Sifting Treasures

My friend, Mare, and I did something new a couple of days ago.  We walked from the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem to east Jerusalem where the Israel Antiquities Authority has a salvage project going on. About ten years ago an illicit construction project occurred under the southeast corner of the Temple Mount.  Many truckloads of dirt were unceremoniously dumped into the nearby Kidron Valley before Jews as well as Christians found out about it and were able to get an order to have it stopped.  Through a lot of red tape, the Israel Antiquities Authority was able to move most of the dirt to a site close to the Old City and began to sift through it looking for artifacts that would document the different time periods under the Temple Mount.  This sifting began about five years ago. For those of you who love archeology but find the actual digs a bit too difficult, this is just for you!  Archaeological digs are HARD work. (Here is my post from a dig we were a part of in ancient Ai this summer.)  At the Temple Mount Salvage you get all the thrill of finding ancient pottery, stones, etc. without the backbreaking work of an actual dig in some remote location!

Here’s our journey:

We walked out of the Old City through the Lion’s Gate. The Lion’s Gate is on the northeast side of the Temple Mount.

As you can see, we walked quite a long way from the Old City.  It was fun, because we hadn’t ever been there before.  We were exploring!

After you choose a black bucket full of rocks, you dump it out on the sifting screen, spray it down with water, and start sorting.

Pottery, glass, bones (yes, bones), mosaic stones, special stones, and metal were the six categories that we sorted our buckets into.

In the pic below you can see the black buckets behind our instructor that had the dirt and rocks to sort.

Ok.  Here is a little sample of what we found. First of all, mosaic stones used for paving and for art. Under the square mosaic stones is a bone I found.  He said it was a knuckle bone, but they don’t know if it was human or animal. They send all bones to a bone specialist who can tell immediately even what kind of animal it is or if it is human. Our instructor said most of the bones are kosher animals that were used in temple sacrifices.  I also found a square Roman nail that dated back to the Roman rule of Jerusalem during the time of Yeshua.  The head of the nail is missing, but you can see it in the lower center of the pic. Pottery handles and bowl rims were among many other things we found. We didn’t really want to stop, but they closed at 2:00 and basically ran us out!

Directly under the blue mosaic stones is a piece of black tile.  The piece was chipped off of a tile like our instructor is showing below. (They actually found this tile in the piles of dirt and rock.)  King Herod used these black tiles and also white tiles to line the floor of the temple. Think about it. This is the temple that Yeshua, Paul, John and Peter walked in. Wow!  That’s all I have to say about that….

This rates right up at the top of the most interesting things I’ve done in Jerusalem.  For more info on this salvage operation, click here.