Excavations at the Temple Mount: Difference between revisions
Archaeology of a Jerusalem holy site
A number of archaeological excavations at the Temple Mount—a celebrated and contentious religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem—have taken place over the last 150 years. Excavations in the area represent one of the more sensitive areas of all archaeological excavations in Jerusalem.
The term Temple Mount usually refers to the artificially expanded platform at the top of the natural hill and the compound situated there. The compound is delineated by four ancient retaining walls, and is of high religious significance. The compound itself has only very rarely been the object of archaeological work, unlike the area surrounding it, which has been quite intensively excavated, especially along the southern and western walls. This article deals both with the Temple Mount compound, and with those adjacent areas. The first section of the article presents a history of archaeological exploration and the political reactions to it, while the second section deals with the actual discoveries of such work.
The first archaeological work was undertaken by the British Royal Engineers in the 1860s in the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem and subsequently the PEF Survey of Palestine.[1]
Since Israel took control of the Old City in 1967, archaeological excavations in the vicinity of the Mount have been undertaken by Israel. Any type of earthmoving work inside the compound however, has mainly been reserved to the Jordanian/Palestinian-led Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, the Muslim authority in charge of the Al-Aqsa compound, who employs its own archaeologist and who at times has applied for the services of Jordanian and Egyptian restoration specialists. Work done by both sides has been controversial and criticized. Israeli and Jewish groups have criticized excavations conducted by the Waqf, with the Muslim side criticizing work done by the Israeli side. International organizations, such as UNESCO, sometimes intervene in the conflicts.
History of archaeological work and reactions to it[edit]
Due to the extreme political sensitivity of the site, few archaeological excavations have been conducted on the Temple Mount itself. Protests commonly occur whenever archaeologists conduct projects on or near the Mount.
PEF work in- and outside the compound[edit]
Aside from visual observation of surface features, most other archaeological knowledge of the site comes from the 19th-century survey carried out by Charles Wilson (Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem) and Charles Warren (PEF Survey of Palestine). Warren was one of the first to excavate this area, exemplifying a new era of Biblical archaeology in the 1870s.[1] His exploration was under the auspices of the Palestine Exploration Fund, a society with a relationship with the Corps of Royal Engineers. The group was conducting a study and survey of the Levant region, also known as Palestine.[2][3] Warren and his team improved the topographic map of Jerusalem and discovered the ancient water systems that lay beneath the city of Jerusalem.[4]
Mandate-time work inside the compound[edit]
Between 1938 and 1942, R.W. Hamilton, director of the British Mandate Antiquities Department, carried out the only archaeological excavation ever undertaken at the Temple Mount’s Aqsa Mosque by the British Mandate. Two of the finds are a Byzantine mosaic floor underneath the mosque, probably the remains of a church or a monastery;[5][6] and a slab with the relief image of a centaur, dated to the 3rd century CE, believed to be a vestige of the Late Roman temple of Jupiter Capitolinus built on the Temple Mount after 135.[7]
Post-1967[edit]
Work outside the compound[edit]
In 1967 the Religious Affairs Ministry began an unlicensed excavation. Starting at the Western Wall Plaza, workers dug northward, under the Old City’s Muslim Quarter.[8]
Beginning in 1968, Israeli archaeologists began excavations at the foot of the Temple Mount, immediately south of the al-Aqsa Mosque, uncovering Roman, Umayyad and Crusader remains.[9]
In 1970, Israeli authorities commenced intensive excavations to the south and west of the compound. Over the period 1970–1988, the Israeli authorities excavated a tunnel passing along the western wall of the Temple Mount, northwards from the prayer plaza of the Western Wall, that became known as the Western Wall Tunnel. They sometimes used mechanical excavators under the supervision of archaeologists. Palestinians claim that both of these have caused cracks and structural weakening of the buildings in the Muslim Quarter of the city above. Israelis confirmed this danger:
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