Dr Leen Ritmeyer’s blog

First of all, I would like to apologize for not having blogged for a while. The reason is that our family has moved from Australia back to the UK. Some people move house, but our lot seems to be moving continents, which is very time consuming.

A few days ago it was announced that remains from the First Temple period were found in a dig close to the Western Wall, see for example here. It is always exciting and encouraging to read about new archaeological finds, especially when they are so close to the Temple Mount. A very interesting seal was found as well, bearing the name of Netanyahu ben Yaush. There has been a plethora of finds made recently, which prove that Israel did exist as a nation in the Land and especially in Jerusalem, during the Biblical periods.

The reporting, however, was not quite accurate. In this place these finds were reported as “FIRST-EVER”, namely, that this was the first time ever that remains from the Iron Age finds have been found so close to the Temple Mount. That, of course, is not the case. The southern part of the Western Wall has actually been built on a cemetery from the First Temple period. Some of these tombs were cut through when the drain below the Herodian street was constructed, see:

This drain was first discovered and recorded by Charles Warren in the 1860’s. In one particular place, just north of Robinson’s Arch, the foundations of the Western Wall were built inside a destroyed Iron Age tomb. One can’t get closer than that. Other Iron Age tombs were found in the Temple Mount excavations by the late Prof. Benjamin Mazar at a distance of some 25 meters from the Western Wall. Similarly, the Southern Wall was built over First Temple remains, in one particular place over an Iron Age cistern just below the Triple Gate.

As I said before, it is very exciting to read about these finds, but one could wish that the reporters would do their homework a little better. A blooper like this headline should never have been published.

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It has been reported in the media (see for example BBC news and the Jerusalem Post) that excavators Ronnie Reich and Eli Shukrun have excavated a large section of the drain that was located just below the Herodian street. This drain was constructed, so that the rain water that fell on the street and the liquid sewage of adjacent buildings could be disposed off. Here is a picture of the drain (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti):

Parts of this drain have been investigated by Charles Warren (1867-1870) and other sections have been excavated by Bliss and Dickie (1894-1897), Johns (1934), Kathleen Kenyon (1961-1967) and Benjamin Mazar (1968-1978). The section found by Mazar below Robinson’s Arch was vaulted and believed to have been a relay of the original drain which had been cut by the south-west corner of Herod’s temple Mount, see this picture from The Quest, p.56:

Warren also investigated a much earlier drain, lower down in the Tyropoeon Valley, so that we know of two different drainage systems. Together with the relay mentioned above, there are three different phases in this drainage system, which indicate three different building phases in the construction of the Temple Mount, see The Quest, pp. 233-235.

The present excavators have not yet provided a map of the excavated drain, but only said that is was between the Temple Mount and the Siloam Pool. In the 1890’s, Bliss and Dickie discovered a large section of the Herodian street near and to the north of the Siloam Pool. This section alone shows that the main street, which, we believe began at the Damascus Gate and followed the Tyropoeon Valley and exited at the South Gate - see map below. On this map we have plotted the street section that was found by Bliss and Dickie in grey with the drain in red:

As the excavators have been digging in the vicinity of the Siloam Pool, the newly found drain is likely to be located just north of the pool. This find received a lot of media coverage because of the remarks made by the excavators that this drain may have been used by people who tried to escape the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD.

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The Biblical Archaeology Society has just published a report on the Temple Mount destruction by Zachi Zweig. On a plan which I had made several years ago, the route of the trench has been plotted and areas where important finds were made are noted in color. Transferring this information unto my latest plan of the Temple Mount, which has the Herodian Temple complex superimposed, one can see where these finds are located.

Bedrock has been observed inside and to the north of the northern gate of the Court of the Women and also south of the southern Soreg. The Soreg is a division wall, inside of which no gentiles were allowed.

A section of pavement, probably belonging to Herod’s extension of the Temple Mount to the south, has been found to the east of the El Aqsa mosque.

The most important remains, however, are the remains of the foundation of a wall. Several photographs of this foundation wall can be seen in this report. As I noted in my previous blog post, if the trench continued south of the eastern stairway leading to the Muslim platform, it would cut through the Chamber of the House of Oil, and that is exactly what has happened. The Chamber of the House of Oil is the south-western one of the four courts which were built at the four corners of the Court of Women. Here we see then the remains of the Court of the Women, a place from which most of the Temple visitors would have been able to watch the rituals of the Temple.

This destruction shows how close the bedrock is below the surface and therefore any archaeological remains can easily be damaged. How much more information could have been gleaned if this trench had been excavated by archaeologists!

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In a previous post we commented on the destruction on the Temple Mount and posted a reconstruction drawing of the Herodian Temple Mount to show where, in relation to the Temple complex, the channel was excavated. The government of Israel and the Israel Antiquities Authorities are doing nothing to stop this destruction. Therefore the Muslims are digging deeper into the mount. The excavated channel is 1 meter (just over 3 feet) deep and that is about the depth of the bedrock in places. There is no doubt that they must be touching the remains of the Azarah (Temple Court) and the Temple itself. This is a unique opportunity to record any remains that may have survived the Roman destruction. Instead, the Arabs are allowed to get away with it. According to this report, one policeman who tried to stop the excavations was assaulted. Instead of being praised for his stand, the Israeli chief officer of the Temple Mount police, actually told him off! Another deep channel is dug to the north and east of the platform, for pictures and filmclip, see here. One wonders how long this situation will be allowed to continue.

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We have developed our new website ritmeyer.com and, although still in its developing stages, it is now fully functional. If you log on to templemountonline.com, which used to be the name of our website, for example by clicking on Temple Mount Online or the Jerusalem Capital in the blue field to the left, you will be redirected to our new site.
The reason for this is that we wanted to separate information from the items we sell. With this blog, which we started about half a year ago, we feel that more relevant and up-to-date information could be commented on and shared with you.
The website ritmeyer.com serves now only as a “virtual shop”, where our books, posters, CD-ROM’s and Temple Mount Model can be purchased. These educational materials have proved useful to many people over the past 20 years or so and continue to be in demand. I am still teaching full-time until the end of this year, but after that I hope, with the help of Kathleen my wife, to develop many more materials of interest to professors, teachers, Sunday School teachers and the many individuals who are interested in the archaeology of the Holy Land, especially of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, as that is our field of expertise.
So, please visit our new store and order the materials that you are interested in. You can also pay online to make things easy. Happy browsing.

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Welcome to my new blog. I hope to use this blog to inform people about subjects that interest me, i.e. the Temple Mount, Jerusalem archaeology and Biblical Archaeology in general. I will try to update the blog as frequently as possible.

Until then take a look at our website: Temple Mount Online.

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