Latest news with #FirstTemple
Newsweek
4 days ago
- General
- Newsweek
Archaeologists Discover Ancient Seal That May Back Bible Story
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. An archaeologist working with the Temple Mount Sifting Project has uncovered a well-preserved clay seal stamped with Paleo-Hebrew letters that read, according to project researchers, "Belonging to Yed[a']yah (son of) Asayahu." The name Asayahu appears in biblical accounts associated with the reign of King Josiah of Judah. Among Josiah's trusted envoys was a senior official named Asayahu, described as "the king's servant." Researchers said the seal's findspot and style of writing date it to the late First Temple period (late 7th–early 6th century BCE), raising the possibility that it belonged to a high-ranking official connected to Temple administration at a historically significant moment. Given his prominent role, it may be reasonable to assume that Asayahu's son, Yeda'yah, may have also served in a prominent position, either at the same time or shortly thereafter. Why It Matters The seal provides a rare material connection to a name that appears in biblical texts describing reforms under King Josiah and related Temple activity, offering archaeologists a datable artifact that could illuminate administrative practice in Jerusalem before the Babylonian destruction. What To Know Archaeologist Mordechai Ehrlich found the clay seal while examining material recovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project, and project researchers rapidly analyzed and publicly announced the artifact shortly before the Jewish fast of Tisha B'Av. Researchers Dr. Anat Mendel-Geberovich and Zachi Dvira read the inscription as "Belonging to Yed[a']yah (son of) Asayahu," and dated the script style to the late First Temple period, approximately the late-7th to early-6th century BCE. A seal thought to bear the Hebrew name Yed[a‛]yah (son of) Asayahu is seen in the image on the left, while archaeologist Mordechai Ehrlich is seen holding the seal in the image on the right. A seal thought to bear the Hebrew name Yed[a‛]yah (son of) Asayahu is seen in the image on the left, while archaeologist Mordechai Ehrlich is seen holding the seal in the image on the right. Temple Mount Setting Project The reverse of the clay bulla, an inscribed token used as a form of authentication, bore cord marks consistent with its use sealing a bag or container, and the object still displayed a partial fingerprint that specialists interpreted as the impression of its ancient handler. The Temple Mount Sifting Project said that this was only the second nearly complete inscribed seal recovered by the project in more than two decades, and researchers compared it to earlier finds from Temple Mount contexts such as a bulla bearing the name "[He]zelyahu son of Immer," interpreted by some scholars as a Temple treasury official. What People Are Saying Zachi Dvira, archaeologist and co-director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, told The Times of Israel: "Obviously, we are not sure that the Asayahu mentioned on the sealing is the same that appears in the Bible. However, several such artifacts found in the area of the Temple Mount carry biblical names, and it does make sense, because these were not objects used by common people." What Happens Next Project leaders said they planned to submit a detailed report on the seal to a peer-reviewed journal in the coming weeks and to continue analysis using imaging techniques such as Reflectance Transformation Imaging to document the inscription and fingerprint. If peer review confirms the dating and reading, scholars anticipate the find will inform understanding of Temple and royal household record-keeping; however, researchers cautioned that a direct identification of the seal's owner with the biblical Asayahu could not be established on the basis of the artifact alone.
