THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE JEWS and the Muslims was at the heart of archaeology in the Holy Land. Both sides manipulated archaeology to prove the existence or non-existence of the Temple of the Jews. Shlomo Klein, as an Israeli, naturally sided with those who wanted to prove the existence of the Temple, but as a scientist and a nominal Jew he could not accept in good conscience evidence based simply on belief and religious faith. For Shlomo the bible was a great book, there was little doubt that it was the greatest and most ancient comprehensive work of human literature, equivalent in literary terms to the pyramids of Egypt; no other people in the history of the world had produced a work of such importance, of such historic, cultural and moral dimensions.
They were eating a light dinner in the coffee shop of the Intercontinental Hotel in Amman where they had arrived early that evening after having crossed the border into Jordan at the Allenby Bridge crossing point. The next morning they planned to leave early for a visit to Petra about 250 kilometres to the south with one of Jordan’s doyens of archaeology, an internationally respected intellectual, Selim Nassib, whose family had fled Israel in 1949, whose long friendship with Shlomo had survived the multiple trials that had divided their two peoples.
‘Tell me Shlomo, this news about Mazar’s latest finds in Jerusalem…,’ Asked Selim.
‘Well as you know some of our friends believe they have found King David’s Palace.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Selim, my dear friend, you know my position, I would like to see a lot more solid evidence and not this kind of messianism.’
‘So what’s their objective?’
‘You know better than me,’ he laughed. They had jousted like this for years respecting their different political points of view, but in total agreement as far as scientific archaeology was concerned. ‘Their goal? Simple, to deny to the other party’s historical right to existence.’
‘How?’ asked Laura.
‘Well take Arafat for example, he always insisted that there was nothing there, he denied that any such palace had ever existed, that Solomon’s temple never existed, that if a Jewish temple had existed it was located in Nablus.’
‘But everyone knows that’s not true,’ remarked O’Connelly now more sure of his facts after three weeks intensive investigation.
‘That doesn’t matter, for him the opposite was true and anything the Jews said were according to his own words, lies, lies, lies.’
‘What is the Muslim point of view?’ asked O’Connelly.
‘According to the Jewish Book, the first Jewish Temple was built by King Solomon in the 10th century BC and was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The Second Temple was built in 515BC after Jerusalem was freed from the Babylonians, then it was rebuilt much later by Herod the Great and then destroyed by the Romans in 70AD. The Al Aqsa Mosque was constructed around 709AD, and the Dome of the Rock was built by the Caliph Abd al-Malik and completed in 691AD. Al Aqsa was built to mark the place where we Muslims came to believe the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, ascended to heaven.
‘The problem however, is that the Waqf deny the Jewish temples ever existed, in spite of overwhelming historical and archaeological evidence, especially the well documented evidence of the Greek and Roman periods and the vast underground structures that date to the centuries before Christ.’
‘You mean the cisterns?’
‘Yes, amongst other things. The Palestinian position according to their Office for Religious Affairs is that the Temple Mount is Muslim and the Western Wall, which it calls the Al-Buraq Wall, was a waiting place for horses. It was where the Prophet Muhammad tethered his horse, Buraq, to the wall before ascending to heaven.’
‘My research shows that Islamic scholars in the 11th century were not able to agree as to the precise spot where Mohammed had tethered his horse. Different places around Haram esh-Sharif were suggested. Finally it was agreed that Mohammed entered Haram esh-Sharif through the eastern wall, south of the Mercy Gate, but then others protested he had tethered al-Buraq outside the southern wall. No one mentioned the Western Wall!’
‘Mr O’Connelly with all due respect you have been misled. As far as, Sheik Ikrima Sabri, the mufti of Jerusalem, is concerned there’s not the slightest indication that a Jewish temple had ever existed on the Esplanade. He even went as far as saying that there is not even a single stone linked with Jewish history in the whole city and that even the Jews don’t know where exactly their temple stood.’
‘Is that true,’ asked O’Connelly surprised that Shlomo could repeat such words and in the Jordanian capital.
‘Absolutely, I’m simply repeating what has been said.’
