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COLLECTION OF THE IAA/PHOTO © THE ISRAEL MUSEUM, JERUSALEM

UNCLEAN: KEEP OUT. Part of a balustrade that surrounded the inner courts of Herod’s Jerusalem Temple, this fragmentary limestone slab once warned: “No foreigner may enter within the railing and enclosure that surround the Temple. Anyone apprehended shall have himself to blame for his resulting death!” The reason, as Josephus explains, was the ritual impurity of gentiles: “Upon this partition of the Temple stood stelae […] declaring the law of purity […] that ‘no foreigner should go within that sanctuary’?” (Josephus, Jewish War, 5.194-195).