For years, scholars believed that a key stretch of wall in ancient Jerusalem was built by King Hezekiah as a defense against the Assyrian Empire. But new research has flipped that story. It turns out the wall was actually constructed by Hezekiah’s great-grandfather, King Uzziah, following a massive earthquake—an event also described in the Bible.
Previously, the wall was thought to date to Hezekiah’s reign, when he fought the Assyrian king Sennacherib. But recent studies using advanced carbon-14 dating, combined with data from ancient tree rings, show it was built much earlier, right after the earthquake that rocked Jerusalem.
This new timeline also challenges earlier views about Jerusalem’s growth. Instead of expanding mainly due to refugees from the Assyrian exile, the city’s growth seems to have been driven by internal population shifts.