and again, you get the old attractive lovely david again. we have to look at david in both ways. he rose to the height of power, and he sunk to the depths of depravity. and yet he comes back. he repents. reporter: and the bible tells us that god never stops loving david. he forgives the sins of this imperfect hero. david was given a second chance, a second child with bathsheba, a son named solomon. coming up today it s the most contested spiritual site on earth. but is it also where king solomon put the ark of the covenant? our amazing journey continues when back to the beginning with christiane amanpour returns.
scholars do believe there is an ark inside but that it s only a replica from the middle ages. and down in the caves below jerusalem we consider another possibility. the ark never left but was instead hidden away in this underground labyrinth. so you think it remained in jerusalem. yes. we know from the bible another thing. one of the kings put it somewhere in the tunnels. a tunnel like this? nobody knows. is there any evidence of this no evidence. no evidence at all. only many stories around. reporter: if only these walls could speak. they do, however, appear almost to weep. and their tears are said to tell a powerful story about the destruction of jerusalem. the name of this corner is tzedakiah s tears. tears of the king. the tears of the king. tzedakiah was the last king of judea. tears for the destruction of the temple.
a mountaintop in the center of the walled old city. it is a storied place, layered with spiritual meaning and now dominated by the golden dome and a muslim mosque. but just a short walk away outside the city walls a picture is emerging of the ancient and humble beginnings of jerusalem, which the bible says was founded by solomon s father, david. the city of david was a rather small settlement, hardly can be termed as a city. most probably unfortified. but it was here somewhere. reporter: we met doron ben ami, an israeli archaeologist who leads a team digging for evidence of the original city, which would have existed around 1,000 b.c. and it s got an interesting name. i mean, at least colloquially we re calling it the parking lot dig. yeah. it s hard to believe. but five years ago cars used to park right above our heads here. and once we decided to go
discovered by accident in the 19th century when an archaeologist was walking his dog, this massive network of caves and tunnels is known as solomon s quarries. is this a natural cave? no, not at all. reporter: the quarry once provided building materials for some of the greatest construction projects in the city. so what is this great big gaping hole here? actually, what you see here is the shape of cut of a big stone that used it in the second temple. we can see today in the western wall. reporter: the secretive freemasons even believe the stones mined here were used to build something much older. they say king solomon, the first builder, actually king solomon is the founding founding father. of the freemasons. the freemasons believe that they even took from this quarry stones to solomon s temple. reporter: and that temple of course was the last known resting place for the mysterious
their sacred building on the same spot, on the same hill. reporter: even though evidence of the temple or the man himself hasn t been found, most scholars believe there was a solomon. but not the larger than life solomon in the hebrew bible did not exist. he did not rule a vast kingdom. he did not build a huge capital city in jerusalem. he was not a nationally or internationally known figure. reporter: even though the wisdom of solomon is legendary, it turns out like his father he had flaws too. his government is inflated. he runs it according to corve, according with forced labor. he s marrying and marrying hundreds of wives and hundreds of concubines, who as the bible say took his heart astray. reporter: the wives solomon took to enhance ties with foreign kingdoms turned him to