A Visit to the Temple Mount

A Visit to the Temple Mount

Recently, I visited the Temple Mount for the first time in my life. My guide is extremely knowledgeable, and my visit there was fascinating. We were there for well over two hours, and on the way out, my guide told me: I probably haven’t given you even a tenth of the information that’s available.

Here are several of the photos that I took up there.

Light and shadow in the new (and supposedly temporary) passage to the Mughrabi Gate:

Capitals from columns from various eras:

Light and shadow from the crenellations along the eastern wall of the Temple Mount:

My guide pointed out damage from a power saw on this column of pink marble:

There is currently a court order in effect that any debris removed from the Temple Mount must be accompanied by an archaeologist. But the Waqf, in its zeal to erase any evidence of Jewish presence from the Temple Mount, evades this order simply by not removing the debris, but leaving it there, or redistributing it in various places on the Mount.

Another waste pile with possible archaeological finds:

According to my guide, these olive trees are hundreds of years old. Some of them are perhaps as much as a thousand years old. They were being harvested when we were there. Imagine eating olives, or using olive oil, from a thousand-year-old olive tree.

Approaching the Dome of the Rock under a clear blue Jerusalem sky. (No, we didn’t go in. Non-Muslims haven’t been allowed inside the Dome of the Rock in a decade.)

The rear of a mihrab (a structure whose function is to point the way to Mecca, the direction of prayer for Muslims) with an uprooted tree

My guide told me that sarcophagi were often reused as water troughs. Here is one example just outside one of the gates leading to the Temple Mount:

See the rest of the set here.