Jerusalem: Discovery of Byzantine-Era Weights May Point to Pre-Islamic Christian Presence on Temple Mount

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Archaeologists in Israel have discovered two Byzantine-era coin weights that may be evidence of a Christian presence on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount before the Islamic conquest of the city between 636–637 AD, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports. The weights are believed to be official imperial weights required by 6th-century Byzantine law to be present in major churches and may even indicate a church on the Temple Mount before the Al Aqsa Mosque was built there in the 7th-8th centuries.

While Jews and Christians revere the Temple Mount as the site of the First and Second Biblical Temples, the site is managed by the Jordanian Muslim Waqf. This Islamic authority has vehemently opposed Jews from entering the location and has worked to downplay the relevance of the Temple Mount to Christians as well: a UNESCO resolution on “Occupied Palestine” was passed by primarily Muslim countries in 2016 and refers to Jerusalem’s holy sites Muslim names only.

The recently discovered weights were found by researchers working on the Temple Mount Sifting Project established in 2004, TOI reports. The project is concerned with sifting through tons of rubble removed from the Temple Mount by the Muslim Waqf in 1999 in the hopes of discovering ancient historical artifacts.

One of the weights discovered is made of glass, and the other of brass; each weighs 0.6 grams, TOI reports. The glass weight has “a haloed Imperial bust above a cross-shaped monogram flanked by two smaller busts.” The weights are believed to have been made in a central official workshop in Constantinople between 550 and 650 AD. The findings are documented in a paper titled “Two Noteworthy Byzantine Weights from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount,” written by Haim Shaham, Zachi Devira, and Gabriel Barkay and published in the Israel Numismatic Research journal.

While emphasizing that it is not at all certain there was ever a Byzantine church on the Temple Mount, Shaham said in a statement: “We have to weigh the simplest explanation as to why the weights are there, and simple is always the best..the idea of official weights inside a Byzantine church has already been established in the Levant.”

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