Is a Piece of Herod’s Temple in St. Paul’s Cathedral?

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If you’d like to see what may be a piece of the Second Temple (Herod’s Temple), pay a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. I’ll tell you later where in the church it can be found.

To explain how it got there, we must explore the life of a Scottish architect named James Fergusson. Born in 1808 in Ayr, the son of an army surgeon, Fergusson went to India as a young man and there produced indigo, earning enough in a decade to retire to London.

Although he had been trained as an architect, he never practiced his profession, but he did write widely and authoritatively about a wide range of architectural subjects. His interest in architecture and its history naturally led him to archaeology. Even before he published his landmark history of Indian architecture, he was working with the great Austen Henry Layard to reconstruct the Assyrian palaces Layard had then recently excavated in ancient Mesopotamia.

Jerusalem, too, was an early and major focus of Fergusson’s interest. In 1847, he published An Essay on the Ancient Topography of Jerusalem, based on an earlier exploration of the Temple Mount by the English architect Frederick Catherwood. There Fergusson first presented his theory that Solomon’s Temple stood not where the Dome of the Rock is located, but on the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount. Moreover, based on certain Byzantine features in the Dome of the Rock, Fergusson identified it as the original Church of the Holy Sepulchre and therefore the site of Christ’s tomb.

In 1864 Fergusson joined Charles Wilson in his survey work in Jerusalem and was with him in the exploration of many of the underground cavities on the Temple Mount. (Fergusson also provided funding for Wilson’s expedition.) Ironically, it was Wilson’s work in Jerusalem, together with that of his successor Charles Warren, that conclusively demonstrated the error of Fergusson’s views on 064the location of Solomon’s Temple and of Christ’s tomb. But Fergusson never gave up.^a

Although he was wrong, he nevertheless aroused enormous interest in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. To a large extent, his theories about the Temple Mount might be said to have triggered Warren’s work at the site. Fergusson’s subsequent bitter feud with Warren was instrumental in the formation of the British Palestine Exploration Fund, which has had an enormous impact on the study of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Moreover, Fergusson continued to publish important works on architectural history that are still consulted and used today.

Despite his errors regarding the Temple Mount and the location of Christ’s tomb, James Fergusson occupies an honorable place among architectural historians, not only for his work on Indian architecture, but also for his four-volume best-seller, The History of Architecture. He also wrote studies on Stonehenge and the Parthenon on the Athenian acropolis. Heinrich Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy, dedicated one of his studies about Tyrins in Greece to Fergusson.

In addition to serving on the board of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Fergusson was also a member of the committee to refurbish London’s most famous church, St. Paul’s Cathedral. After the great fire of 1666, the renowned architect (later Sir) Christopher Wren prepared a master plan for London’s reconstruction. Although the plan was never executed, he designed many of the city’s new buildings. The greatest of them, indeed his masterpiece, was St. Paul’s Cathedral. In 1675 Wren himself laid the first foundation block and 35 years later set the final stone of the church. By the late 18th century, the church needed some redecorating, so the committee of which Fergusson was a member was appointed. Fergusson died in 1886 at the age of 78.

In 1995, while visiting the church, I noticed an engraved stone about 1 foot high and 1 foot wide 065set into a wall. It extends about 8.5 inches from the wall and is carved on both sides. On one side is a rosette; on the other side are two curved lily stems (the lily carvings themselves have not survived). The stone is located in a semi-dark place in a side chapel on the upper level on the south side of the church. Naturally curious, I looked around it to see if there was any sign explaining it. A Latin plaque beside the stone explains that it was placed there in memoriam to James Fergusson in 1889 (three years after his death) by Anna Liddon.

Anna Liddon was the daughter of James Fergusson’s groom. Fergusson apparently left the stone to him. On his death, the stone passed to his daughter, who in reverence for Fergusson gave it to the church to install into the wall.

But where did Fergusson get it? And what was it?

There can be no doubt that, based on its decorative style and its workmanship, it belongs to the 066decorative art of Jerusalem in the late Second Temple period, just prior to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. From its shape, size and decoration, it appears to have been the decorative stone on the top of a door jamb.

The rosette, which is the principal decoration on the stone, is particularly diagnostic. Inside the rosette is a smaller one with eight petals. Eight smaller diamond-shaped petals are curved around the petals of the larger rosette, giving the whole a three-dimensional impression. Rosettes are extremely common decorations in the late Second Temple period. They are known at the entrance to burial caves, on stone coffins and ossuaries (bone boxes), on stone tables and sundials. They were painted on the fragile, decorated ceramic ware known as Jerusalem painted bowls (or pseudo-Nabatean bowls). Although some far-fetched symbolism has sometimes been attributed to these rosettes (for example, as a substitute for prohibited likenesses of cherubs), it is highly likely that they served simply as decoration, without any hidden symbolism.

It is most probable that Fergusson brought the stone back with him from Jerusalem when he returned in 1864 after working on the Temple Mount with Charles Wilson. Because of where he worked, it seems clear that the stone came from the Temple Mount. But where on the Temple Mount?

Many similarly decorated stones have been found upon and near the Temple Mount, especially during the excavations of Professor Benjamin Mazar at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount. They are now being studied, under Dr. Eilat Mazar’s direction, by Orit Peleg as part of her doctoral dissertation. The origin of these stones is likely the Royal Stoa that Herod built and the Romans destroyed at the southern end of the Temple Mount. One leading architect of the period has called this Royal Stoa “probably the most magnificent secular building ever erected by Herod.”¹

Another similarly decorated stone was discovered in the excavations of Professor Nahman Avigad in the Upper City of Jerusalem not far from the Temple Mount.²

All this points to a stone from the Royal Stoa. On the other hand, it is most likely that it was found during Wilson’s survey in which Fergusson participated. It could have come from the surface or from one of the many underground cavities and cisterns that the expedition explored on the Temple Mount. In short, the stone in St. Paul’s may not have come from the southern Temple Mount but rather from the interior of the giant platform, perhaps from the Temple itself. In either event, the structures on the Temple Mount displayed the finest carving artistry in the land, and this fragment is certainly consistent with that supposition.

To my knowledge, this stone has never previously been mentioned in the scholarly literature. It apparently escaped the notice of all the scholars who have studied Jerusalem and its history for more than a century and a half. It is a pleasure now to inform the world of its existence.

If you’d like to see what may be a piece of the Second Temple (Herod’s Temple), pay a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. I’ll tell you later where in the church it can be found.