What’s an Egyptian Temple Doing in Jerusalem?

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Recent attacks on the historicity of the United Monarchy of David and Solomon (in the tenth century B.C.) have focused on the scant archaeological remains that have been discovered in Jerusalem. Based on this, some scholars have charged that there was no significant settlement in Jerusalem during the time of the United Monarchy, despite what the Bible tells us. For similar reasons, these scholars have argued that there was no settlement during the preceding period—called Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.), the period of the Israelite settlement and of the Judges—or even earlier, during the period of Egyptian rule in the province of Canaan, the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 B.C.).

I do not wish to enter that debate. I want only to demonstrate how chancy it is to base an argument on the absence of data.

I have discovered important evidence regarding the Egyptian presence in Jerusalem during the Late Bronze Age.

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Egyptian texts indicate that during this period Egypt controlled Canaan, including Jerusalem, through a series of local rulers. These texts hearten the so-called Biblical maximalists—those who think the Bible contains reliable historical information—because they indicate that Jerusalem was a city with political significance, the kind of city that might well have been made into the capital of David’s kingdom, just like the Bible records. The Biblical “minimalists,” however—those who treat the Bible as an ideological document with little trustworthy historical data—downplay these texts and say that there is little reason to think that Jerusalem was anything more than a provincial settlement in the Late Bronze Age, in Iron Age I or in the tenth century B.C.^a

The minimalists point to the paucity of archaeological evidence from those periods despite extensive excavation, the past 150 years of which have made Jerusalem the most excavated city in the world. Some pottery and a few tombs, they stress, and some imported vessels from these tombs, are all the evidence we have for an Egyptian presence in Jerusalem in the Late Bronze Age. But to these I can now add evidence for perhaps an Egyptian temple.

Several years ago, in connection with an entirely different project, I stumbled across indications of a possible Egyptian temple. I was studying two large burial caves dating to the eighth or seventh century B.C. on the grounds of the French Dominican Monastery of St. Étienne (St. Stephen), which houses the École Biblique et Archéologique Française, just north of the Old City of Jerusalem. I was also studying nearby the Garden Tomb, which is championed by some Protestants as the tomb of Jesus (Catholic and Orthodox Christians believe the actual tomb is in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre). A Late Bronze Age Egyptian temple in Jerusalem was the furthest thing from my mind.

My research required me to read all the literature related to excavations that had been conducted at the site of the St. Étienne church and monastery. The Dominican complex had been built north of Damascus Gate on land purchased by the Dominican fathers in 1882. They chose the site because of its association with the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, who, according to tradition, was stoned here in about 35 A.D. In the fifth century A.D., the Byzantine empress Eudoxia (pronounced Eudoshia) built a large church here in commemoration of his martyrdom. A Crusader church was later built nearby.

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In 1882 the Dominican fathers began extensive excavations here under the direction of Père Marie-Joseph Lagrange, who published a summary of his work in 1894.¹ After these excavations were completed, a new church was built over the Byzantine period ruins, some of which may still be seen. The present church incorporates some of the ancient mosaic floor fragments and other remains, and it has the same general size and shape as the Byzantine period church of Empress Eudoxia.

While reading Père Lagrange’s comprehensive report of the excavation, I came across a description of an intriguing, if not puzzling, find, which was mentioned only in a few words in a note. In one of two large square cisterns underneath the Byzantine church, the excavators found a fragment of a small stele with Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The inscription itself was published in 1892 by Père Vincent Scheil in the first volume of the École Biblique’s scholarly journal, Revue biblique (still a premier archaeological and Biblical publication). Unfortunately, the hieroglyphic inscription was published incorrectly and with a drawing that appeared backward.

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Strangely enough, the fragment was again discussed in the 1966 report of the University of Pennsylvania’s excavation of Beth-Shean, a site 75 miles north of Jerusalem. For some reason, the authors of the Beth-Shean excavation report—who prepared it after the excavator, Allen Rowe, had died—thought the fragment had been found at Beth-Shean.² Their report noted that the field record and field number of the fragment were missing. The fragment itself, they believed, had been discarded before it could be published.³ Obviously, they had missed Père Scheil’s publication of the inscription in Revue biblique. Apparently, when Rowe began working on the Egyptian inscriptions found at Beth-Shean in the 1930s and tried to compare them with the limited number of Egyptian inscriptions from throughout the land of Israel dating to the Egyptian New Kingdom period (1575–1087 B.C.), he included a photograph of the inscription from Jerusalem among material from Beth-Shean.

