Inside BAR

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“Building C,” her grandfather called it. The modest designation reflected uncertainty about the structure’s function, although Professor Benjamin Mazar, director of the decade-long Jerusalem Temple Mount Excavations, thought that it might be the Beth Millo, the place where King Joash was assassinated (2 Kings 12:21). When archaeologist Eilat Mazar began processing Iron Age finds from her distinguished grandfather’s excavations, Building C intrigued her. It was the only First Temple-period structure (c. ninth century B.C.) to come to light in the nine-acre dig on Jerusalem’s Ophel ridge.

The younger Mazar launched her own investigation and, to everyone’s surprise, discovered that Building C may be a gatehouse leading through the First Temple fortification wall around Jerusalem. In “Royal Gateway to Ancient Jerusalem Uncovered,” Mazar chronicles and illustrates her new discoveries and integrates them with those made earlier by Benjamin Mazar, by the British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon in the 1960s and by the 19th-century British explorer of Jerusalem, Sir Charles Warren.

Currently co-director with Benjamin Mazar of the Temple Mount Excavations, Eilat Mazar also directs the Southern Akhziv Excavation in northern Israel. From 1981 to 1985 she excavated with the late Yigal Shiloh at the City of David, just south of her present Jerusalem site.

Eilat Mazar’s excavation on the Ophel ridge, along with many other noteworthy discoveries, appear in miniature on a new model that displays the archaeological discoveries found in Jerusalem of the First Temple period. Assembled by a team headed by Rivka Gonen, the model recreates the topography of the ancient city in the time of the Israelite kings and features scaled versions of significant archaeological finds from that time, as described in “Visualizing First Temple Jerusalem.”

Born in Vienna, Austria, Gonen emigrated to Israel in 1937. Now curator of the department of Jewish ethnography of the Israel Museum, she is also a lecturer in Bible and Near Eastern studies at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Also a field archaeologist, Gonen directed the excavation of a Middle Bronze cemetery in the Hebron mountains and was a member of the City of David excavation team.

“Does the Bible Exaggerate King Solomon’s Golden Wealth?” asks Alan R. Millard. Not only were “all King Solomon’s goblets [of] gold” (1 Kings 10:21) but he had 500 gold shields (1 Kings 10:16–17) and, most astonishing of all, “he overlaid the whole interior [of the Temple] with gold” (1 Kings 6:20–22).

Many of us moderns read these claims somewhat critically, Millard observes, but he then goes on to document numerous examples of golden tableware, furniture, and even architecture in antiquity. The evidence from texts, tombs and excavations—illustrated in an array of photos—is dazzling.

Kenneth A. Kitchen offers an explanation for the natural question in a sidebar, “Where Did Solomon’s Gold Go?” When the Egyptian pharaoh Shishak invaded Israel and Judah about 925 B.C., he “carried off the treasures of the Temple of the Lord” (1 Kings 14:25–26). Judging from an Egyptian text, we even get a good idea of how rich this looted wealth was. In another sidebar, “Shishak’s Military Campaign in Israel Confirmed,” Kitchen shows that several texts from Israel and Egypt provide evidence for the Biblical account of Shiskak’s invasion.

Alan Millard is Rankin Reader in Hebrew and ancient Semitic languages at the University of Liverpool, England. He has excavated in Syria (Arpad and Qadesh), Jordan (Petra) and Iraq (Nimrud), and in 1984 was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Millard’s Treasures from Bible Times has been published in eight languages. He is also the author of “The Question of Israelite Literacy,” published in BAR’s sister magazine, Bible Review, Fall 1987.

Professor Kitchen, also of the University of Liverpool, is the author of the eight-volume Ramesside Inscriptions project. His other publications include Pharaoh Triumphant, a biography of Ramesses II, and Bible in Its World.

No one disputes that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the most important ancient manuscripts of this century. Yet of the approximately 800 documents recovered from the famous caves on the northwestern side of the Dead Sea, more than half remain unpublished after 35 years. BAR has for years pressed these scholars to complete their assigned tasks and has offered suggestions for allowing their materials to be shared with other scholars before publication.

Now the stalemate may be breaking. A source in Israel credits BAR as “really responsible for all the movement toward publication.” In “At Least Publish the Dead Sea Scrolls Timetable!” BAR editor Hershel Shanks reports on the breakthroughs. A new chief editor of the scrolls has been appointed, and Israel’s Department of Antiquities has a new director; the two are negotiating a publication timetable. And numerous scroll fragments have been reassigned or subassigned to scholars who will publish rapidly. The single holdout is J. T. Milik of Paris, who refuses to share his scroll fragments. The long list of Milik’s holdings appears in the sidebar, “After 30 Years, Milik Sits on More Than 50 Dead Sea Scroll Fragments.”

“Building C,” her grandfather called it. The modest designation reflected uncertainty about the structure’s function, although Professor Benjamin Mazar, director of the decade-long Jerusalem Temple Mount Excavations, thought that it might be the Beth Millo, the place where King Joash was assassinated (2 Kings 12:21). When archaeologist Eilat Mazar began processing Iron Age finds from her distinguished grandfather’s excavations, Building C intrigued her. It was the only First Temple-period structure (c. ninth century B.C.) to come to light in the nine-acre dig on Jerusalem’s Ophel ridge. The younger Mazar launched her own investigation and, to everyone’s surprise, discovered that […]