Paul Calvert spoke at length with prominent Israeli archaeologist Dr Gabriel Barkay

Paul: Were you able to go to that soil and check it out and see what history was there?

Dr Barkay: Since 2004 I got the license together with my colleague for sifting through that material and we have been busy since then doing the sifting. We have tens of thousands of finds from the Temple Mount. Significant among them are finds from pre-historic periods, which were not known to exist at all in Jerusalem; the Epipaleolithic Period, the Neolithic Age; we have finds from Canaanite pre-Israelite Jerusalem; we have finds from the time of the first temple. Altogether between 15-20% of the entire material found dates back to that time of the first temple period. We have remains of the Persian period, the Hellenistic period of the late Roman period; early Christian and early Arabic up to our own times. We also have a large amount of coins, about 4500 coins. The ancient coins are very significant. They have a very important collection of Crusader coins. You should know that the Temple Mount was the headquarter of the Knight Templers. They are named Templers after the Temple Mount. The coinage which was minted by the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century is very richly represented. We also have a very significant ancient early coin dating back to the 4th Century BC from the Yehud type; these are very rare coins, having the name of the province of Judah under the Persians.

A bulge in the Temple Mount wall

We have a large amount of coins from the Hasmonean and Herodian dynasties; including a significant number of coins minted by Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator with whom Roman crucifixion took place. We have a large number of Islamic coins of different stages of the Islamic rule in Jerusalem. Very interestingly we also have modern coins in addition to the ancient ones and among them is a significant one, which is a large gold coin of Napoleon the 3rd from the mid 19th century.

Paul: And all this was dumped over the edge of a cliff? This must make you feel really angry as an archaeologist.

Dr Barkay: One has to benefit from everything happening. If one can benefit from the very serious destruction and the very unfortunate events which took place on the Temple Mount since the 90's, one of the benefits is the ability for us to sift through this material. I would be much happier if I could find these objects in context; in the proper depth in which they were, in connection with walls and structures and not just dumped outside. It loses about 90% of the importance, the historical significance as a result of the fact that it was removed out of context.

The Temple Mount suffered as a result of these atrocities carried out since the 90's. For example the run of rain water in the Temple Mount was absorbed by the soil for centuries and as much of the area was paved, declaring it as open air mosques to avoid anyone else having any ideas about anything else being on the Temple Mount; as a result of these flooring slabs, the rain water was not anymore absorbed by the soil and the rain water searched for a way to go and was absorbed by the walls surrounding the Temple Mount. As a result the southern wall of the Temple Mount in the year 2000 there appeared a bulge. The bulge in the beginning was denied by all. It is like pregnancy, you can deny it at the beginning, but then it further develops and everybody sees the bulge bulged out for approximately one metre. It was about 100 metres long and it aimed to cause a collapse of the entire southern part of the Temple Mount. The denial of both Waqf and Israeli authorities couldn't go on any more. A secret agreement was reached between the former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the King of Jordan Abdullah the second. The Jordanian team came over and dismantled part of the wall, putting in steel and concrete and replaced the stones, so things could still be done. One could also do archaeology if one would simply sit down and talk about matters.

The Waqf authorities have a full time archaeologist, Dr. Yusuf Natsheh. I believe he is a good man. The problem is that in the society which he lives, he cannot say 'there was a temple on the Temple Mount and it would be interesting to find the remains. At the moment the Temple Mount has Moslem edifices but there were other people in this country before Islam came over, which is the history'. He cannot say that. He is going to be shortened by one head if he says so. This archaeologist was allegedly sent on his holidays to Jordan when the bulldozers dug that atrocious pit in the south eastern part.

I have in my possession a booklet published by the supreme Muslim Council, which is the Waqf in 1935; a brief guide to the Al-Haram al-Sharif of the Noble Sanctuary. The name Al-Haram al-Sharif of the Noble Sanctuary was the name for the Temple Mount until the 90's but does not exist anymore. All of the Temple Mount is al-Aqsa. Why? Because of political reasons. In any case this booklet published by the Waqf, I read the following in the introductory chapter, it says the following:

'The Temple Mount sanctity from earliest, prehaps from pre-historic times is well known. Its identity with the site of Solomon's temple is beyond dispute.'

This was published by the Waqf in 1935 and then in 1935, the man who headed the Islamic authorities was nobody else but Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who collaborated with Hitler and the Nazi's. He headed the Islamic religious authorities in Jerusalem. This was published under him, so this is very strange to find the temple denial today. The temple denial appears since the 90's, also among Europeans and western groups to my amazement. They come up with the idea that there is no Jewish claim to the Temple Mount. There was no temple etc. This is very dangerous; I think it is the bending of history for political reasons.

Paul: Do you think it's Anti-Semitism?

Dr Barkay: I think it is more serious than that. For the Holocaust denial you have eye witnesses; you have survivors and you have the perpetrators; you also have films and you have the concentration camps with document archives kept by the Nazi's. Everything is there. For the temple, you don't have an eye witness that could say 'I saw the temple'. You have an enormous amount of literature; you have the Mishnah, Talmud, New Testament; you have the writings of Josephus and a bunch of Greek and Roman historians who tell us about the temple and all that in addition to the Bible, which tells us about the first temple. The temple denial is something viscous. It is bad bad bad; this is something which is an attempt to use ancient history for current political uses and it is totally none legitimate.

Paul: Do you think the Ark of the Covenant could be under the Temple Mount or do you think it would have disintegrated by now?

Dr Barkay: First of all I don't care. Second I think it to be unimportant. The Ark of the Covenant somehow inflames the imagination of people in the West, especially Americans. The Ark of the Covenant became an issue maybe since the movies of Indiana Jones and who knows, maybe it is still kept in Fort Knox. In any case the Ark of the Covenant stood only in the first temple and the second temple didn't have it. The Ark of the Covenant was made of wood and it was plated with gold. Gold always has a tendency of being looted in antiquity and wood does not preserve, so the Ark of the Covenant is not there. I think mankind does quite well and religions have developed since the loss of the Ark of the Covenant 2,500 years ago. I think that Judaism as well as Christianity as well as any other religion can go on developing without the presence of the Temple Mount and without the presence of the Ark of the Covenant and actually I don't need the Ark of the Covenant; its significance was for its time.