- An inscription attributed to Jehoash, the king of Judea
who ruled in Jerusalem at the end of the ninth century B.C.E., has been
authenticated by experts from the National Infrastructure Ministry's Geological
Survey of Israel following months of examination. The 10-line fragment,
which was apparently found on the Temple Mount, is written in the first
person on a black stone tablet in ancient Phoenician script. The inscription's
description of Temple "house repairs" ordered by King Jehoash
strongly resembles passages in the Second Book of Kings, chapter 12.
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- Dr. Gabriel Barkai, a leading Israeli archaeologist from
Bar Ilan University's Land of Israel Studies Department, says that if the
inscription proves to be authentic, the finding is a "sensation"
of the greatest import. It could be, he says, the most significant archaeological
finding yet in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel. It would be a first-of-its
kind piece of physical evidence describing events in a manner that adheres
to the narrative in the Bible.
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- According to Dr. Barkai, such a finding, which appears
to furnish proof of the existence of the Temple, must be made available
for examination by scholars, and can not be kept a virtual secret.
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- Detailed research findings about the inscription are
to be disclosed in a collection of articles published by the Geology Survey
of Israel, a government research institute. Research studies have been
prepared by Dr. Shimon Ilani, Dr. Amnon Rosenfeld and Michael Dvorchik,
the institute's chief technician who carried out electronic microscope
tests of the inscription that, the three say, were largely responsible
for the finding's authentication.
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- Apart from noting that the discovery was made in Jerusalem,
the researchers do not disclose where the inscription was found. But sources
have indicated that the writing surfaced in the Temple Mount area as a
result of widescale excavation work done in recent years in the area by
Muslims, and that Palestinians relayed the fragment to a major collector
of antiquities in Jerusalem.
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- The Jerusalem collector is represented by attorney Isaac
Herzog, a former cabinet secretary and currently a Knesset candidate on
Labor's list.
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- The collector offered to sell the inscription to the
Israel Museum, but museum curators who examined the fragment cast doubt
on its authenticity, though they did not state categorically that the writing
was a forgery.
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- Ilani and Rosenfeld refused yesterday to discuss the
Israel Museum's response with Ha'aretz. But officials from the Geology
Survey said that results of the battery of examinations that were carried
out must be taken as conclusive: It's inconceivable that such extensive
testing would fail to reveal a forgery, they said. The inscription is authentic,
they insisted, and the finding is an archaeological sensation that could
have global repercussions and that effectively vindicates Jewish claims
to the Temple Mount.
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- The inscription lauds repairs carried out by King Jehoash
in ways reminiscent of the description in the Second Book of Kings. It
includes the king's request that priests collect public money to be used
for the repair of the First Temple; and there are references to the purchase
of timber and quarried stones for the carrying out of repairs on the Temple.
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- The inscription contains fragments from 2 Kings 12:15:
"And they did not ask an accounting from the men into whose hands
they delivered the money to pay out to the workmen; for they dealt honestly."
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- The researchers believe that the sandstone used for the
inscription was brought from southern Jordan, or the Dead Sea region. Materials
that covered the inscription over the years date from 200-400 B.C.E., they
suggest.
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- Ilani and Rosenfeld speculate that during this period,
the inscription began to be covered up as a buried object. Should this
hypothesis be correct, it would mean that the inscription was exposed to
the elements for hundreds of years, before being buried some 500-600 years
after it was written.
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- In his conversation with Ha'aretz, Dr. Barkai noted that
"the problem here is that circumstances of the finding are not clear...
We should wait for the official scientific publication, at which time we
will be able to probe this finding carefully. Right now, of course, we
can't rule out any possibility. It's too bad that a matter of this sort
was kept under wraps, apparently due to business concerns."
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- http://www.haaretzdaily.com
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