Temple Mount Archives - Page 47 of 59

Man with Goat Arrested before Passover

The Passover celebration began last night, and yesterday afternoon police arrested a man allegedly preparing in an illegal way. From the Jerusalem Post:

Jerusalem District police officers detained extreme right-wing activist Noam Federman Monday afternoon, after he was caught driving his vehicle with a kid – a young, male goat – in his car.
Federman is suspected of intending to ritually slaughter the animal in the recently renovated Hurva Synagogue located near the Temple Mount in the Old City.
Police said right wing activists threatened repeatedly this week to come up to the Temple Mount and conduct ritual slaughter there during the Pessah holiday. They also suspect Federman was planning to slaughter the animal on the Temple Mount proper, and not in the synagogue.
Federman was taken in for interrogation and the innocent animal was transferred to the Agricultural Development Unit in the Agriculture Ministry.

This article raises several questions in my mind. How did police know the goat was in Federman’s car? Is there a law against having a goat in your car? Is there a law against having a goat in your car with certain intentions in your mind? How does the reporter know that the animal is innocent?

The full story is here.

Tagged Jerusalem, Not an April Fool's Joke, Temple Mount

Interviews with Monson and Barkay

The LandMinds show at Israel National Radio (Arutz-7) has two interviews this week that may interest readers. Each interview is 48 minutes and may be downloaded in mp3 format.

James Monson describes his years living in Israel and the creation of maps for students of Bible.

Monson was one of the creators of the long-lived Student Map Manual, and for the past decade he has been creating resources for Biblical Backgrounds, Inc. His influence on students of historical geography can hardly be overstated.

Gabriel Barkay discusses his work over the past decade sifting the material illegally removed from the Temple Mount. He also answers questions on a variety of archaeological subjects.

I don’t have time to listen to these interviews in full before posting this notice, but I expect that both interviews are fascinating and worth the time.

Readers may be interested in following the LandMinds show regularly:

LandMinds broadcasts live on www.israelnationalradio.com every Wednesday evening from 5-7pm Israel time, 10-12 EST, 3-5pm in the UK, and rebroadcast during the week. You can also listen live with your iPhone!

HT: Yehuda Group

Tagged Jerusalem, Resources, Temple Mount

Policemen Hurt in Attack on Western Wall

From the Jerusalem Post:

Fifteen policemen were lightly wounded in their attempt to restore order on the Temple Mount after Arab youths emerging from Friday prayers started hurling rocks down onto those worshiping at the Western Wall. Having restored calm with the use of stun grenades, police left the Temple Mount compound in cooperation with the waqf to allow older worshipers to leave. […] The repeated clashes in Jerusalem follow Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s announcement incorporating the Cave of the Patriarch’s in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem onto Israel’s list of national heritage sites.

The full article is here. The Haaretz article is similar, but adds this statement:

The clashes later calmed when adult Muslim worshippers dispersed the young stone throwers.

Tagged Jerusalem, Temple Mount

Weekend Roundup

You never know what will start a riot in Israel. In this case, it was the government’s adding two historical sites to a list of 150 that should be restored. Today Israeli police forces entered the Temple Mount in order to remove 20 masked protesters who were throwing objects at tourists.

G. M. Grena notes that BAR has posted a good photograph of the Qeiyafa Ostracon.

Egypt has announced the discovery of a large red granite head of Pharaoh Amenhotep III in his mortuary temple on Luxor’s West Bank.

Tom Powers has followed up the “Under the Temple Mount” post here with some beautiful watercolors of the same areas on his blog.

If you’re looking for more reaction to Eilat Mazar’s “10th century” “wall” announced last week, take a look at this roundup by John Hobbins. I expect to post more on the matter this coming week.

Today is Purim and in honor of this festive holiday, the Israel Antiquities Authority has posted an online exhibit of “Masks, Rattles and Purim Customs.” Some images are available in high resolution here (zip).

Tagged Egypt, Jerusalem, Shephelah, Temple Mount, Weekend Roundup

Under the Temple Mount

I want to return to a recent post on the 360 degree views in Jerusalem. There are some images here that I did not notice or note carefully before, including Solomon’s Stables, the Well of the Souls, and the passageway of the Double Gate.

First, go to the Al Aqsa tour. Counting the images from the left, #6-8 show Al-Marwani Mosque, built a decade ago inside the area known traditionally as “Solomon’s Stables.” You can see the Herodian masonry in the columns.

#9 is the Well of the Souls, the cave underneath the Dome of the Rock.

#10-11 were taken inside the passageway of the “Double Gate.” If you look up you can see the beautifully carved (but now plastered over) domes from Herod’s time.

These are really extraordinary images of places that are very difficult for non-Muslims to access. The limited captions on the website do not explain what you’re seeing. Leen Ritmeyer has a nice screenshot showing the domes.

Tagged Jerusalem, Temple Mount

Massive Wall in Jerusalem Dated to Solomon’s Time

Eilat Mazar announced today the discovery of a large stone wall that she attributes to King Solomon.

The article with the most detail is at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (with a copy here). Arutz-7 has a similar report, and others have brief summaries. Trying to sort out all the pieces is a little difficult from these sources, but here’s a summary:

A well-built wall was uncovered that is 220 feet (70 m) long and 20 feet (6 m) high. The width is not given. The wall is located on the eastern side of the Ophel atop the western slope of the Kidron Valley (see photo below). She dates it “with a great degree of assurance” to the 10th century BC on the basis of (1) comparison with walls and gates in other cities and (2) pottery.
A large four-chambered gatehouse was found, similar in style to those at Megiddo, Beersheba, and Ashdod. This gatehouse is 20 feet (6 m) high.
A tower adjacent to the gate is buried underneath the road but is believed to be 75 by 60 feet (24 by 18 m) in size.

The report mentions some inscriptions, but it is not clear what was found in Mazar’s dig and what comes from the Temple Mount debris sifting operation. These should not be reported in the same article, and I sense that some of these inscriptions have been announced previously. [See update below.]

In fact, I think that a good portion of these “discoveries” were made already in 1986-87. Mazar excavated in the southern portion of her grandfather’s “southern Temple Mount excavations” and claimed that she found an Iron Age gate. The article mentions in this connection large storage jars, and I am sure that these were published decades ago. Thus, I surmise that the present excavation is an extension of the old one, but that they are reporting old and new together, without distinguishing between them. It’s fine to report previous discoveries in order to give context, but that does not appear to be how the excavation results are being communicated to the journalists.
Mazar’s claim that the building she excavated in the 1980s was an Iron Age gate never met with widespread (or even non-widespread) agreement among archaeologists. They felt that the evidence did not support the identification as a gate. I’ll write more on this in a follow-up post.

Sources tell me that Mazar has found some very interesting material than has not yet been announced.

Excavation area (circled) south of the Temple Mount

UPDATE: BibleX points to this Hebrew article which has better photos of the excavation and discoveries.

UPDATE #2: I’ve learned that the reason why the Temple Mount Sifting Project was mentioned is that Mazar contracted with them to wet-sift some of her material. Also, there are some more photos from the excavation at the Hebrew U’s Facebook page.

Tagged Analysis, Excavations, Jerusalem, Temple Mount