|
A number of archaeological excavations at the Temple Mount — a celebrated and contentious religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem — have taken place over the last 150 years. The first were undertaken by the British Royal Engineers in the 1870s. Since Israel took control of the Old City in 1967, archaeological excavations in the vicinity of the Mount have been undertaken by Israel and the Waqf. Both excavations have been controversial and criticized. Israeli and Jewish groups have criticized excavations conducted by the ''Waqf'', the Muslim authority in charge of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. ==History== Due to the extreme political sensitivity of the site, few archaeological excavations have been conducted on the Temple Mount itself. Protests commonly occur whenever archaeologists conduct projects on or near the Mount. Aside from visual observation of surface features, most other archaeological knowledge of the site comes from the 19th century survey carried out by Charles Wilson and Charles Warren. Warren was one of the first to excavate this area, exemplifying a new era of Biblical archaeology in the 1870s.〔 In 1930, R.W. Hamilton, director of the British Mandate Antiquities Department, carried out the only archeological excavation ever undertaken at the Temple Mount's Aqsa Mosque by the British Mandate, the excavations show a Byzantine mosaic floor underneath the mosque that was likely the remains of a church or a monastery.〔LEFKOVITS,ETGAR. (Was the Aksa Mosque built over the remains of a Byzantine church? ) ''The Jerusalem Post''. November 2008.〕 In addition to the Byzantine mosaic, R.W. Hamilton also found a tile in the floor bearing the image of a centaur. It is believed this tile may be related to pagan religious construction on the Temple Mount during the Roman Period (135 - 325 CE).〔Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Zweig. A Roman Period Centaur Relief from the Temple Mount. http://www.academia.edu/1303992/_〕 File:Roman_Centaur_Tile_of_Al-Aqsa_Mosque.jpg|Tile from the floor of Al-Aqsa Mosque bearing the Roman pagan image of a centaur. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Excavations at the Temple Mount」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|