Is this Egyptian statue fragment the last artifact to be shared with you?

Has part of an Egyptian Statue been discovered on the Temple Mount?

Fragment of a finger of an Egyptian statue

A finger of a statue has been discovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project. The finger is currently being examined by the leading experts in the field who have determined that the statue probably originated in Egypt, though there is a need for further in-depth research in order to accurately date it. The Temple Mount Sifting Project, which is struggling to remain open in the face of depleted funds, has recently launched a crowdfunding campaign calling on the public to support the research and publication of the many finds discovered over the years, and secure the project’s future.

The statue fragment was discovered within the soil dumped in the Kidron Valley by the Muslim Waqf in 1999; soil which originated from an illegal excavation which took place on the Temple Mount.

Statue of Egyptian Pharoah, Thutmose III from the British Museum (GoogleImages)

“This is a fragment of a life-size statue, which was made in Egypt and imported to Canaan,” reports Dr. Gabriel Barkay, co-director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project. “We clearly notice that this is part of a pinky finger measuring 3.5 cm, from a man’s hand, which includes also a fingernail. The statue is made of a hard black stone originating in Egypt. The statue most likely represented a figure of a god or king. The black stone from which the statue is manufactured testifies to its Egyptian origin.”

The finger has been examined by archaeologists who specialize in early art from the Land of Israel. Though the identification and dating are not yet certain, according to Dr. Barkay the statue fragment was probably made in the Egyptian art style common during the Late Bronze Age (about 3500 years ago). We cannot exclude the possibility that the statue is from a later period.

The Temple Mount Sifting Project has yielded additional artifacts which were imported from Egypt or manufactured under Egyptian influence. Among them is an additional statue fragment of a man’s shoulder, scarabs (amulets shaped like dung beetles), seal impressions, and Egyptian-style jewelry all dating to the Late Bronze Age.

Egyptian scarabs found in the Temple Mount soil by the Sifting Project

Amulet of Thutmose III found in the Temple Mount soil by the Sifting Project

These artifacts join others from this period which were discovered in recent years in the City of David, as well as artifacts which may testify to the existence of an Egyptian Temple in Jerusalem in the area of the St. Etienne Monastery near Damascus Gate, and dated to the 13^th century BCE (prior to the date traditionally attributed to the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt).

Ancient Egypt ruled over the Land of Israel during the second half of the 2nd Millennium BCE, the days of the Egyptian New Kingdom and of the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th dynasties. Jerusalem is known to have been a semi-autonomous city-state, located in the Egyptian province of Canaan.

The finger fragment found by the project will be handed over to additional experts who can clarify its date.

Check out our cool video where Dr. Aaron Greener speaks about this Egyptian Finger!

The accurate dating of this artifact is just one example of the many research questions which the Temple Mount Sifting Project is attempting to solve while researching the many finds accumulated during the past 12 years of sifting. Unfortunately, many archaeological excavations fail to publish scientific reports and many important finds are left in the oblivion of the warehouses of University, museum, or government archaeological institutes. Without publication, it is as if these artifacts had never been found. The directors of the Temple Mount Sifting Project are working tirelessly to prevent a similar fate for the hundreds of thousands of artifacts discovered by the project. Publication is crucial due to the archaeological importance and national significance of these artifacts. They are also the cultural heritage of billions of people around the world who have a right to know about them.

The Temple Mount Sifting Project launched a crowdfunding campaign a few days ago in order to recruit wide public support to help the project continue the important work of researching these artifacts. Zachi Dvira, founder and co-director of the project, said that the public has demonstrated how much the historical heritage is dear to them. Half of the full sum needed for funding the annual research was raised within the first three days of the campaign. “We hope that the public – recognizing the great significance of the project – will continue to support us in the future.”

Important note: Last week media reports about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s intervention for resuming the sifting were not accurate. The sifting was not resumed, but a meeting will be scheduled for after the Passover holiday to resolve the crisis in order to resume the sifting. As we mentioned in our first announcement, the main problem we are facing is finding the funding for the research and publication of the many artifacts that we have recovered. The sifting cannot be resumed until this is solved.

