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Displaying 1 - 20 of 28 results
Locating the Original Temple Mount
Somewhere on Jerusalem’s majestic Temple Mount—the largest man-made platform in the ancient world, the size of 24 football fields, nearly 145 acres—Herod the Great (37–4 B.C.) built a...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1992
Reconstructing Herod’s Temple Mount in Jerusalem
Herod the Great—master builder! Despite his crimes and excesses, no one can doubt his prowess as a builder. One of his most imposing achievements was in Jerusalem. To feed his passion for grandeur, to immortalize his name and to attempt to...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1989
Quarrying and Transporting Stones for Herod’s Temple Mount
Herod’s construction in the Temple Mount area, like the construction of most of Jerusalem’s buildings, used local limestone. The mountains around Jerusalem are composed of Turonian and Cenomanian limestone that has a characteristic horizontal...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1989
What the Temple Mount Floor Looked Like
More than a hundred colorful polished stone tiles have been recovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project. The tiles reveal what the Temple Mount floors looked like in Herod’s time. They were paved in a technique called opus sectile.
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2016
Relics in Rubble: The Temple Mount Sifting Project
Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is one of the world’s holiest sites; archaeological excavations are prohibited here. But, in November 1999, the Islamic trust that controls the Islamic structures on the site bulldozed a massive area in the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount and dumped the excavated debris into the Kidron Valley. Two archaeologists are running a pioneering project to wet-sift this debris to search for Temple Mount artifacts that have been concealed for centuries.
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2016
Visualizing First Temple Jerusalem
Visitors to Jerusalem understandably are often confused by the jumbled and disconnected layers of the past that exist side by side with the teeming modern city. Jerusalem at the time of the First Temple—the Jerusalem of the Bible, the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1989
Was the Site of the Jerusalem Temple Originally a Cemetery?
Stylistic and architectural similarities between the cave of Machpelah enclosure at Hebron and the Temple Mount enclosure in Jerusalem have been clearly demonstrated by Nancy Miller in “Patriarchal Burial Site Explored for First Time in 700...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1985
Is a Piece of Herod’s Temple in St. Paul’s Cathedral?
If you’d like to see what may be a piece of the Second Temple (Herod’s Temple), pay a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. I’ll tell you later where in the church it can be found. To explain how it got there, we must explore the life of a...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2007
The Ark of the Covenant: Where It Stood in Solomon’s Temple
Four years ago, I wrote an article for BAR in which I identified the original 500-cubit-square Temple Mount.1 By now, this location is well established in the archaeological world,...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1996
Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple
A few hundred yards from Damascus Gate and over the wall from the Garden Tomb, magnificent burial cave lies beneath a Dominican monastery.
Damascus Gate, the most important entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City, fairly bustles with activity inside and out. Arab men in their robes and keffiyehs; Arab women in long embroidered...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1986
Ritmeyer Responds to Jacobson
David Jacobson’s theory regarding the shape of Herod’s Temple Mount and the placement of the Temple within it draws heavily on Roman architectural practice. The Romans were particularly fond of symmetrical structures, as Jacobson rightly...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2000
Keeping Jerusalem’s Past Alive
Jerusalem is not only one of the oldest cities in the world, it is one of the few cities which has been continuously inhabited for more than 40 centuries. From before 1850 B.C., when the first wall surrounded and defended Jerusalem, people...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1981
Reconstructing the Triple Gate
Reconstructing the Triple Gate required that we answer three principal questions. What was the gate’s original width? Was it originally a double gate or a triple gate? For whom was it built? The discovery of a vault in front of the Triple...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1989
Potter’s Field or High Priest’s Tomb?
About a half mile south of the Old City of Jerusalem—at the southeast end of the Hinnom Valley, near where it joins the Kidron Valley east of the city—is one of the most impressive,...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1994
Searching for Roman Jerusalem
The Romans destroyed Jerusalem at the end of the summer of 70 C.E. Under the command of the Roman general Titus, they burned the city and dismantled the Temple, thus ending the First Jewish Revolt (66—70 C.E.)—the so-called Great Jewish...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1997
Why Megiddo?
Armageddon—the name is synonymous with apocalypse, Judgment Day and end-time. As the site of the cataclysmic battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil, Armageddon has...
Bible Review, June 2000
Who Was Buried in the Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter?
The Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter is one of Jerusalem’s most neglected sites, despite being one of the most complete, distinctive and magnificent First Temple period tombs in the city. Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the City...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2013
The Riches of Ketef Hinnom
Jerusalem tomb yields Biblical text four centuries older than Dead Sea Scrolls
I’ve lived in Jerusalem for more than 59 years. I sometimes feel I can put myself in the shoes (or minds) of ancient Jerusalemites. I think I can tell better than most where these ancient Jerusalemites would have located different facilities...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August September/October 2009
The Garden Tomb: Was Jesus Buried Here?
First-time visitors to Jerusalem are often surprised to learn that two very different sites vie for recognition as the burial place of Jesus. One is, as its name implies, the Holy Sepulchre Church; it is located in a crowded area of the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1986
Royal Palace, Royal Portrait?
The Tantalizing Possibilities of Ramat Raḥel
The first Judahite royal palace ever exposed in an archaeological excavation is bei ng rediscovered. And with this renewed interest come echoes of what is probably one of the bitterest rivalries in the history of Israeli ar chaeology—between...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2006