Gold Plated Building Stone Found Near Temple Mount

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Writing from Rome after the Romans had destroyed the Temple in 70 A.D., the Jewish historian Josephus described its glorious gates as having been plated in gold. 1

BAR has recently learned that examples of gold-plated building stones were discovered in the excavations at the southern wall of the Temple Mount conducted in the 1960s and 1970s under the overall direction of Professor Benjamin Mazar and field director Meir Ben-Dov, but they were never published.

BAR has obtained this picture of a gold-coated building stone discovered in the excavation and photographed by Ben-Dov. This is its first publication.

This extraordinary find surfaced for a second time in connection with the ongoing forgery trial in a Jerusalem court. One of the items that the government charges is a forgery is the so-called Yehoash or Jehoash tablet, describing repairs to the Temple by King Jehoash in the late ninth century B.C., as described in the Bible (2 Kings 12).2

Several very prominent scholars maintain the inscription is a clear forgery. Other equally prominent scholars are not so sure.

The tablet’s defenders point to the presence of extremely tiny gold globules in the tablet’s patina as evidence of authenticity. These gold globules are so tiny (one micron or a millionth part of a meter) that they are not available commercially. How did the alleged forger get them? Why would he go to this extraordinary effort, even if he could somehow do it? Moreover, the gold globules are widely dispersed in the patina, not clustered. The only way this could occur would be as the result of a splash and the melting of the gold in an intense conflagration. This could have occurred during the Babylonian destruction of Solomon’s Temple in 586 B.C. or in 70 A.D. if the Jehoash tablet became exposed when Herod’s Temple was burned by the Romans.

The stone excavated near the Temple Mount is clear evidence that there were gold-covered stones closely associated with the Temple complex.

On the other hand, those who claim the Jehoash tablet is a forgery say the gold globules in the patina could have come from the soil in which the forger buried the inscribed stone to give it the appearance of authenticity. Soil—especially from archaeological sites in which the forger would have buried his forgery for a short time—is often full of many different minerals, including silver and gold.

This is just one of the extremely complex issues involved in the authenticity/forgery debate concerning the Jehoash tablet. But as an offshoot of this debate, we may have discovered gold-plated building stones from Herod’s Temple.


1 Josephus, Jewish War, 5. 201–224

2 See Hershel Shanks, “Is It or Isn’t It?” BAR 29:02; “What About the Jehoash Inscription?” BAR 29:05; “New Reading Bolsters Case for Jehoash Tablet,” Update: Finds or Fakes? BAR 30:04