Dr Leen Ritmeyer’s blog

The Israel Museum’s Archaeology Wing is currently closed for comprehensive renewal and will reopen to the public in 2009-2010. This is done with the support of the Bronfman family, after whom the wing is named.

Their website gives an overview of some of the most important finds that were exhibited in the Archaeology Wing. One of the finds shown here is the partially broken “Trumpeting Stone” which was found near the southwest corner of the Temple Mount during the 1968-78 excavations, led by the late Prof. Benjamin Mazar. Here is a reconstruction drawing of the “Trumpeting Stone”, which was placed at the top of this corner of the Temple Mount.

The Hebrew inscription, which was found on the stone, reads “l’bet hatqia l’hakh…” The most likely translation of this incomplete inscription is “to the place of trumpeting to announce”. This stone was originally located some 42m or 138 feet above street level and from that elevated position a trumpet call could be heard all over the city.
I have reason to believe that the stone was broken, not by the Romans in 70AD, but some 140 years ago. If you want to know ‘whodunit’, read my book The Quest, pp. 57-60.

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I was interested to see, in my daily Google Alert for the Temple Mount, on James Grant’s blog, that the new ESV Study Bible, for which I have been providing illustrations, now has its own webpage, launched by Crossways, its publisher. It is worthwhile having a look at the sample pages. Having worked with Justin Taylor, the Project Director and Managing Editor, for the last half year, with graphics winging their way for checking and correction from Wheaton, Illinois to Adelaide in Australia, and latterly to Cardiff in Wales, I can’t wait to see the final product, due out in October of this year.

The whole “painstaking process of research and refinement”, to use Justin’s words, has caused me to look into problems which I had not previously addressed. In particular, the discoveries in Jerusalem over the last few years, especially in the City of David, made it necessary for me to produce completely new reconstruction drawings of Jerusalem in the various periods - a very exciting project indeed! I have also enjoyed working with Maltings Partnership, who have rendered my drawings into works of tremendous beauty.

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It has been reported here and here that some of the small stones near the top of the Western Wall are crumbling. One wonders why this is happening and what can be done about it.

Let us first examine the wall. There are three different layers of stone courses visible, see illustration below (a similar picture appears in Todd Bolen’s blog). The lowest courses are Herodian. They were built by King Herod the Great, who began building the new Temple Mount in 19 B.C. Seven courses can be seen above ground, but there are many more below the surface. Above these stones are four courses of large stones which were laid in the Umayyad period (around 700 A.D.). Both types of masonry are so strong and well built that, up till now, no earthquake has been able to move these walls. The big earthquake of 1927 caused the destruction of the El Aqsa mosque, but not even a crack appeared in the Herodian masonry! The upper third part of the Western Wall is made up of small stones. It is in this section that some stones are crumbling.

There are legends about this upper section of the wall, one of which claims that it was built in the 19th century by Sir Moses Montefiore, a Jewish philantropist. He indeed tried to buy the Western Wall and the adjacent area to facilitate Jewish prayers, but his efforts came to nothing.

It is difficult to say when this upper portion was built, as it has no distinctive masonry. It could date from any period after the Early Muslim time, i.e. Fatimid, Crusader, Mamluk or Turkish. The top three courses were added by the Muslim Religious Council as part of general repair work. This upper third part of the wall is, of course, the back wall of the western colonnade.

We must ask ourselves the question why the upper parts of the Temple Mount walls suffer so much from crumbling and/or bulging. Very large bulging parts in the southern and eastern walls had to be rebuilt a couple of years ago.

I believe that it is caused by the renewal and renovation programme undertaken on the Temple Mount by the Muslim Religious Council. Many walls and pavements have been “repaired” by pointing in between the stone courses. If this is not done properly, it can cause problems such as bulging and the subsequent collapse of walls.

Ancient walls were built with stone courses on both sides of the wall and a fill in between. This fill should have been made up of a hard core fill of broken stones set in lime, but often soil was mixed in with it. When it rains the walls get wet, including the inner fill. The ancient mortar, made of lime and an aggregate, such as sand, gravel or sometimes ground up pottery, is porous and lets the water seep out through the gaps in between the stones. Such walls can ‘breathe’ as it were.

