(Smithsonian) Joshua Hammer - Being an amateur archaeologist at the Temple Mount Salvage Operation wasn't as easy as it sounded. A chunk of what looked like conglomerate rock turned out to be plaster used to line cisterns during the time of Herod the Great, some 2,000 years ago. When I tossed aside a shard of green glass I thought was from a soft-drink bottle, my supervisor snatched it up. "Notice the bubbles," she told me. "That indicates it's ancient glass, because during that time, oven temperatures didn't reach as high as they do now." I also retrieved a rough-edged coin minted more than 1,500 years ago and bearing the profile of a Byzantine emperor. In 1999, the Muslim religious authority that controls the compound, the Waqf, announced plans to create an emergency exit for the El-Marwani Mosque. But instead of a small emergency exit, the Waqf dug a pit more than 131 feet long and nearly 40 feet deep. Dump trucks carted away hundreds of tons of Temple Mount soil to the Kidron Valley. This material is now being explored by archaeologist Gaby Barkay, ten full-time staffers and a corps of part-time volunteers.
2011-04-01 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive