompanied by sustained anti-Sasanid religious- and political propaganda targeting (especially in Transcaucasia) the Christian subjects of the Persian state. Khosrow II was himself castigated as God-abhorred and execrated, an opponent of God, who blasphemed against Jesus Christ18 and cruelly dismissed Heraclius peace overtures in 615/616, stating that he would spare the emperor only if he renounced the Crucified One and adopted sun-worship19. The accounts of Persian anti-Christian violence and atrocities in Jerusalem, including the reported conflagration of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher were thus exploited as the crucial ingredients of an anti-Persian propaganda campaign which was intended to escalate the religious dimension of the warfare20. The focus on the recovery of Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulcher and the True Cross formed the central themes of a religio-political complex of notions which, being triggered by the intense religious sentiments and rhetoric ignited by the protracted Byzantine-Persian war in the first three decades of the century, rapidly began to assume eschatological features. By the end of the century this new religio-political ideological complex transformed irretrievably Byzantine imperial and Eastern Christian appocalypticism (and elements of Byzantine political theology) vis--vis the political and religious challenges posed by the conflict with the Umayyad Khaliphate21. Thus apart from helping to reconstruct facets of early seventh-century historical reality, the use of archaeological research as a corrective to the written records of the Persian capture of Jerusalem in 614 also serves to discern in these texts the beginning of an influential politico-theological pattern. It exploited inherited anti-Sasanian stereotypes to create a grand ideological narrative of Jerusalem and the Holy Land as a battlefield against invading alien faiths, with all its long-lasting repercussions. The contemporary Christian sources include the treatise on the capture of Jerusalem by the Mar Saba monk, Strategius (extant in Georgian and Arab versions as well as Greek fragments), ed. and trans. G. Garitte. La prise de Jrusalem par les Perses en 614. Louvain, 1960; G. Garitte (ed.). Expugnationis Hierosolymae AD 614 Recensiones Arabicae, 2 vols. Louvain, 19731974, and anacreontic poems by Sophronius, a monk of the St Theodosius monastery and would-be Patriarch of Jerusalem see M. Gigante
1

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(ed.). Sophronii anacreontica. Rome, 1957. Later sources include the Armenian chronicle attributed to Sebeos, Bishop of the Bagratouni, the Greek chronicle of Theophanes and several Syriac chronicles. On the historicity of the Christian sources for the Persian conquest of Jerusalem, their rhetorical strategies (including the generous use of biblical typologies), theological and ideological agendas see for example R. L. Wilken. The Land Called Holy. Palestine in Christian History and Thought. New Haven, 1992, pp. 218233; B. M. Wheeler. Imagining the Sasanian Capture of Jerusalem. The Prophecy and Dream of Zerubbabel and Antiochus Strategios Capture of Jerusalem. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 57, 1991, pp. 6985, at pp. 7785; G. Stemberger. Jerusalem in Early Seventh Century Aspirations of Christians and Jews. In: Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, Christianity and Islam (ed. L. I. Levine). New York, 1999, pp. 260273, at pp. 261265; A. Cameron. Blaming the Jews: the Seventh-Century Invasions of Palestine in Context. Melange Gilbert Dagron, Travaux et Mmoires, 14, 2002, pp. 5778, at 58 ff. 2 See for example: A. A.Vasiliev. History of the Byzantine Empire. Madison, 1961, pp. 190191. 3 See the summary of these approaches to the Persian conquest in: C. Foss. The Persians in the Near East (602630 AD). Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 13, 2003, pp. 149170. 4 See for example: P. Mayerson. The First Muslim Attacks on Southern Palestine (A.D. 633634). Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 95, 1964, pp. 155199. 5 See the critical observations on this trend of archaeological research in: J. Russell. The Persian Invasions of Syria/Palestine and Asia Minor in the Reign of Heraclius: Archaeological and Numismatic Evidence. In: The Dark Centuries of Byzantium (7th9th c.) (ed. E. Kontura-Galake). Athens, 2001, pp. 4171, especially at pp. 4344; G. Avni. The Sack of Jerusalem by the Sassanian Persians (614) an Archaeological Assessment (forthcoming), pp. 34. 6 See, for example, J. Magness. A Re-examination of the Archaeological Evidence for the Sassanian Persian Destruction of the Tyropoeon Valley. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 287, 1992, pp. 6774. 7 J. Magness. Archaeological Evidence for the Sasanid Persian Invasion of Jerusalem (forthcoming). 8 E. Mazar. The Temple Mount Excavations in Jerusalem 19681978 Directed by Benjamin Mazar Final Reports. Volume II, the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods. Qedem 43. Jerusalem, 2003, pp. 468. 9 J. Magness. Archaeological Evidence for the Sasanid Persian Invasion of Jerusalem (forthcoming). 10 See, for example, G. Avni, Y. Baruch, S. Weksler-Bdolah. Jerusalem. The Old City Herods Gate (A-2877). Hadashot Arkheologiyot/Evacuations & Surveys in Israel, 113, 2001, pp. 7679; S. Weksler-Bdolah. The Fortifications of Jerusalem in the Byzantine Period. Aram, 1819, 20062007, pp. 85112; G. Avni. The
