Under threat from Romans ransacking Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, many of the city's Jewish residents crowded into an underground drainage channel to hide and later flee the chaos through Jerusalem's southern end.

The ancient tunnel was recently discovered buried beneath rubble, a monument to one of the great dramatic scenes of the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 A.D.

The channel was dug beneath what would become the main road of Jerusalem, the archaeology dig's directors, Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa and Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said Sunday. Shukron said excavators looking for the road happened upon a small drainage channel that led them to the discovery of the massive tunnel two weeks ago.

"We were looking for the road and suddenly we discovered it," Shukron said. "And the first thing we said was, 'Wow."'

The walls of the tunnel -- made of ashlar stones 3 feet deep -- reach a height of 10 feet in some places and are covered by heavy stone slabs that were the road's paving stones, Shukron said. Several manholes are visible, and portions of the original plastering remain, he said.

Pottery shards, vessel fragments and coins from the end of the Second Temple period were also discovered inside the channel, attesting to its age, Reich said...

(IsraelNN.com) The Israel Antiquities Authority announced Sunday that it found the site which served as a backdrop for a famous scene in the Great Jewish Rebellion against Rome in the 1st century. The Authority has uncovered a 70 meter long section of Jerusalem's main drainage duct. It was inside this drainage duct that Jerusalem's Jewish inhabitants hid from the Roman invaders when Rome sacked Jerusalem, according to historian (and Jewish turncoat [News with an A7 flare]) Josephus Flavius.

After a prolonged siege, Jerusalem was conquered by the Roman general Titus Flavius in the year 70 CE, and the Temple was destroyed. The Roman army placed a siege around Jerusalem by digging a trench around the city's walls, and building an additional wall around that trench. Anyone caught attempting to flee the city was crucified. Tens of thousands of crucified bodies encircled Jerusalem by the end of the siege.

Throughout the siege, many of the Jewish warriors' family members hid out in a drainage canal that carried rainwater from the Temple Mount to the Pool of Shiloach (AKA Siloam). This is the duct that has been exposed by archaeologists. When the city fell, some of the Jews hiding in the duct managed to escape through its southern section...