Motza

Motza lies west of Jerusalem, close to Tel Motza, in a valley fed by plentiful springs and the confluence of Nahal Sorek and Nahal Arza.[6] The site sits at an average elevation of about 600 meters.[1] Its position along an ancient route connecting the Shefela lowlands to Jerusalem, combined with reliable fresh water, made the area favorable for human habitation from the earliest prehistoric periods through the modern era.[4]

The ancient settlement identified with Motza has been linked by archaeologists and textual scholars to the biblical Moẓah, a site mentioned in the Book of Joshua as lying within the territory of Benjamin.[5] Encyclopedia.com identifies ancient Moza with Khirbat Beit Mizza, west of Jerusalem, near a spring in a valley with olive groves and vineyards, and notes remains in the area of a Roman road station, a bath, Jewish and Roman tombs, and a Byzantine monastery.[2] The Arab village of Qalunya, which neighbored Motza into the twentieth century, derived its name from the Roman town Colonia that once occupied the same ground.[6]

Human presence at the Motza site extends from the Epipaleolithic period, around 20,000 years ago, through the present, with finds belonging to widely separated occupation layers.[4] The valley's springs and agricultural potential drew one of the largest early settlements documented in the region.[4]

Excavations conducted as part of the Road 16 highway project by the Israel Antiquities Authority, funded by Netivei Israel, revealed a Neolithic settlement dated to approximately 9,000 years ago that archaeologists described as the largest known from that period in Israel and one of the largest in the world.[4] The site extends more than half a kilometer across a fan-shaped slope and comprises over 1,200 excavation squares of 25 square meters each.[7] Excavation directors estimated that at least 2,000 to 3,000 people lived there simultaneously—a population they compared to that of a modern city.[4]

The settlement's layout revealed large residential buildings with multiple rooms, public complexes and cult areas, and narrow alleys between structures, all presented as evidence of advanced settlement planning.[4] Some buildings featured plaster floors or plastered installations. A study of red-painted plaster floors from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period found that preparation layers contained large aggregates, a high proportion of dolomite, and some sediment, while the finishing topcoat was almost pure calcite with finer aggregates. The same technology persisted across all examined building phases.[8]

The subsistence economy was varied. Built storage structures held large quantities of legumes, especially lentils, indicating intensive agriculture. Animal remains showed increasing specialization in herding alongside a declining role for hunting.[4] The lithic assemblage included thousands of arrowheads, axes, sickle blades, and flint knives, as well as stone bracelets, beads, pendants, mother-of-pearl bracelets, and a bull figurine.[4] Burials were placed between and inside houses, sometimes with grave goods; finds included obsidian originating in Anatolia and shells from both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, interpreted as evidence of far-reaching trade and cultural exchange.[4]

One remarkable discovery was a tomb dated to approximately 4,000 years ago found within an older stratigraphic layer. The tomb contained two individuals along with a dagger, a spearhead, and a whole domesticated donkey buried in front of it; the excavation co-director suggested the donkey was intended to serve the dead in the afterlife.[9] A 2020 supplementary volume, The Mega Project at Motza (Moẓa): The Neolithic and Later Occupations up to the 20th Century, brought together research on the site.[10]

Researchers studying the site's palaeoenvironment examined how Motza's geomorphology, hydrology, and surrounding resources related to its selection and long occupation. They concluded that Early Holocene climate and environmental conditions help explain the Neolithic occupation's climax and its effects on the landscape, while cautioning that the evidence cannot offer deterministic explanations for why the megasite was eventually abandoned.[7] Excavators said the discovery revised previous assumptions that Judea was largely empty during the Neolithic while settlements of comparable scale existed only east of the Jordan or in the northern Levant.[4]

Tel Motza has been proposed as the site of the biblical Moẓah mentioned in Joshua 18 within the tribal territory of Benjamin.[11][5] Israel Antiquities Authority excavations at the site took place in 1993, 2002, 2003, 2012, and 2013, in advance of construction work on Highway 1, and confirmed a substantial Iron Age II presence dating from the tenth to the sixth centuries BCE.[11]

Among the most significant finds was a temple complex first reported in 2012 and investigated further in subsequent seasons. An early report described massive walls, a broad east-facing entrance, a probable courtyard altar, and a cache of ritual pottery, chalice fragments, decorated pedestals, and pottery figurines of people and horses. The excavation directors noted that it was an unusual discovery because few ritual buildings of that period had been found in Judah, particularly so close to Jerusalem.[12] A 2020 report characterized the complex more fully: oriented east to west, with a courtyard and a large rectangular building, the temple was in use from around 900 BCE until approximately the early sixth century BCE, making it contemporaneous with the First Temple in Jerusalem and roughly two-thirds its size.[5] The full perimeter had not yet been uncovered at the time of reporting.[5]

Excavations also uncovered a courtyard altar, a stone offering table, human-like and horse figurines, cult stands, and chalices. Researchers interpreted the assemblage as evidence of cultic activity, while acknowledging that the precise religious practices and the meaning of the figurines remain interpretive questions. The principal researchers hypothesized that the nearby Jerusalem administration sanctioned the temple's operation; whether it continued functioning after Josiah's religious reforms remains unresolved.[5]