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Sack of Jerusalem by the Sassanian Persians (614) an Archaeological Assessment (forthcoming), pp. 911. 11 See the summaries of the evidence in: R. Schick. The Christian Communities of Palestine in the Early Islamic Period. Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam. Princeton, 1994, pp. 2047, pp. 325359; R. Schick. Jerusalem in the Byzantine Period. In: Jerusalem before Islam (eds. Z. Kafafi, R. Schick). Oxford, 2007, pp. 169188, at pp. 179181; G. Avni. The Sack of Jerusalem by the Sassanian Persians (614) an Archaeological Assessment (forthcoming), pp. 1114. 12 J. Russell. The Persian Invasions of Syria/Palestine and Asia Minor in the Reign of Heraclius, pp. 4950. 13 See now R. Schick. The Christian Communities of Palestine in the Early Islamic Period, pp. 3738; G. Avni, J. Seligman. New Excavations at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre Compound. In: One Land, Many Cultures Archaeological Studies in Honor of Stanislao Loffreda OFM (eds. G. C. Bottini, L. Di Segni, L. D. Chrupcala). Jersualem, 2003, pp. 153162; G. Avni, J. Seligman. Excavations at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (forthcoming). 14 See for example: R. Avner. The Recovery of the Kathisma Church and its Influence on Octagonal Buildings. In: One Land, Many Cultures Archaeological Studies in Honor of Stanislao Loffreda OFM (eds. G. C. Bottini, L. Di Segni, L. D. Chrupcala). Jersualem, 2003, pp. 173186. 15 R. Reich. The Ancient Burial Ground in the Mamila Neighbourhood, Jerusalem. In: Ancient Jerusalem Revealed (ed. H. Geva). Jerusalem, 1994, pp. 111118; A. Kloner. Archaeological Survey of Israel, Survey of Jerusalem The Northwestern Sector, Introduction and Indices. Jerusalem, 2003, pp. 137138; G. Avni. The Sack of Jerusalem by the Sassanian Persians (614) an Archaeological Assessment (forthcoming), pp. 49. 16 See the summary of the archaeological evidence in: G. Avni. The Sack of Jerusalem by the Sassanian Persians (614). In: Archaeological Assessment (forthcoming), pp. 1416. 17 Nikephoros, Patriarch of Constantinople. Breviarum Historicum, 12:4143; translation in Nikephoros, Patriarch of Constantinople. Short History, text, tr. and comm. by C. Mango. Washington, D.C., 1990, p. 55. 18 Chronicon Pascale, ed. L. Dindorf. Bonn, 1832, 729/114 (tr. by M. Whitby and M. Whitby. Chronicon Paschale 228628 AD. Liverpool, 1989, pp. 18384). 19 Theophanes. Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, 1. Leipzig, 1883, 301:2025 (tr. by C. Mango and R. Scott. The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor. Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284813. Oxford, 1997, p. 433. 20 For Byzantine sources for the war, which present the conflict with overt religious connotations, see for example: Chronicon Pascale, 728/412, 729/114, tr. M. Whitby and M. Whitby. Chronicon Paschale, 18384; George of Pisidia. Expeditio persica, ed. and tr. A. Pertusi; Giorgio di Pisidia. Poemi I: Panegirici epici. Ettal, 1959, pp. 84136; more recently, ed. and tr. by L. Tartaglia. Carmi. Giorgio di Pisidia. Turin, 1998, pp.
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7141; Theophanes. Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor, 2 vols. Leipzig, 18831885, 1, 303.12304.13, 307.212; 310.25311.2 (tr. C. Mango and R. Scott. The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, resp. 435436, 439, 442443). On Heraclius strong emphasis on and meticulous exploitation of the religious dimension of the war see J. HowardJohnston. The Official History of Heraclius Persian Campaigns. In: The Roman and Byzantine Army in the East (ed. E. Dbrowa). Cracow, 1994, pp. 5787, at pp. 8182, pp. 8485; J. Howard-Johnston. Heraclius Persian Campaign and the Revival of the East Roman Empire. War in History, 6, 1996, pp. 144, at pp. 3641. On George of Pisidias presentation of the Byzantine-Persian war in religious terms see: J. D. C. Frendo. Classical and Christian Influences in the Heracliad of George of Pisidia. Classical Bulletin, 62, 1986, pp. 5362; D. M. Olster. Roman Defeat, Christian Response and the Literary Construction of the Jew. Philadelphia, 1994, pp. 5172 passim; M. Whitby. George of Pisidia on Emperor Heraclius and His Deputies. In: The Propaganda of Power. The Role of Panegyric in Late Antiquity (ed. M. Whitby). Brill, 1998, pp. 253254; J. Haldon. Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World, 5651204. London, 1999, pp. 2021; I. Huber. Ansichten eines Zivilisierten ber die unzivilisierte Welt: Das Ssniden-Bild des Georgios Pisides und sein historischer Wert fr den sptantiken Iran. Klio, 90:1, 2008, S. 162192. 21 Y. Stoyanov. Apocalypticizing Warfare: from Political Theology to Imperial Eschatology in Seventh to Early Eighth Century Byzantium (forthcoming).

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