A number of archaeological excavations at the Temple Mount—a celebrated and contentious religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem—have taken place over the last 150 years. Excavations in the area represent one of the more sensitive areas of all archaeological excavations in Jerusalem.
The term Temple Mount usually refers to the artificially expanded platform at the top of the natural hill and the compound situated there. The compound is delineated by four ancient retaining walls, and is of high religious significance. The compound itself has only very rarely been the object of archaeological work, unlike the area surrounding it, which has been quite intensively excavated, especially along the southern and western walls.
The first archaeological work was undertaken by the British Royal Engineers in the 1860s in the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem and subsequently the PEF Survey of Palestine.
Since Israel took control of the Old City in 1967, archaeological excavations in the vicinity of the Mount have been undertaken by Israel. Any type of earthmoving work inside the compound however, has mainly been reserved to the Jordanian/Palestinian-led Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, the Muslim authority in charge of the Al-Aqsa compound, who employs its own archaeologist and who at times has applied for the services of Jordanian and Egyptian restoration specialists. Work done by both sides has been controversial and criticized. Israeli and Jewish groups have criticized excavations conducted by the Waqf, with the Muslim side criticizing work done by the Israeli side. International organizations, such as UNESCO, sometimes intervene in the conflicts.
History of archaeological work and reactions to it Due to the extreme political sensitivity of the site, few archaeological excavations have been conducted on the Temple Mount itself. Protests commonly occur whenever archaeologists conduct projects on or near the Mount.
For actual finds from the surveys and digs inside the compound and listed in this section, please see the next section, Finds from the compound.
PEF work in- and outside the compound Aside from visual observation of surface features, most other archaeological knowledge of the site comes from the 19th-century survey carried out by Charles Wilson (Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem) and Charles Warren (PEF Survey of Palestine). Warren was one of the first to excavate this area, exemplifying a new era of Biblical archaeology in the 1870s. His exploration was under the auspices of the Palestine Exploration Fund, a society with a relationship with the Corps of Royal Engineers. The group was conducting a study and survey of the Levant region, including the southern part, Palestine.Archaeologists Reveal Shocking Stories of Their Past, Jerusalem Post Warren and his team improved the topographic map of Jerusalem and discovered the ancient water systems that lay beneath the city of Jerusalem.
Mandate-time work inside the compound During the 1930s, repairs being made to the al-Aqsa mosque enabled Robert Hamilton to examine parts of the structure usually hidden, including below the floor.
Post-1967 Work outside the compound In 1967 the Religious Affairs Ministry began an unlicensed excavation. Starting at the Western Wall Plaza, workers dug northward, under the Old City's Muslim Quarter.The end of days, Gershom Gorenberg
Beginning in 1968, Israeli archaeologists began excavations at the foot of the Temple Mount, immediately south of the al-Aqsa Mosque, uncovering Roman, Umayyad and Crusader remains.Jacqueline Schaalje, Special: The Temple Mount in Jerusalem .
In 1970, Israeli authorities commenced intensive excavations to the south and west of the compound. Over the period 1970–1988, the Israeli authorities excavated a tunnel passing along the western wall of the Temple Mount, northwards from the prayer plaza of the Western Wall, that became known as the Western Wall Tunnel. They sometimes used mechanical excavators under the supervision of archaeologists. Palestinians claim that both of these have caused cracks and structural weakening of the buildings in the Muslim Quarter of the city above. Israelis confirmed this danger:
"The Moslem authorities were concerned about the ministry tunnel along the Temple Mount wall, and not without cause. Two incidents during the Mazar dig along the southern wall had sounded alarm bells. Technion engineers had already measured a slight movement in part of the southern wall during the excavations. ... There was no penetration of the Mount itself or danger to holy places, but midway in the tunnel's progress large cracks appeared in one of the residential buildings in the Moslem Quarter, 12 meters above the excavation. The dig was halted until steel buttresses secured the building."
In an article published in the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly in 2007, Palestinian journalist Khaled Amayreh listed Israeli encroachments on the Al-Aqsa Mosque: In 1977, digging continued and a large ancient tunnel was opened below the women's prayer area. A further tunnel was unearthed under the mosque, going from east to west, in 1979. Amayreh further claimed that in March 1984, the Archaeological Department of the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs dug a tunnel near the western portion of the mosque, endangering the Islamic "Majlis" or council building. Writing in 1991, Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein denied the claims, asserting that "the closest excavation to the mosque is some 70 meters to its south".Dan Izenberg, The Jerusalem Post, July 19, 1991
1981 breach of Warren's Gate In 1981, Yehuda Meir Getz, rabbi of the Western Wall, had workmen clear the debris from the gateway of the ancient Warren's Gate. There were allegations the intention of this excavation was to access the innards of the Temple Mount itself from the Western Wall Tunnel. Arabs on the Mount heard banging from one of the more than two dozen cisterns on the Mount. Israeli Government officials, upon being notified of the unauthorized breach, immediately ordered Warren's Gate sealed. The 2,000-year-old stone gate was filled with cement, and remains cemented shut today.Abraham Rabinovich, Tunnel vision.
