Category: News

Missing the Cyrus Cylinder in the British Museum

Missing the Cyrus Cylinder on our visit to London and the British Museum. The Guardian had a thought-provoking article discussing the likelihood (or not) of its being returned by the Iranians in January 2011.

The Cyrus Cylinder

It was not an easy decision for the British Museum to lend one of its most treasured artefacts to a country which has a notoriously prickly relationship with the UK. So curators in London are paying close attention to an Iranian threat not to return the famous Cyrus Cylinder — now embroiled in political intrigue in the Islamic Republic.

The 6th century BC Babylonian object, sometimes described as the world’s first human rights charter, arrived in Iran at the weekend and is due to be displayed for four months at the national museum.

In a ceremony on Sunday President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad draped a Palestinian-style keffiyeh scarf worn by Basij militiamen over the shoulders of a bowing actor dressed as Cyrus. He also described Cyrus reverentially as “King of the World” – a striking phrase in a country where pride in Iran’s pre-Islamic past, encouraged by the shah, has been downplayed since the 1979 revolution. For Ahmadinejad’s domestic enemies, this was another glaring example both of his self-promotion and a religious-nationalist agenda that arouses their deepest suspicions.

“Isn’t it correct that the Cyrus Cylinder belongs to Iran?” asked the Keyhan newspaper, mouthpiece of hardline conservatives. “Isn’t it true that the British government stole this valuable and ancient object of ours? If the answer to these questions is positive, which it is, why should we return [it] … to the party which stole it.”

The correct answer, insists the British Museum, is that the cylinder was not stolen but excavated in Babylon, Iraq in 1879. Its loan was a triumph of cultural diplomacy for Neil MacGregor, the museum’s director, after relations between London and Tehran were strained to breaking point with the expulsion of British Council staff from Iran, the launch of the BBC Persian TV channel, and the violent and repressive aftermath of last summer’s disputed presidential election.

The loan reciprocates those made by Iran’s national museum to the successful Forgotten Empire and Shah Abbas exhibitions at the British Museum.

The cylinder is due back in Bloomsbury in January. “There is no sense that this is anything other than a loan,” said a museum spokesperson. “This is part of our ongoing relationship with the national museum of Iran which both institutions value as a cultural dialogue independent of political difficulties.”

But it seems destined to be the centre of controversy for as long as it stays in Tehran. Elyas Naderan, a fundamentalist MP, criticised the government for inviting British ambassador Simon Gass to Sunday’s reception.

Ayatollah Makarem-e-Shirazi, an influential cleric, denied rumours that he wanted to see the cylinder. “He never visits any exhibition apart from Qur’anic ones,” a statement said.

Critics on the left point to the irony of the president’s celebration of the cylinder as “a charter against injustice and oppression” as he oversees unprecedented human rights abuses. The opposition Jaras website called the object “a stranger in its own home”. Cyrus would have been shocked to hear Ahmadinejad invoke his name, it said.

“Ahmadinejad was apparently trying to appeal to a new constituency among non-political types and tap into discontent with the clerical establishment, while at the same time trying to keep his hard-line supporters happy,” commented Golnaz Esfandiari in her Persian Letters blog.

Read the full article here, including a history of the Cyrus Cylinder.

The Ark of the Covenant and Music Festival at Kiriath Yearim

Working on what will be our CD Vol. 3 “The Ark of the Covenant – Its journey from Sinai to Jerusalem,” we are spending time in Kiriath Yearim, where the Ark was kept for twenty years before David brought it to Jerusalem. In the early part of the twentieth century, a determined French nun made the acquisition of this site on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the demonstration that it was the Biblical Kiriath Yearim and the building of a church, convent and retreat centre, her life’s work. She had the basilica built over the remains of a church of the fifth century, using the same quarry as the Byzantine builders. It turns out that the church is now recognised as having “arguably the best acoustics in the country!”