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With my curiosity thus aroused, and with the help of the Dominican fathers at the École Biblique, especially the late Père Pierre Benoit, I was able to locate the hieroglyphic fragment itself in the École Biblique’s collections.

The stele fragment is only 5.4 inches (13.5 centimeters) high and 4.8 inches (12 centimeters) wide. It is carved from white porous limestone. Hieroglyphs had been carved on both sides, and the back had been smoothed quite nicely, indicating that the stele was originally free-standing. The fragment includes part of the rounded top of the stele, so we know that it was originally shaped like typical Egyptian stelae.

The inscription on the front is very fragmentary; the one on the reverse is even worse. On the front, 13 hieroglyphic signs are arranged in three vertical columns. They include the title “the foremost of westerners,” which is the title of Osiris, the god of the dead who were buried on the western side of the Nile. The name of Osiris also appears on an inscribed stele fragment of reddish Nubian sandstone discovered at Hazor in northern Israel and on stelae found at Deir el-Balah., in the Gaza Strip.⁴ It seems that this Egyptian deity was especially popular in Canaan, when it was under Egyptian domination.

The back of the stele has only a single readable sign, possibly the loop of an ankh (the symbol for life).

This fragmentary inscription is not sufficient to indicate the presence of an Egyptian temple in Jerusalem, but it was enough to encourage further research into the old excavation records, as well as the artifacts preserved in the École Biblique collection. Among the latter were two finely crafted alabaster vessels that are clearly Egyptian (see photo). Although they were found in the excavations, they were never published.⁵ One is a bag-shaped bottle about 3.8 inches (9.5 centimeters) high with a flared rim. The other is a jug with a globular body and a ring base; its neck and handle are missing, but they can be reconstructed with confidence on the basis of numerous comparable vessels dating to the 18th Egyptian Dynasty (1575–1308 B.C.), which corresponds to the Late Bronze Age in Palestine.

Below the floor level of the apse of the Byzantine church built by Eudoxia, the Dominican fathers also found a strange installation that they were not sure how to interpret (see photo). It consisted of a slab 054of marblelike white stone about 3.5 feet by 2.15 feet (1.09 by 0.65 meters) divided into three fields by two shallow channels. These channels are connected by two additional, perpendicular channels, from which yet another channel leads to a spout. The spout, which consists of a separate piece of stone, pours into a pit that was cut into bedrock and lined with fieldstone masonry. In each of the three fields of the slab a round impression is visible. Holes from two small nails are visible in each of these round imprints.

Père Louis-Hugues Vincent, one of the École Biblique’s most distinguished archaeological scholars, dated this installation to the Byzantine period, claiming that it was placed under the altar of the Byzantine church and was used for ablutions.⁶ There is no doubt in my mind, however, that the stone slab, which was discovered in situ under the church floor, is earlier than the church structure and was used for pouring some kind of liquid. No installation of this kind has been found in any of the hundreds of Byzantine period churches known to us. Indeed, shortly after its discovery, two scholars who had seen the stone slab in situ argued, on the basis of its shape, that it must be an offering table of a type well known in Egypt.⁷ Indeed, a great many Egyptian offering tables are divided into three fields, with each field containing a relief image of round loaves of bread. Other Egyptian offering tables appear in various shapes and sizes, and they all have channels and spouts. Installations similar to our stone-lined pit, although of a less impressive shape, are known from Late Bronze Age Canaanite temples at such sites as Hazor and Megiddo.

The Canaanite connection is also suggested by another offering table (or perhaps an altar) found at the St. Étienne excavations that has three sunken compartments of unequal depth (one deep and the other two shallower). It is made of local limestone. Similar objects with sunken compartments made of basalt are known from the Late Bronze temples at Hazor;⁸ others were unearthed in the Late Bronze Age temple at Megiddo.⁹ An almost perfect parallel to the St. Étienne example was excavated at Gezer;¹⁰ it is also made of limestone and has three sunken compartments of unequal depth.