Metro
07-08-2025
- General
- Metro
Archeologists' 2,600-year-old find likely belonged to biblical figure
Hiyah Zaidi Published August 6, 2025 10:42am Updated August 6, 2025 10:42am Link is copied Comments A 2,600-year-old clay seal has been uncovered in Jerusalem - and it could have belonged to biblical figure. Clay seals were used as a form of identification, way before the likes of driving licenses and biometric measures. By having a personalised seal, people were able to show ownership of items such as wine and oil, and they also acted as an theft deterrent. Clay seals are a great way of dating historic finds and this one, marked with a Hebrew name, has sparked intrigue (Picture: Temple Mount Sifting Project) An ongoing excavation by the Temple Mount Sifting Project (TMSP) in Jerusalem revealed the clay seal. Markings on its back showed that it was used as a closure on a bag or storage vessel. And experts say that the style of writing on the clay dates the seal back to the First Temple period – spanning from late-7th century BC to the early-6th century BC. But the most exciting thing to come from the seal was a little fingerprint, likely from the owner (Picture: Temple Mount Sifting Project) Researchers on the study, Anat Mendel-Geberovich and Zachi Dvira, have fully deciphered the name stamped on the artefact. It reads: 'Belonging to Yed[a‛]yah (son of) Asayahu'. The name, Asayahu, appears in the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Tanakh, during the story of King Josiah of Judah. In the tale, King Josiah ordered repairs be made to the temple 2,600 years ago – and during the repairs, his workers found an ancient scroll which warned of a punishment from God (Picture: Getty) Concerned, the King sent trusted consuls to search for counsel from Huldah, a prophetess. One of these trusted consuls was Asayahu – who was also known as 'the king's servant'. Since Asayahu had a high position, it's thought his son would have too, serving a prominent role around the same time. The fate of Yeda‛yah is unknown. But did the seal actually belong to Yeda‛yah? The TMSP researchers say that it is highly likely (Picture: Temple Mount Sifting Project) Speaking to The Times of Israel, Dvira said: 'Obviously, we are not sure that the Asayahu mentioned on the sealing is the same that appears in the Bible. However, several such artifacts found in the area of the Temple Mount carry biblical names, and it does make sense, because these were not objects used by common people. Because of their small size, clay sealings are difficult to identify. In the past, most of the [seals] came from the antiquity market, but as we developed new techniques to sift through massive amounts of dirt, more excavations have started to either employ our sifting services or carry out their own sifting. Now, there are maybe 10 or 20 times more known [seals] found during controlled archaeological work than in the past' (Picture: Getty) The researchers say that historically seals like these were reserved for officials of high rank. The authors added: 'Many individuals named in similar discoveries from Jerusalem have been directly identified with biblical-era officials. The artifact's discovery on the Temple Mount further supports the likelihood of this connection. Thus, the clay sealing's owner was probably involved in Temple administration or in the royal household, much like his father' (Picture: Getty) A few decades after the event of the finding of the Torah scroll, Jerusalem's walls were breached by Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. Then, just weeks later, the Temple was destroyed, countless Jerusalemites were killed, and many survivors, including senior officials, were exiled to Babylon (Picture: Getty)
Yahoo
04-08-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Archaeologists Found a 2,600-Year-Old Fingerprint of a Biblical Figure
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: Archeologists discovered a clay seal stamped with the name of a biblical figure. The style of the writing on the seal dates the artifact back to the First Temple period 2,600 years ago. Experts believe the seal belonged to the son of Asayahu, one of King Josiah of Judah's senior officials. Before drivers licenses and social media handles, seals were a primary method of identification. They helped prevent theft, marked property, and showed ownership when they were bound to goods like wine and oil. For modern historians, seals are the perfect stamp (literally) of chronology in ancient studies. And our understanding of the ancient world just got a little more complex, as archaeologists unearthed a clay seal that's 2,600 years old and marked with a Hebrew name. Perhaps even more incredibly, researchers believe the clay seal may have belonged to an important biblical official. Ongoing excavations led by the Temple Mount Sifting Project (TMSP) in Jerusalem, Israel, revealed the clay seal. Archaeologist Mordechai Ehrlich was the one who initially discovered the rare artifact. According to a press release from TMSP, examination of the seal was fast-tracked. Markings on the back of the seal indicate that it was used as a closure on a bag or storage vessel. According to experts, the style of writing on the clay dates the seal back to the First Temple period, which spanned from late-7th century B.C. to the early-6th century B.C. Close examination also revealed a preserved fingerprint, likely from the owner of the seal. Researchers on the study—Anat Mendel-Geberovich and Zachi Dvira—have fully deciphered the name stamped on the artifact; it reads: 'Belonging to Yed[a‛]yah (son of) Asayahu.' The name 'Asayahu' appears in the Hebrew Bible (or the Tanakh) during the story of King Josiah of Judah. According to the tale, King Josiah ordered repairs be made to the temple 2,600 years ago. During the repairs, his workers discovered an ancient scroll that warned of punishment from God. Worried by the prophecy, King Josiah sent out members of his court to seek counsel from Huldah, a prophetess. One of these trusted consuls was a senior official named Asayahu, who is often referred to as 'the king's servant.' Researchers believe that, because of Asayahu's important position, his son, Yeda‛yah, may have also served in a prominent role around the same time. Biblical context in mind, a pressing question still remains: did the seal actually belong to Yeda‛yah, son of Asayahu? According to TMSP researchers, it's highly likely. 