Over the last 30 years or so, an extensive programme has been going on on the Temple Mount, where old walls were refaced with new stone and the joints in between stone courses of old buildings have been filled with Portland cement. This modern cement is very hard and seals off the spaces in between the stones. Walls still absorb rain water, because stone is porous. However, once the inner core is wet, the water cannot seep out, causing a swelling inside the wall itself. Over time, more water is absorbed until the swelling is so large that it causes one of the sides of the wall to bulge, usually the outer side, as there is no counter pressure. Individual stones can be crushed by the movement of the stones. This is the cause of the crumbling and bulging of the upper parts of the Temple Mount walls and also of other buildings on the mount itself. If this situation remains unchecked, more sections of the walls will bulge, crumble and eventually collapse. So, watch your head when you stand at the foot of the Western Wall!

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Here is the official program. Please note that attendance is free, but registration is required, see below.
The Temple of Jerusalem: From Moses to the Messiah
May 11 – 12, 2008

The Inaugural conference of the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies,
Honoring Professor Louis H. Feldman
May 11 • Noon – 6:00 pm
Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
Noon – 1:00 pm • Viewing of “Imagining the Temple: The Models of Leen Ritmeyer”

Session 1, 1: 00 – 3:30 pm

From the Tabernacle to the Dead Sea Scrolls
Chair: David Horwitz, Yeshiva University

Gary A. Anderson, University of Notre Dame
The Inauguration of the Tabernacle Service at Sinai

Shawn Zelig Aster, Yeshiva University
Centralization of Worship in the First Temple and Israelite Religious Belief

Shalom Holtz, Yeshiva University
Temple as Asylum and God as Asylum in the Psalms

Lawrence H. Schiffman, New York University
The Temple Scroll: A Utopian Temple Plan from Second Temple Times

Session 2, 3:45 – 6:00 pm

The Second Temple: Between Rome and Eternity
Chair: Moshe Bernstein, Yeshiva University

Menachem Mor, Haifa University
The Jewish and Samaritan Temples: Religious Competition in the Second Temple Period

Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev, Ben Gurion University
From Tolerance to Destruction: Roman Policy and Jewish Temple

Joshua Schwartz and Yehoshua Peleg, Bar Ilan University
Notes on the Virtual Reconstruction of the Herodian Period Temple and Courtyards

Leen Ritmeyer, Trinity Southwest University
Envisioning the Sanctuaries of Israel—The Academic and Creative Process of Archaeological Model Making

May 12 • 9:00 am – 5:30 pm
Stern College for Women
Geraldine Schottenstein Cultural Center
239 East 34th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues)

Session 3, 9:00 – 11:30 am

The Jerusalem Temple in Medieval Christianity and Islam
Chair: David Berger, Yeshiva University

Frank Peters, New York University
Ruined Expectations: Christians and Muslims and the Jerusalem Temple

Moshe Sokolow, Yeshiva University
Fadai’l al-Quds: Jerusalem, The Temple and The Rock in Muslim Literature

Vivian B. Mann, Jewish Theological Seminary of America
Imagining the Temple in Late Medieval Spanish Altarpieces

Session 4, 12:30 – 2:45 pm

The Jerusalem Temple in Medieval and Early Modern Thought
Chair: Elisheva Carlebach, Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

Jonathan Dauber, Yeshiva University
Images of the Temple in Sefer ha-Bahir

Mordechai Z. Cohen, Yeshiva University
God Dwelling in the Sanctuary? Interpretive Strategies of Maimonides, Nahmanides and Sefer ha-Hinnukh

Jacob J. Schacter, Yeshiva University
Remembering the Temple: Commemoration and Catastrophe in Medieval Ashkenazi Culture

Matt Goldish, Ohio State University
The Temple of Jerusalem from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

Session 5, 3:00 – 5:30 pm

The Jerusalem Temple in the Modern World
Chair: Joshua Zimmerman, Yeshiva University

Jess Olson, Yeshiva University,
“Jerusalem Rebuilt”: The Temple in the Fin-de-siècle Zionist Imagination

Maya Balakirsky Katz, Touro College
The Second Temple in Contemporary Orthodox Visual Culture

Ann Killebrew, Pennsylvania State University
Recent Excavations and Discoveries On and Near the Temple Mount

Robert O. Freedman, Johns Hopkins University
Digging the Temple Mount: Archaeology and the Arab-Israeli Conflict from the British Mandate to the Present

Concluding Remarks

Louis H. Feldman, Yeshiva University
Steven Fine, Yeshiva University

Attendance is free and open to the public.
Register at http://www.yu.edu/cis
or call (212) 960-0189

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