A worship building down the road from the First Temple?

ARCHAEOLOGY: Study: First Temple Era Structure in City of David Was Used for Ritual Practices (David Israel, the Jewish Press).

Excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority on the eastern slope of the City of David, within the Jerusalem Walls National Park, uncovered a unique First Temple period structure. This complex features eight rock-hewn rooms containing an altar, a standing stone (masseba), an oil press, and a winepress.

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Used for (religious) ritual practices? Could be. If so, that was cheeky, running a cultic installation a few hundred meters from the Temple Mount.

The underlying article is published in the journal ‘Atiqot and is open access.

Shukron, Eli; Freud, Liora; Roth, Helena; Avisar, Reli; and Bocher, Efrat (2024) "Evidence of Worship in the Rock-Cut Rooms on the Eastern Slope of the City of David, Jerusalem," 'Atiqot: Vol. 116, Article 5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.70967/2948-040X.1126 Available at: https://publications.iaa.org.il/atiqot/vol116/iss1/5

Abstract
This paper presents the finds retrieved from a unique series of rock-cut rooms found on the eastern slope of the City of David. These rock-cut rooms stand out in terms of their architectural features, as well as the artifacts discovered within them, all of which reflect on their function as a cultic complex, likely constructed in the Middle Bronze Age, with its final stage in Iron Age IIB. This complex offers profound evidence for the diversity of cultic practices in the capital of the Kingdom of Judah.

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