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New Discoveries Related to Temple Mount

Foundation Stone has a fascinating interview with Zachi Zweig, who co-leads the Temple Mount Sifting Project with Gabriel Barkay. It was Zweig who brought public attention to the Muslim dumping of the Temple Mount material many years ago, and his initiative led Barkay to secure a permit for the project. Barkay was interviewed recently about the project, and now Zweig provides more detail about some of the latest discoveries.

You can listen to the 45-minute interview (here, select part 2), but here are a few of the highlights:

They have been working 6 days a week for about 5 years now, but they have sifted only 20% of the material. They estimate 15 more years of work!
Their interest is in knowledge, in understanding the ancient world. This is sharply contrasted with the Arabs who removed this ancient material from the Temple Mount and dumped it in the Kidron Valley.
There are some tunnels and hollow spaces under the Temple Mount that have not been previously known, including one with an Aramaic inscription.
There is a mikveh on the Temple Mount, found in the 1930s but not accurately identified until recently.
Recently the Franciscans were digging on their property on eastern slope of Temple Mount in the Kidron Valley and they found the dump from the Temple Mount in use during the periods of the First and Second Temples. They found restorable vessels from the First Temple period, maybe as early as the 10th century (time of Solomon). They discovered lots of bones from sacrifices eaten on Temple Mount. They also found cultic figurines, which the Bible says were destroyed by King Josiah and dumped in the Kidron Valley (2 Kings 23:12).
Why does no one else care? Why is there so little interest in Israel for the only archaeological work possible on the Temple Mount?
Politics hurts archaeology and our understanding of the past.
The Temple Mount is a house of prayer for ~~all nations~~ the Muslims only.
A Byzantine mosaic was discovered under the Al Aqsa Mosque during the British Mandate but never publicized. Zweig published an article about it last year.
A massive wall uprooted by the Muslim authorities in 1970 may date to First Temple period.

In all, this is quite interesting, particularly the longest bullet point above.

Debris on the Temple Mount, 2005

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Jerusalem, Temple Mount

Rachel’s Tomb, Then and Now

The traditional location of the tomb of Jacob’s beloved wife is located on the north side of Bethlehem, next to the main highway that has run from Jerusalem to Hebron for thousands of years now. The photo below gives a good idea of what the monument looked like in the early 1900s. It’s quite picturesque.

The traditional Tomb of Rachel, early 1900s

Today, it’s a little harder to get a photo (see below). The tomb is here, just behind that fortified IDF watchtower on the right. The ancient highway now has “walls reaching up to heaven,” and Joshua himself might have despaired of getting through.

The reason for such security is that the tomb is a holy site for some religious Jews, but the Arab city of Bethlehem has grown up around the tomb. When the Israelis built the partition wall, they designed its route so that the tomb and the road accessing it would stay on the Israeli side of the wall. In difficult days, even this protection is not enough and travel to the tomb is banned. The Palestinians who live next to the tomb can no longer cross the street.

Access to the traditional Tomb of Rachel, Sept. 2004

Looking for a bright spot in all of this? How about this: the tomb has nothing to do with Rachel anyway. According to 1 Samuel 10:2, her tomb was in the tribal territory of Benjamin, which begins five miles north along the Hinnom Valley of Jerusalem. So all this expense and rancor is over Jews who want to pray at what likely was originally the tomb of a Muslim holy man!

The top photo is one of more than 550 photos included in the Southern Palestine volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection (Library of Congress, LC-matpc-09188). For less than 4 cents a photo ($20/CD), you get a unique and outstanding collection of high-resolution photographs of Bethlehem, Hebron, the Shephelah, Tell Beit Mirsim, the Judean wilderness, Jericho, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, Masada, Qumran, and the Negev.

Tagged American Colony Photos, Judah, Then and Now

Gabriel Barkay Interviewed

Gabriel Barkay is interviewed in this 10-minute video about the destruction to the Temple Mount, which he claims is carried out not by Israelis but by the Muslims. He talks as well about his long-term project to save ancient remains from that destruction. The content is not really “news,” but it’s worth hearing it from one intimately involved in the matter. The interview concludes with his account of the discovery of the Ketef Hinnom amulets, with the oldest inscriptions of biblical verses known to date.

