Strata

Temple Mount Update

Excavating Dump Yields Lintel, Other Artifacts

Once again, politics and archaeology are entangled. The Jerusalem Post, in a story headlined “Rare Temple Mount lintel neglected by Antiquities Authority” (January 5, 2001), charges that a 3-foot-long carved stone fragment from the Second Temple period, found in January 2000 amid earth dug up from the Temple Mount and then dumped in the Kidron Valley by the Waqf—the Muslim religious authority that administers the Temple Mount—is languishing in the courtyard of the Rockefeller Museum, headquarters of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).