There is still more evidence of this possible Egyptian temple in Jerusalem. In his publication of the Egyptian hieroglyphic stele fragment, Père Scheil wrote that Egyptian-style “lotus shaped” capitals were also uncovered in the excavation. Since they were not published, however, we do not know how many were found.¹¹ A capital—possibly one of those described by Scheil—is now built into a low stone wall on the Garden Tomb grounds adjacent to St. Étienne. From its shape, it is clear that this capital does not belong to the rich collection of sculptured capitals in Jerusalem from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine periods, or even later. It is, rather, a unique feature of early Jerusalem 055architecture. Both its form and measurement indicate that it is Egyptian. It seems to have been cut using the royal Egyptian cubit of 21 inches (52.5 centimeters) as a measuring standard. The height of the capital is 21.6 inches (54 centimeters); its diameter at the base is 20.8 inches (52 centimeters) and at the top about 32 inches (80 centimeters, or 1.5 cubits). Eight leaves are modeled in low relief around the capital. The maximum width of each leaf is 8.8 inches (22 centimeters, or about half a cubit). Each leaf has a rounded top with a triangular protrusion, of which only one is now intact. Smaller leaves with pointed tops are modeled between the large ones, each with a protruding central ridge. The capital has a faceted abacus above the leaves. The shape of the capital resembles palm capitals of ancient Egyptian architecture. Many are known in Egypt from the New Kingdom period (16th–11th centuries B.C.); the closest to our type, from Soleb, is dated to the 19th Dynasty (1308–1194 B.C.), also corresponding to the Late Bronze Age in Palestine.¹²

One final artifact provides the last piece of the puzzle. In 1975 a small beautifully crafted statuette was found by Dr. Jacqueline Belensi in the garden of the monastery (see photo). The statuette is about 3 inches (7.3 centimeter) high. It is made of smoothed greenish Egyptian serpentine stone and portrays a male figure seated on a chair; the head and the upper part of the body are missing. The figure wears a long garment reaching down to the ankles that emphasizes the leg muscles and the contours of the knees. The arms, which were not preserved, probably stretched forward and held a staff or a standard in front of the face. The statuette can definitely be identified as Egyptian because of its shape and material; it dates to the New Kingdom and may portray the Egyptian god Amon or Ptah.¹³ A comparable figurine was unearthed in the northwestern part of the City of David during excavations in 1927 and 1928.¹⁴

From all of this—a fragment of a stele with a hieroglyphic inscription, two Egyptian alabaster vessels, an Egyptian serpentine statuette, an offering table and architectural fragments—I conclude that there was probably an Egyptian temple here in the Late Bronze Age. The architectural finds—that is, the capitals and the offering table, the latter found in situ on bedrock under the floor of the Byzantine church—rule out the possibility that the objects originated in tombs. It seems likely that this was an Egyptian temple located on the main road leading north from Jerusalem to Shechem.

If there was an Egyptian temple just outside Jerusalem in the Late Bronze Age, then this has considerable significance for our historical reconstruction of Jerusalem in this period.

Let me try to pinpoint the date of these Egyptian 056artifacts. The choices are the first two dynasties of the New Kingdom—the 18th and 19th Egyptian Dynasties (1575–1308 B.C. and 1308–1194 B.C., respectively).

Our knowledge of Late Bronze Age Jerusalem is very limited; a very few finds indicate only that a settlement existed in the City of David, ancient Jerusalem’s core. The Egyptians who ruled the land of Canaan had little interest in the hill country of Canaan in the early part of the Late Bronze Age. They were mainly interested in the trade routes and military passages along the coastal plain far west of Jerusalem. From the time of the 18th Dynasty, the Egyptian lists of cities conquered by their rulers contain no references to Jerusalem. Indeed, the entire hill country is totally missing from these lists.

Imagine the conclusion the minimalists would reach about an Egyptian presence in Jerusalem in the Late Bronze Age based on these lists of conquered cities and on the scant evidence of any settlement here in the Late Bronze Age. Here, too, however, the situation was drastically altered by a chance find.

In 1887 Egyptian peasants digging in a mound called Tell el-Amarna, about 190 miles south of Cairo, uncovered an archive of cuneiform tablets now known as the Amarna letters. They consist largely of correspondence between two 14th-century B.C. Egyptian pharaohs (Amenophis III and Amenophis IV, also called Akhenaten) and petty local rulers in Canaan. Among these rulers was one Abdi-H|epa, described as king of Jerusalem. Included in the archive were six letters of Abdi-H|epa

Without these letters, we would have no evidence of an Egyptian presence in this part of Canaan. A memory of Jerusalem’s importance in the period prior to the Israelite settlement of the land may be reflected in the Book of Joshua. There we learn that the Jerusalem king led a southern coalition of five Canaanite rulers who tried to dislodge Joshua from Gibeon in the famous battle where the sun stood still (Joshua 10).