The site also yielded dozens of silos and two storage buildings interpreted as a royal granary supplying Jerusalem.[11] A limestone capital decorated with menorah-like designs was found in 2020 during construction-related excavations, discovered upside down in a room of a Byzantine building dated to the sixth or seventh century CE. Researchers proposed that it had been reused from a late Roman-period settlement of the second through fourth centuries CE, while acknowledging uncertainty about the capital's original function and whether the decorative resemblance to a menorah was intentional or accidental.[13]

During the Second Temple period, Motza was known for willow trees growing beside a nearby brook, and branches from the area were brought to the Temple in Jerusalem for Sukkot rituals.[1] The Mishnah describes the place below Jerusalem from which people gathered willow branches for the Temple altar, and the Gemara identifies this location as a Roman military colony, explaining the name Motza as deriving from exemption from the king's tax.[14] The ritual involved standing the branches upright at the altar's sides with their tops bent over, circling the altar daily and seven times on the seventh day of Sukkot, and storing branches in golden basins on the eve of Shabbat so they would not wither.[14]

The Roman presence at the site was substantial. Emperor Vespasian settled a garrison of 800 Roman soldiers at the town known as Colonia in 71 CE, and the Arab village of Qalunya later took its name from that Roman settlement.[6] Several Roman-Byzantine mosaic floors have been found near Tel Motza and described as nearly intact. One mosaic, measuring 1.60 by 1.60 meters and featuring a partridge at its center, was found in a garden near a modern house. After the original was transferred to the Rockefeller Museum for examination and restoration, local resident Shauli Yossefon organized neighbors to produce a replica, which was installed in the village.[6] The area also preserves remains of a Roman road station, baths, Jewish and Roman tombs, and a Byzantine monastery.[2]

The modern Jewish farming community at Motza is among the earliest Jewish agricultural settlements established outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City in the modern era. The Jewish Virtual Library identifies it as the first Jewish agricultural community in the country in modern times and says that for years it was the sole Jewish rural village in the Jerusalem area.[3]

The precise date of the settlement's founding is attested differently across sources. The Jewish Virtual Library reports that in 1859 Shaul Yehuda, a wealthy Jew from Baghdad, purchased a farm near Colonia and called it Motza, with other settlers joining later.[3] Encyclopedia.com attributes the initial 1859 land acquisition to inhabitants of Jerusalem's Old City headed by Yehoshua Yellin, with a few families working the land and terracing the hillsides without living there permanently.[2] A Jerusalem Post report dates the founding of the modern Jewish farming community to 1854.[1] An early-twentieth-century American Jewish Year Book account places land purchases by supporters of Rabbi Hirsch Kalischer as early as 1873, describing funds raised to buy 127 acres and several families placed there that year for agricultural colonization, with the settlers engaged primarily in viticulture and truck farming for the Jerusalem market.[15] A separate account notes that the colony was never wholly developed but retained a recognized place in the history of Jewish colonization and served as an excursion destination for Jerusalem children.[16]

In 1894, the Jerusalem chapter of B'nai B'rith founded a small village on the site.[2] The National Library of Israel holds a collection of documents related to Motza's history, chiefly concerning land purchases in the 1890s and relations between Motza's settlers and the Jerusalem B'nai B'rith office, preserved in Hebrew, Turkish, and Arabic.[17] At the turn of the twentieth century, Motza settlers built a tile and roof-tile factory using local marl as raw material, described as one of the country's first industrial enterprises.[2] A roadside building constructed in 1871 as a khan on the Jaffa–Jerusalem caravan route, with basement foundations dating to the Byzantine period, was later adapted by Yehoshua Yellin as a hotel and café; its upper floor was subsequently converted into a synagogue and remained largely unchanged into the modern period.[18]

In 1898, Theodor Herzl visited Motza while traveling toward Jerusalem and was received at the settlement, then home to approximately 200 people.[19] The settlement's olive, date, and apricot trees and grapevines gave it a fertile appearance, and Herzl planted a young cypress there after being captivated by the view.[19] Zionist youth subsequently returned to the tree on the anniversary of his death to plant trees nearby. In 1917, they found that the cypress had been cut down and collected cones from its remains; the seeds were later planted across the country.[19] The preserved stump was kept in a glass case near the Arza convalescent home, south of Road 1.[18]

Yehoshua Yellin, one of Motza's founders, left a memoir, Memories of a Son of Jerusalem, first published in 1924, whose manuscript is held by the Central Zionist Archives.[20] His account provides a detailed record of life at Motza during the turbulent years of the First World War.[20]

The British advance on Jerusalem in 1917 brought intense hardship to Motza's residents. After the British took Beersheba on 31 October 1917, fighting between British and Turkish forces reached the area around Motza, with Turkish posts at Bab Al-Wad, Abu Gosh, and the Kastel.[20] Yellin's memoir describes residents hiding in basements during daylight hours and returning to their homes at night when cannon fire ceased.[20]

