Written in stone: the tablet has been carbon-dated at 2,300 years old but doubts remain about its true origins
Posted on 01/17/2003 4:03:58 PM PST by MadIvan
THE scene is straight from The Maltese Falcon. A secret hotel rendezvous, and a Jewish messenger and his silent Arab accomplice waiting while the learned Israeli academic peers at a black stone tablet.
Written in stone: the tablet has been carbon-dated at 2,300 years old but doubts remain about its true origins |
The fragment, 31cm x 24cm x 7cm of Arkosic sandstone, is the subject of intense debate among archaeologists in Israel, where politics, faith, science and money mix in an incendiary cocktail.
Of the stone’s ownership and place of origin, nothing is certain, save that agents representing its proprietor claim that it is a 15-line inscription in ancient Hebrew describing temple repairs ordered by the Biblical King Jehoash, who ruled Judea in the 9th century BC. It was found on Jerusalem’s disputed Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif complex, they say.
The text closely resembles descriptions in the Old Testament, II Kings, xii, 1-6 and 11-17, by recounting how the ruler tells priests to take “holy money . . . to buy quarry stones and timber and copper and labour to carry out the duty with faith”.
Dr Gabriel Barkay, a leading Israeli archaeological expert, said: “If this is genuine, it is the first time the Davidic dynasty in its very early stages is documented in an extra-Biblical source, and a reference to Solomon’s Temple. My impression is it’s authentic, but there is a Yiddish saying that translates: ‘It is too good to be true.’ ”
Dr Shimon Ilani, of the Geological Survey of Israel, said that carbon-dating had established that the stone’s crust was 2,300 years old.
Yet Professor Joseph Naveh, an academic asked to analyse the fragment in 2001, has declared it to be fake. He confirms that most of letter shapes are of 9th-century BC Hebrew, but says that others are typical of 7th-century Aramaic and Phoenician.
Regards, Ivan
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Mmmmmm... lobster.
I will of course have to study it further.
By Nadav Shragai
The inscription attributed to King Jehoash whose discovery was announced earlier this week was reportedly found near Jerusalem's Muslim cemetery, outside the eastern wall of the Temple Mount, not far from Golden Gate, according to information obtained by Ha'aretz.
Jehoash ruled in Jerusalem at the end of the ninth century B.C.E. The inscription has been authenticated by the National Infrastructure Ministry's Geological Survey of Israel.
Three different people and institutions involved in examining the stone told Ha'aretz that representatives of the collector who owns the stone told them it was found near the Muslim cemetery. One added that he was told it had been found following a landslide or flood.
Prof. Yosef Naveh of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a well-known expert on the development of the alphabet, said agents of the collector brought it to him for inspection in 2001. He said he was asked to meet the agents in a Jerusalem hotel room, where he found two people: a man who introduced himself as Tzur and "an Arab youth who never opened his mouth the entire time, so I don't know his name. [Tzur] told me where the stone was found [near the Muslim cemetery] and even speculated that the stone had actually come from the inner sections of the Temple Mount, but that its finders - Palestinian Muslims - were afraid to say so, due to the religious-political sensibilities of the compound."
Tzur, Naveh continued, "made me promise not to mention [the stone] or talk about it with anyone, because the life of the Palestinian who found and sold it would be endangered," and he indeed refrained from mentioning the inscription until it was made public by the Geological Survey and reported in Ha'aretz, which he considered sufficient to release him from his promise. He said he soon plans to publish his conclusions about the inscription - which he believes is a forgery.
Another person who examined the inscription said he was also told it had been found near the Muslim cemetery, not far from Golden Gate. He said the "courier" who brought it to him seemed very nervous and was constantly checking to make sure that no representatives of the Antiquities Authority were present. "He was very afraid the artifact would be taken from him, and throughout the tests we conducted, he wandered around ceaselessly, in great tension."
Both Naveh and the other two people who inspected the inscription said the collector's representatives refused to leave the stone during the examinations, which lasted for a few hours each time, and also refused to leave it there for lengthier tests.
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Am I missing something here? How does a 2,300 year old inscription document events that took place 2,900 years ago? This sounds no more contemporary than a book written today about Joan of Arc. I'm sure that Jews in Hellenistic Judea knew about Solomon's temple, probably from Scripture, but this doesn't appear to be extra-biblical confirmation of the Temple's existence, unless I'm misunderstanding the article.
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