'Obviously, we are not sure that the Asayahu mentioned on the sealing is the same that appears in the Bible,' Dvira told The Times of Israel (TOI) in an interview. 'However, several such artifacts found in the area of the Temple Mount carry biblical names, and it does make sense, because these were not objects used by common people.' Researchers said the fate of the seal's owner remains unknown. Luckily, technological developments in recent years have made artifacts like the clay seal easier to identify, so finds like the one at Temple Mount should hopefully become more common. 'Because of their small size, clay sealings are difficult to identify,' Dvira told TOI. 'In the past, most of the [seals] came from the antiquity market, but as we developed new techniques to sift through massive amounts of dirt, more excavations have started to either employ our sifting services or carry out their own sifting. Now, there are maybe 10 or 20 times more known [seals] found during controlled archaeological work than in the past.' In this particular study, experts used Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) photography, which creates an image by photographing the same area of an artifact under different light sources. As for the future of Yeda‛yah's seal, a paper detailing the findings will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal in the coming weeks, according to the press release. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life? Solve the daily Crossword
The Guardian
31-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘A cipher for crazy self-projection': why are architects so obsessed with Solomon's Temple?
No legendary building has ever inspired more conjecture about what it might have looked like than Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. It is said to have been built in c.950BC, on the mound where God created Adam, and was destroyed 400 years later by marauding Babylonians. But, beyond some inconsistent descriptions in the Bible written centuries after the temple was razed, there is no archaeological evidence that this palatial edifice ever existed. And yet, for more than two millennia, generations of architects, archaeologists and ideologues have bickered over the building's appearance. They have debated its exact height and width, speculated on the design of its columns, and battled over the precise nature of its porch. The mythic building, also known as the First Temple, has inspired everything from a Renaissance royal palace in Spain to a recent megachurch in Brazil, to the interiors of masonic lodges around the world – all built on a fantasy. 'It really draws out the batshit crazy,' says Argentinian artist Pablo Bronstein, standing in front of his monumental new drawings of what Solomon's Temple, and its contents, might have looked like. 'It has been used as a cipher for pretty much every crazy projection of power and self-delusion for 2,500 years. I find it totally fascinating – particularly as the whole thing is entirely fabricated.' Bronstein's work has long played with the provocative power of architectural image-making. He has poked fun at Britain's pseudo-Georgian housing and given us orgiastic depictions of hell, which he imagined as a showcase city strewn with garish monuments worthy of the most tasteless dictator. But the subject matter, location and (incidental) timing of his latest mischievous outing couldn't be more charged. Bronstein's speculative drawings of the holiest site in Judaism are now on display in Waddesdon Manor, an inflated French chateau built in Buckinghamshire in the 1890s as the weekend party pad of the Rothschilds – an immensely wealthy Jewish banking family who were instrumental in the creation of Israel. Baron Edmond de Rothschild – the French cousin of Baron Ferdinand, who built Waddesdon – financed a number of early settlements in Palestine and founded the Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association in 1924, run by his son James, who inherited the manor. When the Balfour Declaration was written in 1917, declaring the British government's support for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, it was addressed to Ferdinand's nephew, Walter Rothschild, an eccentric zoologist who liked to pose astride giant tortoises, ride a carriage drawn by zebras andwho was also a prominent Zionist leader. A permanent exhibition at Waddesdon, in a room preceding Bronstein's show, celebrates the Rothschilds' connection with Israel. It recounts the family's funding of the construction of the Knesset building, seat of the Israeli parliament, the Supreme Court building and, most recently, the National Library, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron in the shape of a swooping stone ski jump. Architectural models of these trophy buildings gleam in Perspex vitrines, like the priceless antique treasures displayed elsewhere around the house. To this lavish display of patronage in the Holy Land, Bronstein's florid drawings add an imaginary additional commission. In a brazen act of architectural cosplay, the artist has inserted himself into the minds of two contestants for a fictitious version of the Prix de Rome, a prominent prize for students of architecture in 19th-century Paris, as they compete to recreate Solomon's Temple in their own image. 