O’Connelly had been given numerous documents and reports relating to the Muslim claims, in which and amongst other things, the Mufti of Jerusalem accused the Jews of deceiving the world. He declared that there was not a single stone in the Wailing Wall relating to Jewish history and that the Jews could not legitimately claim the wall, either religiously or historically. He however claimed that what he called the Al-Buraq Wall was part of Al Aqsa Mosque, a wall of the mosque. Saying that the wall of any house belongs to the house, therefore the Al-Buraq Wall belonged to the Al Aqsa Mosque. Consequently the Jews who prayed in front of the wall were on the outside, but the wall belonged to the Muslims.
Arafat often claimed that the Jews had invented a religious link between Jerusalem and the Wailing Wall, announcing that they found not a single stone that proved the Temple of Solomon had stood there, for the simple reason that historically the Temple was not in Palestine.
Today, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president continues to approve Arafat theories on Jerusalem, challenging the idea that the Jews had a temple and accusing them of forgetting the fate of the Palestinian people whilst paradoxically somehow remembering the supposed existence of a temple on the Haram two thousand years previously without the least solid evidence exists.
The Al Quds Al-Sharif Encyclopaedia claimed that the Israelis falsified history, fabricating Jewish inscriptions on rocks and pretending they were parts of Jewish palaces or historical buildings. In another study they rejected false Zionist religious claims even pretending that the Al Aqsa Mosque had been built more than a thousand years before Solomon, throwing out any idea that the Mosque had been built on the ruins of Solomon's Temple and that the Zionist’s so called rights to the wall were groundless.
‘You must understand Mr O’Connelly,’ said Selim, ‘that the archaeological battle has become a political battle, which not only affects the Jews and Palestinians, but also certain archaeologists. For example Sean Kingsley, a British archaeologist, who has written a book called God’s Gold, in which he pretends he has conclusive evidence concerning the treasures of the Temple pillaged by the Romans in 70AD, proving that the treasure is hidden in the Holy Land, not hidden in Vatican vaults as certain image.’
‘So you see Pat, you’re are not the only one writing a book, and in addition books such as the one Selim mentioned are even stranger than fiction.’
‘There is a big market for such books,’ added Selim.
‘Who is this Kingsley?’
‘He’s an archaeologist and historian specialised in marine archaeology.’
‘Like de Lussac?’
‘No, his academic qualifications are better, he holds a doctorate in the archaeology of the Holy Land from Oxford University and is a Visiting Fellow at the Research Centre for Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at Reading University.’
‘We know of the Titus’ triumph in Rome when the treasures were paraded as booty including the Menorah and a large part of this treasure was used to build the Colosseum, but what else was there?’
‘There is good historical evidence that some fifty tons of gold, silver and precious objects were plundered by Titus, the son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian, in 70AD. There are stories that the treasure is kept in the vaults of the Vatican, this the gold Menorah, the Table of the Divine Presence, and a pair of silver trumpets, which were
said to have been displayed in the Temple of Peace in Rome’s Forum until the early fifth century.’
‘It sounds like an archaeological version of the Da Vinci Code.’
‘It’s not all, the best is that he claims to have found proof that silver trumpets, golden candlesticks and other jewellery are hidden in Palestinian controlled territories.’
‘As I said such claims, stories and rumours become part of the Arab-Israeli conflict centred around the Temple Mount, making it difficult for ordinary people to sort out truth from invention, it is why scientific archaeology is of the utmost importance,’ emphasised Selim, ‘Unfortunately there are as many theories as there are words in the Bible.’
There was little doubt that amongst the general public in Israel many believed that if the Temple treasures still existed and could be found, then they would be the finally proof of Israel's ancient historical rights to the Promised Land, in the same way De Lussac believed finding the true site of the Temple would bring about peace.
Shlomo explained that the problem of any object that suddenly appears on the archaeological scene raises more questions than answers, especially those unlinked to a specific site and dissociated from their stratigraphical context, and an object that bears no inscription becomes extremely difficult to date. A case in point, he explained, was the black stone tablet found in 2001, in this specific case it was in fact covered with inscriptions in ancient Hebrew and the stone was dated to being nearly 3,000 years old. The inscriptions gave evidence that the Temple that Solomon had been built for the Ark of the Covenant, which according to the Bible contained the Ten Commandments.
Up until the discovery of the black stone the only evidence pointing to the possible existence of the Temple was a pottery shards dating from the 10th century BC. Therefore when the scientists of the Geological Survey of Israel, were asked to investigate the authenticity of the black stone it was necessary to undertake a very deep scientific investigation. The initial investigation was logically focused on the surface patina of the stone.
