Illicit diggers on Mount Scopus seeking treasures to sell on the black market led archaeologists to discover a 2,000-year-old stone vessel workshop replete with the stone vessels used only by Jews because, unlike pottery, they can’t become impure, “tamei” in Hebrew. The find was announced Monday by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The workshop, now located in a cave on the eastern slope of the mountain, once dominated the main road leading to Jerusalem from the east and dates to the late Second Temple period, based on the typology of the vessels.

Eitan Klein, deputy director of the IAA Theft Prevention Unit that nabbed the would-be artifact looters, said the finds enrich our understanding of Jewish life in the latter part of the Second Temple period.