'I became fascinated by the construction of Jewish identity in the 19th century,' says Bronstein, who was born in Argentina, grew up in London, and describes himself as a 'diehard atheist Jew'. Several years in the making, his new work was commissioned alongside a wider research project about Jewish country houses, and it seems to have triggered a deep curiosity and scepticism in the artist about his own cultural heritage. 'As nationalisms develop in the 19th century, particularly in Germany, Judaism begins to develop its idea of a body of people that are somehow genetically connected to the ancient Middle East,' he says. 'They start to see Jerusalem not as an abstract idea, the way that Muslims look at Mecca, but as a reconstructible place of belonging, tied to a kind of orientalist architectural fantasy.' Bronstein's mesmerising drawings depict what, if taken to extremes, this fantasy might have looked like. Painstakingly drawn in pen and ink, and beautifully coloured with layers of acrylic wash (with the help of two recent architecture graduate assistants), the images are magnificently grandiose projections of that exoticised 19th-century longing. They depict two rival designs, in precisely detailed elevations, cross-sections and facade studies, for reconstructing the temple. Both are wild mashups of architectural motifs, sampling from the richly embellished catalogue of Asian antiquity, medieval and gothic revival, baroque and art deco with promiscuous relish. On one wall is a version of the temple that Bronstein describes as 'vaudeville beaux arts', its interior glowing with the gilded razzle-dazzle of a New Orleans casino. Marvel at the spiralling Solomonic columns at the entrance, sampled from Bernini's baldacchino at St Peter's in Rome, and the illusionistic domes that hover above the Ark, influenced by Alessandro Antonelli's Mole Antonelliana in Turin, which was originally conceived as a synagogue. 'It's the temple as a sort of gin palace,' says Bronstein – an architecturally virtuosic one, nonetheless. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion On the opposite wall is a more restrained version of the temple, with interior wooden panelling that recalls the kind of synagogue you might find in Golders Green, north London – not far from where Bronstein grew up in Neasden. There are also notes of Henri Labrouste's Bibliothèque de Saint Geneviève in Paris, as well as dazzling blue lapis lazuli walls, representing the celestial realm in a medieval manner, along the lines of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the 'arch-reconstructor of historic architecture', a caption tells us. It's a heady cocktail, made no less so by the fruity facade, which depicts the heads of Moses, David and Solomon as blue-bearded gargoyles above the entrance, and a relief of God, flanked by sphinxes. 'There's a good amount of scholarship about what a temple would have actually looked like if it was built in the 10th century BC,' says Bronstein. 'And it's got nothing to do with monotheism.' He thinks it's much more likely that, had the temple been built at the time the Bible alleges, it is highly likely that it would have been a pantheistic riot, full of different representations of the divine – as is the case with a comparable structure that has survived in Ain Dara in Syria, built in 1300BC, 'which is just full of goblins, basically.' If all this wasn't enough, Bronstein has also drawn the Ark of the Covenant – depicted as a gilded medieval reliquary casket, topped with a cushion, where God is said to have rested his feet – and the temple's menorah, imagined as a twirly rococo candelabrum, whose branches emerge from a chinoiserie-style grotto. Drawings from the Waddesdon archive in a following room help to set the project in context, and show that Bronstein's flamboyant fantasies aren't so far from what was being designed by the 19th-century architects from whom he took inspiration. Alarmingly, nor are they too far off what some people are still hoping to see built in Jerusalem. The Third Temple movement continues to campaign to rebuild the original temple on Temple Mount, one of the most contested sites on the planet – known as the Haram al-Sharif in the Muslim world, site of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque, two of the holiest sites in Islam. We can only hope the Third Temple fanatics don't misconstrue Bronstein's drawings as a blueprint. He began these drawings long before war erupted in the region after Hamas's attack on 7 October 2023. Has Israel's merciless bombardment of Gaza altered his position? 'The work hasn't changed,' he says. 'But the war has changed my relationship to Judaism. It made me really question the fact that we all get instinctively bullied into the idea that we have a genetic, cosmic link to the Holy Land. It's genuinely a 19th-century construct and it's total rubbish.' Pablo Bronstein: The Temple of Solomon and Its Contents is at Waddeston Manor, Buckinghamshire, until 2 November
The Guardian
31-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘A cipher for crazy self-projection': why are architects so obsessed with Solomon's Temple?