From the Abdi-H|epa letters, we learn that Abdi-H|epa was probably educated in Egypt and that he was one of the Canaanite rulers most loyal to the Egyptian crown. His kingdom of Jerusalem stretched from the area of Ramallah in the north to south of Bethlehem and covered the entire central Judean hills.

From other Amarna letters we learn of a small but important Egyptian military presence in Jerusalem during the 14th century B.C. and about the important role of Abdi-H|epa in the political machinations of the time. Because the Egyptian activity in the central hill country was rather limited in this period, it does not seem likely that an Egyptian temple would have been built north of Jerusalem at this time.

The situation changed a century later, in the days of the 19th Egyptian Dynasty. During the reign of Pharaoh Merneptah (1212–1202 B.C.), there was an increase in Egyptian interest in the mountainous interior areas of the land of Canaan. A document from that time known as Papyrus Anastasi 3 mentions a fort of 057Merneptah near a place called Sar-ram.¹⁵ The late Israeli archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni identified this Egyptian name with the Semitic name SðLM, or Salem, often connected with Jerusalem (see Genesis 14:18; Psalms 76:2).¹⁶ In another papyrus document of the same time,¹⁷ we read about an Egyptian official arriving from a place known as Merneptah’s wells, located in the Canaanite hill country. Aharoni connected this place with Biblical Mey-Nephtoah. (the Waters of Nephtoah.; see Joshua 15:9, 18:15), now on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. The Biblical name of that place could well be a later Israelite pronunciation of the Egyptian monarch’s name, still remembered after the Israelites arrived in the hill country.

Père Scheil, who first published the fragmentary hieroglyphic stele from St. Stephen’s church, identified in its lower part a remnant of what seems to be the characteristic angular ear of the Egyptian deity Seth. If this is correct, then we have further support for dating the Egyptian remains found on the grounds of the École Biblique to the 19th Egyptian Dynasty; the worship of Seth was totally absent in the days of the 18th Dynasty but became popular again in the 19th Dynasty.¹⁸ An Egyptian presence, and even Egyptian temples, are known from many sites in Canaan from the 13th century B.C., the time of the 19th Dynasty.¹⁹ Remains of an Egyptian temple from that time, with a stash of Egyptian finds, were unearthed at the site known as Solomon’s Pillars, at Timna, north of Eilat.²⁰ From an inscription on an ivory pen case found at Megiddo that dates to the time of Ramesses III (1184–1153 B.C.), we know of a temple of the Egyptian deity Ptah at Ashkelon in the 13th or early 12th century B.C.²¹

Egypto-Canaanite temples from the 13th century B.C. were excavated in important centers such as Beth-Shean and Lachish. There was clearly an increase of Egyptian penetration to the interior of Canaan during this period.

It thus seems that the finds from St. Stephen’s should be dated to the 19th Egyptian Dynasty, the 13th century B.C. Unfortunately, the pottery from the École Biblique excavation of Père Lagrange was not saved. His excavation occurred in the early 1880s, less than a decade before Sir William Flinders Petrie’s epoch-making excavation of Tell el-Hesi in southern Israel, in which Petrie demonstrated the importance of pottery for dating purposes. All we have from the École Biblique excavations are some stone objects that Père Lagrange decided to keep. Were it not for those pieces—and the careful records he kept—we would neverknow about this possible Egyptian temple on the road leading north from 13th-century B.C. Jerusalem.

If there is a lesson to be learned from all this, it is how dangerous it is to draw conclusions from the paucity of evidence about ancient Jerusalem.

Recent attacks on the historicity of the United Monarchy of David and Solomon (in the tenth century B.C.) have focused on the scant archaeological remains that have been discovered in Jerusalem. Based on this, some scholars have charged that there was no significant settlement in Jerusalem during the time of the United Monarchy, despite what the Bible tells us. For similar reasons, these scholars have argued that there was no settlement during the preceding period—called Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.), the period of the Israelite settlement and of the Judges—or even earlier, during the period of Egyptian rule […]