.Temple Mount relics saved from garbage

[Dover]

Temple Mount relics saved from garbage
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

On the grounds of a Jerusalem national park with a view of the Temple Mount, a small group of
Israeli archaeologists and volunteers sifting through piles of rubble discarded by Islamic Wakf officials from the Temple Mount into a city garbage dump have recently uncovered a series of history-rich artifacts dating back to the First and Second Temple periods.
The five-month old privately-funded project underway at the site, which is being directed by Bar Ilan University archeology professor Dr. Gabriel Barkay, is being called virtually unprecedented since archaeological excavation has never been permitted on the Temple Mount itself.

Six years ago, following the Islamic Wakf's unilateral construction of a mosque at an underground area of the Temple Mount known as Solomon's Stables, Wakf officials discarded more than 10,000 tons of rubble with history-rich artifacts, at a municipal garbage dump in the Kidron Valley and other locations outside the Old City.

The November 1999 destruction and removal of the antiquities in the wake of the mosque construction was later called "an unprecedented archaeological crime" by the head of Israel's Antiquities Authority, the state-run archaeological body nominally charged with supervision at Judaism's holiest site, as well as by Israel's leading archaeologists. According to decades-old regulations in place on the Temple Mount, Islamic Wakf official administer the compound, while Jerusalem police are in charge of overall security at the site.

Straddled by political concerns and in flagrant contravention of the law, Israeli archaeologists from the Antiquities Authority have not been carrying out supervision for five years now at the bitterly contested site due to their concern about renewed Palestinian violence at the compound.
After the Antiquities Authority voiced disinterest in thoroughly sifting through the rubble discarded by the Wakf, Barkay applied -- and eventually received –a license from the Antiquities Authority to sort through the piles of earth thrown into the garbage dump in search of antiquities...cont'd

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1113445110394

[Igel]

1. No, no, that can't be.

It's an article of faith that there's never been a Jewish Temple there.

Since there never has been, why waste time looking?

And since they don't look, there's never been any evidence found for a Jewish Temple there.

Since there's never been any evidence found, it conclusively proves that that particular article of faith is true.

And thus stands the citadel of late Dark Ages logic, impervious in it's rectitude.

[On the Road]

2. This is Too Bad

It shows that a unique site like this has to be excavated by knowledgable people who care about it. There's tons of stuff on the mount that needs to be examined.