Mutual accusation of destruction, neglect Archaeologist Léon Pressouyre, a UNESCO envoy who visited the site in 1998 and claims to have been prevented from meeting Israeli officials (in his own words, "Mr Avi Shoket, Israel's permanent delegate to UNESCO, had repeatedly opposed my mission and, when I expressed the wish to meet with his successor, Uri Gabay, I was denied an appointment"),Omayma Abdel-Latif, "Revoking the death warrant" accuses the Israeli government of culpably neglecting to protect the Islamic period buildings uncovered in Israeli excavations. Later, Prof. Oleg Grabar of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton replaced Leon Pressouyre as the UNESCO envoy to investigate the Israeli allegations that antiquities are being destroyed by the Waqf on the Temple Mount. Initially, Grabar was denied access to the buildings by Israel for over a year, allegedly due to the threat of violence resulting from the al-Aqsa Intifada. His eventual conclusion was that the monuments are deteriorating largely because of conflicts over who is responsible for them, the Jordanian government, the local Palestinian Authority or the Israeli government.
Western Wall Tunnel (1996)
After the Six-Day War, the Ministry of Religious Affairs of Israel began the excavations aimed at exposing the continuation of the Western Wall. The excavations lasted almost twenty years and revealed many previously unknown facts about the history and geography of the Temple Mount.
The tunnel exposes a total length of 500 m (a third of a mile) of the wall, revealing the methods of construction and the various activities in the vicinity of the Temple Mount. The excavations included many archaeological finds along the way, including discoveries from the Herodian period (streets, monumental masonry), sections of a reconstruction of the Western Wall dating to the Umayyad period, and various structures dating to the Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Hasmonean periods constructed to support buildings in the vicinity of the Temple Mount. Warren's Gate lies about into the tunnel. At the northern portion of the Western Wall, remains of a water channel, which originally supplied water to the Temple Mount, were found. The exact source of the channel is unknown, though it passes through an underground pool known as the Strouthion Pool. The water channel was dated to the Hasmonean period and was accordingly dubbed the Hasmonean Channel.
The biggest stone in the Western Wall often called the Western Stone is also revealed within the tunnel and ranks as one of the heaviest objects ever lifted by human beings without powered machinery. The stone has a length of and an estimated width between Estimates place its weight at 550 metric tons.
In 1996, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu opened the Western Wall Tunnel near the site.Violent clashes at key Jerusalem mosque on 'day of anger', The Times, access-date=May 5, 2009Mayor halts Temple Mount dig, BBC, access-date=May 5, 2009 Fueled by the allegation that the tunnel would undermine the Temple Mount, Palestinians protested. Consequently, gun battles in the West Bank and Gaza Strip killed 54 Palestinians and 14 Israeli soldiers.
Construction at Solomon's Stables (1996–1999)
In 1996 the Waqf began unauthorized construction in the structures known since Crusader times as Solomon's Stables, and in the Eastern Hulda Triple Gate passageway, allowing the area to be (re)opened as a prayer space called the Marwani Musalla, capable of accommodating 7,000 people. In 1997, the Western Hulda Double Gate passageway was converted into another mosque.
According to The New York Times, an emergency exit had been urged upon the Waqf by the Israeli police. In 1999, the Waqf agreed on its necessity, which was also acknowledged by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). But the IAA criticized the Waqf's use of bulldozers, and said that salvation archaeology needed to be performed first.Romey, Kristin M. Jerusalem's Temple Mount Flap, Archaeology, Volume 53 Number 2, March/April 2000 Gabriel Barkay, an Israeli archaeology professor, said the construction demolished Crusader structures dating to the twelfth century, and went on without archaeological supervision. He said the workers used ancient stones from early Jewish structures in order to build modern ones.Temple Mount destruction stirred archaeologist to action, February 8, 2005. Michael McCormack, Baptist Press Israel Finkelstein has described the project as "the greatest devastation to have recently been inflicted on Jerusalem's archaeological heritage".
In 2000, an Israeli high court rejected a petition to halt construction, saying the matter should be left to the Israeli government. Ehud Olmert, then mayor of Jerusalem, also criticized the construction. He ordered a halt to the construction, on grounds of archaeological damage, defying an Israeli government decision to allow excavations at the site. The Waqf rejected that Israel had any right to halt the construction. Formally, the Waqf does not recognize Israeli authority, though it had cooperated with Israel until the 1996 opening of Western Wall tunnel (see above).
The Temple Mount Sifting Project is an archaeological project established in 2005 and dedicated to recovering archaeological artifacts from the 300 truckloads of topsoil removed from the Temple Mount by the Waqf during the construction of the underground el-Marwani Mosque from 1996 to 1999."Temple Mount relics saved from garbage," Etgar Lefkovits, The Jerusalem Post, April 14, 2005 For the items recovered, see below in the "Findings from the compound" section and the Sifting Project article.
Southern wall bulge (2002–2004)