Temple Mount in Jerusalem: Coin Find Sheds Light

[guy]

Here's a recent article making news at a few numismatic sites:

 

 

Old coins shed light on Jerusalem's Western Wall

 

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered ancient coins near the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City which challenge the assumption that all of the walls of the Second Temple were built by King Herod.

 

 

JERUSALEM (AP) Newly found coins underneath Jerusalem's Western Wall could change the accepted belief about the construction of one of the world's most sacred sites two millennia ago, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday.

 

The man usually credited with building the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary is Herod, a Jewish ruler who died in 4 B.C. Herod's monumental compound replaced and expanded a much older Jewish temple complex on the same site.

 

But archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority now say diggers have found coins underneath the massive foundation stones of the compound's Western Wall that were stamped by a Roman proconsul 20 years after Herod's death. That indicates that Herod did not build the wall part of which is venerated as Judaism's holiest prayer site and that construction was not close to being complete when he died.

 

The coins confirm a contemporary account by Josephus Flavius, a Jewish general who became a Roman historian. Writing after a Jewish revolt against Rome and the destruction of the Temple by legionnaires in 70 A.D., he recounted that work on the Temple Mount had been completed only by King Agrippa II, Herod's great-grandson, two decades before the entire compound was destroyed

 

Scholars have long been familiar with Josephus' account, but the find is nonetheless important because it offers the "first clear-cut archaeological evidence that part of the enclosure wall was not built by Herod," said archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, who was not involved in the dig.

 

http://news.yahoo.co...-092556159.html

 

 

http://news.yahoo.co...051224-537.html

 

 

 

Coins struck by Valerius Gratus, the Roman procurator of ancient Judea, in 17/18 A.D. were found recently beneath the lowest layer of the Western Wall of Jerusalem's Temple Mount, which Muslims refer to as the Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary. That dates the building of this part of the site to more than two decades after the death of King Herod, the ruler credited with its construction.

http://www.bloomberg...ontroversy.html

 

 

 

guy also known as gaius

Edited September 1, 2014 by guy