‘Patina?’
‘Yes, a thin surface film an object built up over thousands of years, caused by the interaction of chemicals present in air, water or soil, with the stone itself. In the case of the black stone the scientists saw that the patina covered not only the general surface of the stone but also the inscriptions.’
‘I see, so that meant that the inscriptions were not added to an old piece of stone,’ said O’Connelly.
‘Exactly, in addition to that chemical analysis showed that the composition of this patina was very similar to the minerals present in Jerusalem, thus indicating it really came from the city.’
‘How did they fix the date, I mean apart from what the inscription said?’
‘That’s a very interesting point, on analysis they noted that the patina contained minute traces of charcoal, which meant they could be dated by C14 dating techniques.’
‘Which showed…,’ Laura said excitedly.
“It was over 2,300 years old, so obviously the carving under the patina must have been older than the patina.’
‘Fantastic!’
‘That’s not all…they also found traces of gold in the patina.’
‘Gold?’
‘When the Temple was burnt down by the Babylonians in 572BC the gold covering would have been evaporated leaving traces in the ruins.’
‘So it really came from the Temple.’
‘That what the scientists confirmed.’
‘So the legend of King Solomon was true.’
‘Yes, this together with the House of David stele is the only archaeological proof of the existence of Solomon, the father of David.’
‘Who found the stone?’
‘Now that was the big question, as I said if you don’t know where it comes from it raises many questions. After all, the inscription did not say ‘made in the Temple 2300BC!’
‘So nobody knows where it comes from!’
‘It was rumoured that it was found in rubble that had been dumped outside of the Haram from building works made by the Waqf.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Well the stone then disappeared.’
‘Lost.’
‘Not exactly, nine months later a businessman, owner of Israel's largest private collection of antiquities, announced that he had been contacted by the widow of a Palestinian dealer who had the stone in her possession. Apparently the stone had in fact been discovered near to the Eastern Wall in the Muslim cemetery outside the Temple Mount.’
‘So did they buy the stone?’
‘Be patient Laura,’ he laughed, ‘it’s not the end of the story, because in the meantime an ossuary turned up in Canada at the Royal Ontario Museum.’
‘An ossuary?’
‘Yes, like the name indicates, ossuaries were made to contain the bones of someone dead.’
‘Of course.’
‘Now this ossuary bore the inscription James, Son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus.’
Laura’s mouth fell open. ‘So, it’s the proof that Jesus existed. Where did it come from?’
‘Oded Golan.’
‘The collector?’
‘Yes.’
‘Too good to be true, n’est ce pas?’ she said with disappointment in her voice.
‘What happened next was the police raided Golan's apartment and storehouses and found the ossuary sitting on the seat of a toilet, and…they also found the black stone.’
‘Of course they were forgeries, incredibly clever made forgeries. One of the things that gave them away was the Hebrew used in the inscription was mixed with Modern Hebrew.’
‘You see,’ said Selim, ‘if this stone had been found during an organised archaeological excavation it would not have raised the questions it did.’
‘So what happened in the end?’
‘Well in the end it turned out that the stone was a local stone, I mean not from Israel, it probably arrived as ships ballast in ancient times. The carved inscriptions were new and the patina the covered the inscription was artificially formed at temperatures too hot for natural conditions, and as Selim just mentioned the Hebrew used contained errors with words that did not exist in ancient times.’
‘But how exactly was the patina made?’
‘When police searched Golan's home they found a workshop with all the necessary materials, thus confirming they had cleverly prepared the patina. In fact the used some fairly elementary chemistry, all the different ingredients had been ground up, including chalk and soil from the Jerusalem area, a few specks of gold and some charcoal dating from the period the stone was supposed to have dated from.’
‘How did they do that?’
‘It’s not too difficult for an archaeologist to lay his hands on some ancient charcoal from some site or other.’
‘So you see,’ said Selim, ‘they had a nice little business and had probably getting rich selling fake archaeological objects to the market for years, not poor archaeologists like us!’
Laura looked worried, thinking about the Assyrian eye black applicator she had bought in a Jaffa antique shop.
‘Which goes to prove that only objects clearly identified at a given site, in a given strata, during an organised excavation by qualified archaeologists have real scientific value as far as dating and historical identification is concerned.’
45
The Destruction of Jerusalem