Biblical Archaeology Review

Elkan N. Adler, Jewish Travellers in the Middle Ages: 19 Firsthand Accounts (New York: Dover, 1987), p. 118.

There is controversy as to what this term originally meant. I believe that it referred to an ancient stone relic that was used as a low pedestal and that only in late antiquity was it taken to refer to al-Sakhra. Thus, Mishnah Yoma 5.2: “After the Ark was taken away, a stone remained there from the time of the early Prophets, and it was called ‘Shetiyah.’ It was three finger-breadths above the ground. On this he used to put (the fire-pan).”

Warren and Conder, Survey, p. 165.

Warren, in The Recovery of Jerusalem: A Narrative of Exploration and Discovery in the City and the Holy Land (London, 1871), p. 231; see also Spencer Corbett, “Some Observations on the Gateways to the Herodian Temple in Jerusalem,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 84 (1952), pp. 8–9.

Mishnah, Middot 1.3.

Nahman Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem: Recent Archaeological Excavations in the Upper City (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), pp. 104, 144.

Asher Ovadiah, “Mosaic Pavements of the Herodian Period in Israel,” in Proceedings of the Fifth International Colloquium in Ancient Mosaics, Bath, 5–12 September 1987, ed. R. Ling and D.J. Smith, part 1, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement Series 9 (1994), pp. 67–76 (mosaics); Michael Avi-Yonah, “Oriental Art in Roman Palestine,” Studii Semitici 5 (1961), pp. 15–21 (stonework).

Netzer, “Greater Herodium,” Qedem 13 (1981). For a geometrical analysis of the circular enclosure at Hebron, see Jacobson, “The Design of the Fortress of Herodium,” Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins 100 (1986), pp. 127–136.

My analysis of the plan of the Northern Palace at Masada, which shows the geometrical basis of the entire palace, will be published in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society.

Netzer, Masada III: The Yigal Yadin Excavations, 1963–1965, Final Reports, The Buildings, Stratigraphy and Architecture (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1991); Gideon Foerster, Masada V: The Yigal Yadin Excavations 1963–1965, Final Reports, Art and Architecture (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1995).