Image Details

After: This empty pit is all that remained of the ashlar wall seen by Ze’ev Yeivin when he returned to the site one week after the unsupervised excavation. The wall in the background is the eastern wall of the Dome of the Rock platform. Before excavation, earth covered the dark portion of the wall. The rock in the foreground is one of two bedrock protrusions between which the 16-foot ashlar wall was inserted in order to form a continuous foundation wall supporting the eastern wall of the Second Temple enclosure. The other rock protrusion is barely visible in the shadow at the left end of the pit. Poor as it is, this picture is our only record of the position of this important wall segment.