Revisionists

Temple Mount Antiquities Destroyed In 'Cultural Intifadah' [Excerpts]
 
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Israeli archeologists are quietly sifting through tons of dirt that Islamic religious authorities excavated from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem several years ago -- an excavation that critics have dubbed a "cultural intifadah."
 
Using heavy machinery instead of the hand tools of an archeologist, the Islamic religious authorities several years ago dug out a giant "emergency exit" -- some 36 feet deep and 130 feet wide -- for a mosque built earlier under the Temple Mount. The unsupervised removal of tons of soil has been called an "archeological crime." The material was dumped in several spots outside the Old City in eastern Jerusalem, including the Kidron Valley.
 
In a small national park on the eastern side of Jerusalem, with a view of the golden Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount visible in the distance, Dr. Gabriel Barkay of Bar-Ilan University has been quietly working with several archeology students and a host of volunteers for six months to sift through the material dug out of the Temple Mount.
 
They wanted to keep a low profile, he said, so as not to attract the attention of people who might want to put a stop to the project. So far they have found thousands of artifacts jumbled together from various eras.
 
Barkay said it was a tragedy that the Western world was not more concerned about the destruction of the antiquities on the Temple Mount.
 
The world community was outraged when the Taliban blew up two 165-foot nearly 2,000-year-old statues of Buddha in Afghanistan in 2001. But the destruction of "the heartland of [Jewish and Christian] faith did not create an effect as it should have done," said Barkay.
 
"Very clearly parallel to the armed [Palestinian] intifadah is also the cultural intifadah, more serious than the armed intifadah, Palestinians claiming Jews never had a right to this country, Jews were never here," Barkay added.
 
"The material is without context, stratification. It was brutally uprooted from its roots. It lost 80 percent of its archeological value." Barkay said. Nevertheless, they will save 20 percent of its value, which is "more than zero, still significant," he added.
 
A shipping container at the site, which acts as an office, contains many flat cardboard boxes on a worktable, full of categorized treasures that have been found.
 
By the door stands that largest piece -- a three-foot-high section of a marble pillar with purple veins running through it. The marble would have been imported from Asia Minor, Barkay said. They know it came from the Temple Mount because there are others like it there, Barkay said.
 
They have found pottery shards -- 15 percent of which date back to the First Jewish Temple period -- the days of Biblical King Solomon. But workers will never be able to put together a complete vessel because of the way things were mixed up, he said.
Barkay said the workers won't be able to finish sifting all of the material they have but will get a good sampling. The project, which is funded by private donors, is scheduled to continue until summer, he said. All of the artifacts as well as the remaining material from the Temple Mount belong to the Antiquities Authority by law (Julie Stahl, CNSNews.com, Jerusalem Bureau Chief, May 06, 2005).