No legendary building has ever inspired more conjecture about what it might have looked like than Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. It is said to have been built in c.950BC, on the mound where God created Adam, and was destroyed 400 years later by marauding Babylonians. But, beyond some inconsistent descriptions in the Bible written centuries after the temple was razed, there is no archaeological evidence that this palatial edifice ever existed. And yet, for more than two millennia, generations of architects, archaeologists and ideologues have bickered over the building's appearance. They have debated its exact height and width, speculated on the design of its columns, and battled over the precise nature of its porch. The mythic building, also known as the First Temple, has inspired everything from a Renaissance royal palace in Spain to a recent megachurch in Brazil, to the interiors of masonic lodges around the world – all built on a fantasy. 'It really draws out the batshit crazy,' says Argentinian artist Pablo Bronstein, standing in front of his monumental new drawings of what Solomon's Temple, and its contents, might have looked like. 'It has been used as a cipher for pretty much every crazy projection of power and self-delusion for 2,500 years. I find it totally fascinating – particularly as the whole thing is entirely fabricated.' Bronstein's work has long played with the provocative power of architectural image-making. He has poked fun at Britain's pseudo-Georgian housing and given us orgiastic depictions of hell, which he imagined as a showcase city strewn with garish monuments worthy of the most tasteless dictator. But the subject matter, location and (incidental) timing of his latest mischievous outing couldn't be more charged. Bronstein's speculative drawings of the holiest site in Judaism are now on display in Waddesdon Manor, an inflated French chateau built in Buckinghamshire in the 1890s as the weekend party pad of the Rothschilds – an immensely wealthy Jewish banking family who were instrumental in the creation of Israel. Baron Edmond de Rothschild – the French cousin of Baron Ferdinand, who built Waddesdon – financed a number of early settlements in Palestine and founded the Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association in 1924, run by his son James, who inherited the manor. When the Balfour Declaration was written in 1917, declaring the British government's support for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, it was addressed to Ferdinand's nephew, Walter Rothschild, an eccentric zoologist who liked to pose astride giant tortoises, ride a carriage drawn by zebras andwho was also a prominent Zionist leader. A permanent exhibition at Waddesdon, in a room preceding Bronstein's show, celebrates the Rothschilds' connection with Israel. It recounts the family's funding of the construction of the Knesset building, seat of the Israeli parliament, the Supreme Court building and, most recently, the National Library, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron in the shape of a swooping stone ski jump. Architectural models of these trophy buildings gleam in Perspex vitrines, like the priceless antique treasures displayed elsewhere around the house. To this lavish display of patronage in the Holy Land, Bronstein's florid drawings add an imaginary additional commission. In a brazen act of architectural cosplay, the artist has inserted himself into the minds of two contestants for a fictitious version of the Prix de Rome, a prominent prize for students of architecture in 19th-century Paris, as they compete to recreate Solomon's Temple in their own image. 'I became fascinated by the construction of Jewish identity in the 19th century,' says Bronstein, who was born in Argentina, grew up in London, and describes himself as a 'diehard atheist Jew'. Several years in the making, his new work was commissioned alongside a wider research project about Jewish country houses, and it seems to have triggered a deep curiosity and scepticism in the artist about his own cultural heritage. 'As nationalisms develop in the 19th century, particularly in Germany, Judaism begins to develop its idea of a body of people that are somehow genetically connected to the ancient Middle East,' he says. 