Wooden Beams from Herod’s Temple Mount: Do They Still Exist? - The BAS Library
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Wooden Beams from Herod’s Temple Mount: Do They Still Exist?

By Peretz Reuven

The Romans destroyed Herod’s Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E. Is it possible that some of the wooden beams from his Temple Mount have survived—and may be identified? I believe the answer is “yes.” Some of the beams may even be from the Temple. Wooden beams of this quality—especially Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) and cypress (Cypressus sempervirens)—were extremely valuable and would have been used and reused, again and again. Known to archaeologists as “secondary use,” the phenomenon of reuse is widely 041 042 recognized, mostly in connection with stone building blocks but also with regard to other construction elements […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Suzanne F. Singer, “Jerusalem Update: More Temple Mount Antiquities Destroyed,” BAR, September/October 2000.

Endnotes

1.

R.W. Hamilton, Structural History of the Aqsa Mosque (Jerusalem: Oxford Univ. Press, 1949).

2.

Cassius Dio, Roman History 69.12. Bordeaux Pilgrim, Travels (Itinerarium Burdigalense) 591.

3.

Nili Liphschitz, Gideon Biger, Georges Bonani and W. Wolfli, “Comparative Dating Methods: Botanical Identification and C-14 Dating of Carved Panels and Beams from the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem,” Journal of Archaeological Science 24 (1997), pp. 1045–1050. See also N. Liphschitz and G. Biger, “Secondary and Tertiary Use of Cedrus Libani (Cedar of Lebanon) Timber in Constructions,” Qadmoniot 97–98 (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 19–20, S. Lev-Yadun, N. Liphschitz and Y. Waisel “Ring Analysis of Cedrus Libani Beams from the Roof of El-Aqsa Mosque,” Eretz-Israel 17 (1984), pp. 92–96 (in Hebrew).

4.

Hamilton, Structural History of the Aqsa Mosque, p. 87.

5.

P. Reuven, “A Decorated Beam from the Roman Period in the Temple Mount,” in E. Baruch et al., eds., New Studies on Jerusalem, vol. 15 (Hebrew) (Ramat-Gan: The Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies Publication, 2009), p. 223.

6.

O. Peleg-Bareket, “The Royal Stoa of the Herodian Temple Mount: A Proposed Reconstruction,” in D. Amit, G. Stiebel and O. Peleg-Barkat, eds., New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Region, Collected Papers Vol. V (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2011), p. 48.