Church of Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant, Kiriath Yearim


Having used the retreat centre as a Jerusalem-base for our tour group some years ago, we can testify to the sublime views from this hilltop site towards the city. If you are in Jerusalem, with Sukkot coming up, there is a not-to-be-missed opportunity to hear beautiful music performed in this church and also in the Crypt of the Crusader Church in the village of Abu Ghosh at the bottom of the hill. The programme of the 38th Abu Ghosh Vocal Music Festival is here, with further information on this site.

King Herod’s royal theater box uncovered at Herodium

It has been widely reported that King Herod’s personal theatre box has been excavated at Herodium:

Herod's Theatre at Herodium

A royal box built at the upper level of King Herod’s private theater at Herodium has been fully unveiled in recent excavations at the archaeological site, providing a further indication of the luxurious lifestyle favored by the well-known Jewish monarch, the Hebrew University announced in a statement released Tuesday.

Several photographs can be viewed at the Smithsonian. Many years ago, I made the following reconstruction drawing of the Herodium complex:

Herod's Desert Fortress at Herodium

Soon we hope to add a new digital image library of  reconstruction drawings, photographs of  Tabernacle and Temple models we designed and much more.

Recommended: The Online Catalogue of the École Biblique in Jerusalem

Tom Powers, an American citizen living in Jerusalem, runs a lively blog, called View from Jerusalem. Whilst perusing our post Lost in Words – Recommendations from our library, he decided to pass on information about the On-line Catalogue of Jerusalem’s École Biblique, which went online about two years ago.

The Atrium of the École Biblique - photo Tom Powers

Here is an excerpt from Tom’s interesting post:

From the very beginning (ca. 1890), the Dominicans here made a point of indexing their collection on the level of the individual articles contained in journals, periodicals and books. Thanks to their foresight and diligence, that means that someone today can sit at their computer — wherever in the world – and do a search of the catalog by keyword, author, or any number of other parameters, and pull up the reference data on a whole host of relevant articles (and books), materials that they might then have access to in their own institutional library or via internet resources such as JSTOR.

About the École’s Library:

More than 140,000 volumes and 400 specialized periodicals are available for ready consultation. The great majority of this material concerns biblical exegesis, the archeology and literature of the Near East, ancient languages, etc.

Knowing the rich collection of this library, we agree that the online catalogue will be an extremely useful tool for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the Archaeology of the Holy Land and the Near East.

Fake Arab Tombs near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

When archaeological investigations were frustrated by existing tombs, be they Jewish, Muslim or Christians, we used to say that the dead are more powerful than the living. Graves are usually respected by archaeologists. Fake tombs, however, should not be respected. See this report: Fake tombs near the Eastern Wall of the Temple Mount

MK Nisim Ze’ev (Shas) said the matter was a very serious one. “The Jerusalem Municipality is allowing complete abandonment of territory and assets,” he said. “The Arabs are trying to conquer the Land of Israel in every possible way. If we do not wake up to their conniving ways we will find ourselves before a gaping chasm. We need to plow the area and take down all of the fictitious tombs.”

Pictures of the fake tombs near the eastern Wall of the Temple Mount can be viewed in this article [Hebrew].

Hopefully, the un-dead in the fake tombs will not be so powerful when their un-existing remains and their rough stone enclosures will be removed.

Elevator for the disabled near the Temple Mount

According to this report, the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter plans to build an elevator inside an underground tunnel leading from the Jewish Quarter to the Western Wall Plaza.

The report tries to draw a historical parallel with the Temple Mount that stood in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago:

Two thousand years ago, stone bridges connected the Jewish Quarter directly to the Temple Mount, saving the high priests the long trek down and back up.

There was actually only one bridge, namely the Bridge of the Priests that was constructed over Wilson’s Arch between the Temple Mount and the Upper City – now the Jewish Quarter. The other arch, Robinson’s Arch, carried a stairway down to the street along the Western wall:

Despite the fact that the exit of the tunnel will be located about 1,000 feet to the west of the Temple Mount, according to this report the Arabs are, predictably, against it.