The British reached the Kastel on 20 November 1917, after which Motza residents found themselves cut off from Jerusalem and dependent on a nearby village for basic supplies, subsisting on bread and vegetables.[20] Turkish soldiers conducted night raids, forcing residents at gunpoint to surrender scarce food. As the situation worsened, Motza residents rented rooms in the neighboring Arab village. After soldiers came at night and forced their host to hand over a cow, the frightened community—Jewish residents and their Arab hosts together—sent a delegation of two Arab women and two Jewish women to seek protection from the military governor in Dir Yassin.[20]

On 12 December 1917, the Turkish army declared the area a military zone and ordered Motza and nearby Arab villages evacuated, giving residents only twelve hours to leave.[20] Residents concealed possessions—furniture, wall clocks, pottery, and linen—in a cave or transported them toward Jerusalem. Yellin departed for Jerusalem with his daughter, her husband, and their three children, staying in the house of David Yellin, who had been exiled to Damascus and did not return until 1919.[20]

Motza was among the locations of the largest massacres during the August 1929 Arab riots.[21] The violence followed a dispute over Jewish prayer arrangements at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and spread rapidly across the region.[22] Motza was an old Jewish community whose residents had long lived near Arab neighbors.[23]

Seven inhabitants of Motza were murdered during the riots.[2] Six members of the Maklef family were killed when their home was attacked.[1] Mordechai Maklef survived and later became the third Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.[22] The houses of Motza stood largely empty for about a year following the attacks.[1]

The village was subsequently restored.[2] Motza Illit, a moshav established on the hills above the original settlement, was founded in 1933, some four years after the riots.[2][19] By 2002, Motza Illit's population had reached 796.[2] During the 1948 War of Independence, Motza faced serious danger until the neighboring Arab village of Qalunya fell to Jewish forces and its inhabitants left; the fall of Qalunya relieved the threat to Motza.[2]

Across the country, the 1929 violence killed more than 130 Jews and wounded nearly 300, with Motza counted alongside Hebron and Safed as one of the sites of the largest massacres.[21]

A 2025 neighborhood profile placed Motza's population at roughly 1,200 residents. It described a community comprising multigenerational families, younger professionals, secular technology workers, Modern Orthodox households, and some older residents who continued to tend family olive trees. Although physically distinct from Jerusalem, the village falls under the Jerusalem Municipality.[1]

Motza's economy shifted from farming and tile production toward a predominantly residential relationship with Jerusalem. Encyclopedia.com notes that most residents worked in Jerusalem while some retained farms, and that a garden suburb developed from the late 1950s.[2] A 2025 profile likewise described most residents as commuting to Jerusalem and linked the village's contemporary character to its historic stone houses, newer villas, olive trees, and proximity to the Jerusalem Forest.[1]

Several historic and archaeological landmarks are associated with Motza and its immediate surroundings. The former khan building on the Jaffa–Jerusalem road, now serving as the community's synagogue, dates to 1871 in its upper structure, with Byzantine-period foundations below; it was adapted by Yehoshua Yellin and has remained largely unchanged.[18] The remains of Yellin's own residence stand beside it.[18]

The site known as Herzl's tree, or Herzl's cedar, lies near the Arza convalescent home south of Road 1. The Arza convalescent home itself was opened by the Histadrut Sick Fund in the 1930s on a hill southwest of Motza, where Herzl planted his cypress during the 1898 visit.[2] The preserved stump of the original tree is kept in a glass case at the site.[18]

Roman-Byzantine mosaic floors discovered near Tel Motza, including the partridge mosaic now replicated in the village, represent another layer of the site's material heritage.[6] Tel Motza itself has been the subject of repeated Israel Antiquities Authority excavations.[11] Finds from the site and its immediate surroundings span Neolithic prehistory and the Iron Age through the Roman and Byzantine periods.[4][6]

Sources associate Motza's modern establishment with different dates. A Jerusalem Post report gives 1854, while the Jewish Virtual Library places a farm purchase in 1859.[1][3] Agricultural histories describe families being placed at Motza in 1873, while a biographical article says Rabbi Hirsch Kalischer announced in 1874 that the first Jewish colony had been established there.[15][24] The 1859 acquisition is itself credited either to Shaul Yehuda or to Jerusalem residents headed by Yehoshua Yellin.[3][2]

The fate of Herzl's cypress is also reported differently: one account says the Turks cut it down in 1917, while another attributes its felling during World War I to unknown persons.[19][2] Accounts of Mordechai Maklef's rescue during the 1929 attack alternatively involve an elderly rabbi, an Arab whose piety prevented him from harming children, or both.[22] Historians likewise emphasize different causes of the wider 1929 violence, including incitement concerning Muslim holy places and opposition to Zionist settlement.[22]

At Tel Motza, the identification of the site with biblical Moẓah remains a scholarly identification rather than an uncontested conclusion.[5] The Iron Age temple's relationship to Jerusalem's administration, the significance of its figurines, and whether it remained in use after Josiah's reforms are unresolved.[5] The menorah-like decoration on the Roman-period limestone capital may also have been intentional or accidental.[13]