'They start to see Jerusalem not as an abstract idea, the way that Muslims look at Mecca, but as a reconstructible place of belonging, tied to a kind of orientalist architectural fantasy.' Bronstein's mesmerising drawings depict what, if taken to extremes, this fantasy might have looked like. Painstakingly drawn in pen and ink, and beautifully coloured with layers of acrylic wash (with the help of two recent architecture graduate assistants), the images are magnificently grandiose projections of that exoticised 19th-century longing. They depict two rival designs, in precisely detailed elevations, cross-sections and facade studies, for reconstructing the temple. Both are wild mashups of architectural motifs, sampling from the richly embellished catalogue of Asian antiquity, medieval and gothic revival, baroque and art deco with promiscuous relish. On one wall is a version of the temple that Bronstein describes as 'vaudeville beaux arts', its interior glowing with the gilded razzle-dazzle of a New Orleans casino. Marvel at the spiralling Solomonic columns at the entrance, sampled from Bernini's baldacchino at St Peter's in Rome, and the illusionistic domes that hover above the Ark, influenced by Alessandro Antonelli's Mole Antonelliana in Turin, which was originally conceived as a synagogue. 'It's the temple as a sort of gin palace,' says Bronstein – an architecturally virtuosic one, nonetheless. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion On the opposite wall is a more restrained version of the temple, with interior wooden panelling that recalls the kind of synagogue you might find in Golders Green, north London – not far from where Bronstein grew up in Neasden. There are also notes of Henri Labrouste's Bibliothèque de Saint Geneviève in Paris, as well as dazzling blue lapis lazuli walls, representing the celestial realm in a medieval manner, along the lines of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the 'arch-reconstructor of historic architecture', a caption tells us. It's a heady cocktail, made no less so by the fruity facade, which depicts the heads of Moses, David and Solomon as blue-bearded gargoyles above the entrance, and a relief of God, flanked by sphinxes. 'There's a good amount of scholarship about what a temple would have actually looked like if it was built in the 10th century BC,' says Bronstein. 'And it's got nothing to do with monotheism.' He thinks it's much more likely that, had the temple been built at the time the Bible alleges, it is highly likely that it would have been a pantheistic riot, full of different representations of the divine – as is the case with a comparable structure that has survived in Ain Dara in Syria, built in 1300BC, 'which is just full of goblins, basically.' If all this wasn't enough, Bronstein has also drawn the Ark of the Covenant – depicted as a gilded medieval reliquary casket, topped with a cushion, where God is said to have rested his feet – and the temple's menorah, imagined as a twirly rococo candelabrum, whose branches emerge from a chinoiserie-style grotto. Drawings from the Waddesdon archive in a following room help to set the project in context, and show that Bronstein's flamboyant fantasies aren't so far from what was being designed by the 19th-century architects from whom he took inspiration. Alarmingly, nor are they too far off what some people are still hoping to see built in Jerusalem. The Third Temple movement continues to campaign to rebuild the original temple on Temple Mount, one of the most contested sites on the planet – known as the Haram al-Sharif in the Muslim world, site of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque, two of the holiest sites in Islam. We can only hope the Third Temple fanatics don't misconstrue Bronstein's drawings as a blueprint. He began these drawings long before war erupted in the region after Hamas's attack on 7 October 2023. Has Israel's merciless bombardment of Gaza altered his position? 'The work hasn't changed,' he says. 'But the war has changed my relationship to Judaism. It made me really question the fact that we all get instinctively bullied into the idea that we have a genetic, cosmic link to the Holy Land. It's genuinely a 19th-century construct and it's total rubbish.' Pablo Bronstein: The Temple of Solomon and Its Contents is at Waddeston Manor, Buckinghamshire, until 2 November