The purpose of the underground elevator “would greatly improve access for visitors in wheelchairs or those with other disabilities, who now have to contend with several flights of stairs”, but the Arabs claim “that the area in front of the wall could be used as a base from which to attack the mosque compound.” Even helping disabled people in Jerusalem is looked upon as suspicious by the Arabs.

HT: Joe lauer

Islamic Destruction of the Temple Mount report

By Anshel Pfeffer, August 12, 2010


Tons of rubble was removed from under Temple Mount by the Muslim authority that oversees the site

An investigation into the failure of law enforcement agencies to prevent what is alleged to have been an attempt to wipe out Jewish history on Temple Mount 11 years ago looks set to cause widespread controversy.

The publication of the report into the removal, by night, of 6,000 cubic metres of mud from beneath the Al Aqsa Mosque by the Muslim Wakf authority that oversees the management of the mosque compound, has been suppressed for months by the government.

The dirt was dug out to make way for a new underground mosque, but Israeli archaeologists and politicians claim that another motive of the Wakf and the Islamic Movement – which financed the work – was to remove evidence of Jewish history from the site where the two temples of Jerusalem stood.

The excavation and building was carried out without any official permit from the planning authorities. Belated intervention by the Justice Ministry, spurred on by a rare petition signed by politicians, writers and archaeologists from the right and the left, brought the digging to an end, but it was too late.

Thousands of volunteers have been sifting ever since through the hundreds of tons of dirt, dumped in a valley east of Jerusalem, unearthing rare remnants of the Temple Mounts from all ancient periods of Jerusalem, going back to the Bronze Age. Among them were fragments and coins from the First and Second Temples, and relics of the Persian, Babylonia, Maccabean, Herodean, Roman, early Christian and Byzantine eras. The work is of questionable historic value as the rules of archaeology mandate that findings should be recorded in their original location, but is still ongoing.

Meanwhile, for the last three years, the Comptroller’s Office has been conducting an investigation into the way the Israeli government, the police and Jerusalem City Hall have relinquished control of the sacred site.

“The conclusions are clear,” says one source who has seen the report, “Israeli law ends at the gates to the Temple Mount.”

The reason for this is the same motive that has caused the government to try and suppress the report for the past few months, previous attempts to enforce Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount have provoked widespread Palestinian violence, as did the visit of the opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, in September 2000, which sparked the second intifada.

“On the one hand, no government wants to be seen as impotent,” said a security official in Jerusalem, “but they prefer keeping the status quo on the Temple Mount to another intifada with all that entails. Even when the report finally gets out, the government will do everything in its power to play it down.”

HT: Joe Lauer

Israel Government buries Temple Mount report

The Jerusalem Post has a follow-up on Sunday’s article on the Temple Mount report, as reported in our previous post:

Comptroller Temple Mount report stays behind closed doors

It reminded me of a volunteer who found a camel’s tooth on the Temple Mount dig. She was so excited that she buried it again for another volunteer to find and be excited as well. The Knesset is burying part of this highly sensitive document “for diplomatic and security reasons”.

Israel is a democracy, so this report will eventually be unearthed again and I wonder if the public will be so excited as the second volunteer, when they read it, for “It is not a secret that the Waqf is building on the Temple Mount, that works have been done, and that many archeological findings have been destroyed.”

Source: Joe Lauer

Jerusalem and the Turks

It is a well-known fact that most British people are unaware that they no longer control an empire. Perhaps they can be excused because, although most colonies separated from Britain after the Second World War, the last colony of Hong Kong was lost only 13 years ago.

The Turks seem to suffer from a similar delusion. The Turkish Empire came to an end officially in 1923, but in practical terms, towards the end of the First World War. However, the Turks apparently still believe that Jerusalem belongs to Turkey. Why otherwise, according to this and this report, would they be building a 10 m. high wall around the Muslim Cemetery next to the Lions Gate?

The cemetery next to the Lions Gate

A couple of years ago the TIKA (Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency) opened an office for the Committee for the Protection of Muslim Cemeteries in Jerusalem. This office is responsible for the maintenance of Turkish cemeteries in Jerusalem.

