Last week we noted an article about the Temple Mount Sifting Project by Ilan Ben Zion in The Times of Israel. If you have any interest in the subject, you’ll want to read today’s response by the director of the project, Zachi Dvira. He counters charges made by three critics interviewed by Ben Zion.
Israel Finkelstein has never even visited the excavation. Yonathan Mizrachi said that the sifting project “doesn’t have any archaeological value” after he failed to get a job at the worthless project!

The only interviewee that spoke to-the-point and  is worthy of a response is Professor Marwan Abu-Khalaf, who claimed that the area from which the earth was removed was an Ottoman dump, and questioned our ability to glean information from soil without clear stratification. In our published articles we’ve already addressed these issues, including the well-known fact that the Ottoman finds come from a local dump – this being a good thing, since dumps provide the richest archaeological data from periods with no destruction phases.

And then there’s this:

Ben Zion gives an account of the contents of the introductory presentation given to visitors at the Sifting Project, and reports that there was no mention of the “Islam or Arabs, and solely emphasized the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount”. This is completely false. The reporter listened only to the beginning of the presentation, and then left due to a phone call.

I suspect that the problem, besides a certain amount of journalistic incompetence, is the desire for a story that generates lots of clicks, and for that you need controversy, not truth. I’ll keep that in mind before I recommend articles by this author in the future.

Read Dvira’s full response here.

HT: Joseph Lauer

The Temple Mount Sifting Project is profiled at length by Ilan Ben Zion in The Times of Israel. If you’ve been following the work for the last decade, much of the report will sound familiar. But Ben Zion provides some detractors with the opportunity to showcase their ignorance.


Israel Finkelstein: “the debris could also have been brought from other locations” besides the Temple Mount.


Marwan Abu-Khalaf: whatever was in that soil may have come from the surrounding Kidron Valley.


Yonathan Mizrachi: the sifting project “doesn’t have any archaeological value.”

First, they tried to prevent archaeologists from studying the material illegally removed from the
Temple Mount. When that failed, they try to deny it has any significance. Unfortunately, news reports like this one allow them to say whatever they want, without any evidence whatsoever.

Ben Zion describes some of the discoveries made since the project began in 2004.

Most of the tens of thousands of items found in the pans by volunteers are small — an abundance of coins, innumerable fragments of clay, figurines, brightly colored mosaic tiles and beads, arrowheads, inscribed stones and bits of bone. In explaining the trove of tiny artifacts found, Barkay made regular reference to biblical and post-biblical characters in corresponding the items to time periods: clay figurines smashed during the time of the just kings of Judah, seal impressions with the names of priests mentioned in the book of Jeremiah and coins minted during the rein of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who fought the Maccabees. The relics catalog the history of Jerusalem from antiquity through the modern era.

The full story, with many photos, is published here.

HT: Joseph Lauer

UPDATE (6/12): The director of the sifting project has responded.