For more, see the websites about the Temple Mount destruction and sifting project.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Jerusalem, Temple Mount

Photographs Reveal the Past at USC

If an inscription is discovered today and you want the best photographs of it, you go to the Zuckerman brothers at USC. Their work revealed a more extensive inscription on one of the Ketef Hinnom amulets~~, and they were called on for photographing the recent Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon~~.

The LA Times has a brief review of their work, including the equipment they use.

Researchers at USC’s West Semitic Research Project have helped uncover its hidden narrative with the aid of lighting and imaging techniques that are credited with revolutionizing the study of ancient texts.
Over the last three decades, the USC project has produced thousands of crisp images of inscriptions and other artifacts from biblical Israel and other Near Eastern locales, making the pictures available to the public in an online archive, InscriptiFact.com.
Among the items shown in the online collection is a Dead Sea Scroll dating to the 1st century that discusses a buried treasure in modern-day Israel. (It’s impossible to pinpoint the precise location because landmarks mentioned in the text no longer exist.)
The database also features an Aramaic inscription on a sheet of papyrus written by a group of Jews in Egypt five centuries before the birth of Jesus. In the text — whose image is so sharp it reveals the grain of the papyrus — Jews petition distant Persian rulers for permission to rebuild a temple.
“A picture is worth a thousand words,” said Bruce Zuckerman, a USC religion professor who founded the research project in the early 1980s. “Sometimes big issues in history can turn on the interpretation of a single letter.”
Zuckerman’s foray into the world of photography and ancient texts grew out of his frustration over the poor quality of archaeological photos.
[…]
“What West Semitic Research Project did was create a collection of photos of inscriptions that were unlike anything that had been done before,” said Wayne Pitard, a religion professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has collaborated with the Zuckermans. “It’s just astonishing.”
Their research project occupies two floors of an academic building at USC. Its offices are filled with gadgetry dreamed up by the Zuckermans and their research team and by engineers off campus.
One office holds the Twister, a contraption with a large-format camera that snaps pictures of ancient “cylinder seals” about the size and shape of triple-A batteries.
The seals — featuring pictures and symbols that once served as a form of personal identification — are mounted on a turntable and slowly moved around in a circle while the camera snaps photos, producing a single large image.
“The picture is better than holding it in your hands,” Bruce Zuckerman said.

The full story is here.

HT: Paleojudaica

UPDATE: My memory about photographing the Qeiyafa ostracon may have been mistaken and thus I’ve lined out the statement above. If it’s true, however, that the ostracon was brought to the U.S. for photographing but was not taken to the Zuckerman lab, then I can only wonder why.

Tagged Technology

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

This week’s Explorator mentions several articles that may be of interest to readers here:

Evidence for tsunami events at Caesarea:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091026093728.htm Rethinking the ‘odds’ of the Talpiot Tomb:
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/tomb357926.shtnl Feature on mapping Iraq’s archaeological sites:
http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=news/news_show.php&id=40707 A Roman-era cemetery from near Hebron:
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=235964

Tagged Jerusalem, Judah, Tomb of Jesus

Weekend Roundup

Glo is reviewed in Newsweek. I’d like to say more about this Bible software some time. In some ways, it’s better than being on-site.

David Padfield has reviewed unfavorably the BAS Photo Archives Complete Set.

Arutz-7 Radio has posted a couple of interviews (mp3) this week that may be of interest to readers here. The first half of part one is an interview with Bernie and Fran Alpert, founders of Archaeological Seminars, which for decades has run the “dig for a day” program. They say that one million people have come through their programs, the main one of which is digging for a few hours in Hellenistic caves at Bet Guvrin.

Part two is a 50-minute interview with Eilat Mazar concerning her initial interest in archaeology, some of her previous excavations, and now her work in the City of David. She gives some reasons for why she believes the large stone structure must date to the time of David. I found myself nodding off in the middle, but it was worthwhile to listen to the end.

The real Snake Path is not at Masada, but in San Diego.

Tagged Jerusalem, Resources