When Israel builds a 10m. high wall to keep suicide bombers out, the world is up in arms, but when the Turks build a 10 m. high wall in Jerusalem, nobody seems to care. What is the purpose of this wall – to keep suicide bombers out or the ghosts in?

Source: Joe Lauer

First Temple period wall found in Jerusalem – revisited

One of my blog readers, Arthur Chrysler, made the following comments on a previous post, which I would like to share with other blog readers:

The Large Tower, explored by Warren and one hundred years later by Dame Kenyon, is constructed of stones of the character identified as Phoenician at Samaria. The header-and-stretcher construction is also identified as Phoenician at Samaria. Kenyon stated, “The date of these earliest walls, on the basis of the deposits against them, is, on the field estimate of the pottery, eighth century B.C. OR EARLIER (Digging up Jerusalem p.115). She also states in the caption under pl. 38, “Wall in Site S II on eastern crest of eastern ridge, which can be STRATIGRAPHICALLY dated to 8th century B.C….”. This area of Jerusalem is not a Tel! You cannot stratigraphically date anything here. This unique topography, consisting of a steep slope with exposed bedrock demands unique methodology. Kenyon states that, “Close at hand, there was a wall of the time of Solomon, from which the builders of the eighth century B.C. derived their stones”. King Hezekiah had a unique style of construction as seen in the Broad Wall, the Outer Wall, and his section of wall cutting across the Jebusite angle above the Gihon Spring. None of these examples give a hint of header-and-stretcher characteristics. Why would Hezekiah go through the trouble of re-stacking Solomon’s massive stones to move the tower only a few meters? Kenyon used the dating method that she was familiar with but it led her to the wrong conclusion regarding the tower here. The tower is certainly Solomonic and the connected wall and the Golden Gate, all of which display Identical characteristics.

If it is true that nothing can be dated stratigraphically in this part of Jerusalem, how can you then insist on a Solomonic date for the wall in Kenyon’s site SII and Benjamin Mazar’s Field 23? Kathleen Kenyon excavated down to the bedrock in this area and indeed concluded that:

“Beneath … the Byzantine wall … is a wall which probably belonged to a projecting tower. The date of these earliest walls, on the basis of the deposits against them, is … eighth century B.C. or earlier.” “… these walls were constructed of re-used stones … with irregular projecting bosses having margins on one, two or three sides.”

If these stones are indeed in secondary use, which I am not convinced of, it is possible that these are rejects or surplus masonry from Hezekiah’s square Temple Mount construction.

If you would examine the elevation, section and Isometric drawing of the Ophel Wall on Warren’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, etc., (1884), Plate 40, then it is clear that this L-shaped wall is built against an earlier wall and one can still see today that two different First Temple period building phases are represented in this area. That is why Warren called this wall section the “Extra Tower” or “Corner Turret”, i.e. it is a tower that was later added to strengthen an earlier fortification or part of the city wall. If the L-shaped wall, as you insist, is Solomonic, does that make the wall against which it is built Canaanite? If there are two construction phases in a building, that is called stratigraphy, showing that one wall is earlier than another. This stratigraphy is not different from that on a tell. This picture shows that the stratigraphically four building constructions can be identified:

1. The Byzantine Tower
2. Excavating inside and below the Byz. tower, a Herodian mikveh was found that was built against the inside wall of the “Extra Tower” (not visible in the picture)
3. The 8th century L-shaped “Extra Tower”
4. The pre-8th century wall against which the “Extra Tower” was built, which may be Solomonic if that can be proved conclusively.

Kenyon dated this L-shaped corner construction to the eighth century B.C. or earlier, but that does not necessarily mean that it is Solomonic. You compared it with the Phoenician masonry in Samaria, but that dates to the 9th century and is not Solomonic. A similar style masonry has been found in the sanctuary walls in Tel Dan, which is also post-Solomonic. I had suggested that there is an historical link between the “Extra Tower” and the masonry near the Golden Gate, but neither of these two constructions can be Solomonic.