Please consider giving to our crowdfunding campaign. We’ve already raised over 168,000 shekel of our goal, but we need your help to go all the way. In this campaign, we get all or nothing, so please help us make sure that this campaign succeeds and we can continue our important research, and share it with you, this year.

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Just a Slice of Humble Pie

Staff Spotlight: August

Hillel Richman has been with the Temple Mount Sifting Project for about 11 years, almost since the project’s beginning. He has raised himself from simple staffer to one of our pottery experts, and yet when you ask him about himself, his response is, “I’m just a simple dude.”

Hillel is a great example of a self-made man. Originally from Jerusalem, he started with the Sifting Project by looking for a part time job that he could stay with for a few weeks or a few months. Even he isn’t quite sure how that turned into 11 years, a career change, and the extensive reading of archaeological pottery typology tomes.

Hillel became more interested in archaeology through the Sifting Project because of his general fascination with the archaic, where we come from, and with what was. For him, it was about the excitement of unraveling the ancient way of life and our origins as people.

Hillel, Zachi, and Haggai discussing a First Temple period scale weight in the lab

 

Imported Mycenaean Greek Pottery from the 14th century BCE

As would any true archaeologist at heart, Hillel considers his favorite finds from the Temple Mount to be rare ancient pottery. “If it’s imported, or not imported but rare,” he likes it. For him, the Late Bronze pottery is particularly fascinating because it is a

Bronze Age Pottery

time period from which we have not found a lot of monumental structures or materials. Though there is a great deal of information about the Bronze Age at other sites in the region, it is a mysterious time period that is not well attested to in the central hill country of Israel, including Jerusalem.

Hillel is now one of the pottery researchers for the project. He can tell you the time period and type of vessel by looking at the smallest piece of rim sherd or base. He says that it is an intuition one gets after years of memorizing typologies and working with the materials. Now, he is researching Iron Age pottery (and the limited amount of earlier pottery that we find) for the Sifting Project. His goal is to put together the typologies and write the report for volume III of our upcoming publication in 2018. His research is uncovering what we have in terms of time and space on the Temple Mount. Who was there and when? How was the Temple Mount set up? Can we compare what we have to other sites? What understandings might we get from statistical analysis?

Hillel has discovered that we have a lot of Iron II (8^th century) pottery and some 7^th and 6^th century pottery. Mostly, we have bowls, tableware and storage vessels. We have some cooking pots, which attest to the number of people coming to the Temple for ritual meals, but there are more from the Second Temple Period. We have not found a lot of imported ware from the Iron IIB period, but this is not unique to the Temple Mount. It seems as though this was a time period with little importation in general across Israel.

Seal found by Hillel

One of Hillel’s favorite memories is having found a seal impression from the Second Temple Period with Hebrew characters. The Sifting Project staff (our volunteers always sift from the Temple Mount itself) are sometimes brought in to sift other excavations’ material. This particular seal was from the excavations at Robinson’s arch, run by Eli Shukron, by the corner of the Western and Southern walls right below the Temple Mount. The seal is one of the first and only indications of the administrative work carried out in the Second Temple, and for Hillel, this was really meaningful.

The seal seems to have been used by pilgrims as a kind of proof that they had undergone ritual purification before worship in the Temple.

Because he is so quiet, humble, unnecessarily self-conscious about his English, and refuses to really talk about himself, I asked one of his closest colleagues to share a memory of Hillel. Frankie Snyder has worked with Hillel throughout her time with the Sifting Project (9 years) and you can often find them discussing things and talking in the laboratory. She concurs that he likes to be in the background and hates the spotlight, but remembers when he was forced into the spotlight by his find of the seal mentioned above.

Each year, there is a Temple Awareness Day with several hours of live broadcasting online. Hillel was asked in 2012 to speak about this seal, but said he would only do it if Frankie would come with him. They were asked to explain several archaeological finds from the past year that all related to the Temple Mount. Frankie says that it was great to see Hillel speak in front of a live camera about the seal and how significant it was to him to be the person who found something that really tells us about the activities on the Temple Mount.