Summary by Claude.ai: Gabriel Barkay, “What’s an Egyptian Temple Doing in Jerusalem?” (Biblical Archaeology Review 26.3, 2000). A PDF of the article with all the photos is in the BAS directory in DropBox.
Thesis
Barkay argues that it is “chancy” to build historical arguments on the absence of archaeological data. He sidesteps the debate over the United Monarchy and instead presents evidence for a probable Egyptian temple just north of Jerusalem in the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 B.C.). Minimalists often downplay that period’s evidence for Jerusalem, and Barkay’s case is meant to show how much can lie buried in old excavation records.
Background and Discovery
- While studying burial caves near the Garden Tomb, Barkay read the records of Père Lagrange’s 1880s Dominican excavations at St. Étienne, just north of Damascus Gate.
- A brief footnote there mentioned an Egyptian hieroglyphic stele fragment from a cistern beneath the Byzantine church. It had been published incorrectly in 1892 (with a reversed drawing) and was later misattributed to Beth-Shean in a 1966 report. Barkay located the actual fragment in the École Biblique’s collection.
The Evidence Assembled
- Stele fragment: a small limestone piece (about 13.5 × 12 cm) with 13 signs, including the title “the foremost of westerners,” an epithet of Osiris. Osiris stelae are also known from Hazor and Deir el-Balah. Scheil thought he saw the ear of Seth in it, which would favor a 19th Dynasty date.
- Two Egyptian alabaster vessels (a bottle and a jug) comparable to 18th Dynasty types, never previously published.
- Stone slab found in situ beneath the church apse, with three fields, channels, and a spout draining into a bedrock pit. Vincent called it a Byzantine ablution installation. Barkay disagrees: no comparable installation exists in Byzantine churches, and it matches Egyptian offering tables (three fields, bread-loaf impressions, channels). Stone-lined pits appear in Canaanite temples at Hazor and Megiddo.
- A second offering table or altar with three sunken compartments of unequal depth, paralleled at Hazor, Megiddo, and especially Gezer.
- Egyptian-style lotus/palm capital (now on Garden Tomb grounds), apparently measured in royal Egyptian cubits, with parallels from New Kingdom Egypt (closest at Soleb, 19th Dynasty) and from Late Bronze temples at Beth-Shean, Megiddo, and Lachish.
- Serpentine statuette (about 7.3 cm) found in 1975, probably Amon or Ptah, with a comparable figurine from the City of David excavations of 1927–28.
Barkay stresses that the capitals and the in-situ offering table rule out a tomb origin for the objects.
Dating
- 14th century (Amarna period): The Amarna letters from Abdi-Heba, king of Jerusalem, show Egyptian ties and a small military presence. Barkay thinks a temple unlikely then, because Egyptian interest in the hill country was limited. Egyptian city lists omit Jerusalem and the hill country entirely.
- 13th century (19th Dynasty): Under Merneptah, Egyptian interest in the interior grew. Barkay cites Papyrus Anastasi 3 (a fort near “Sar-ram,” possibly Salem) and “Merneptah’s wells,” connected by Aharoni to Mey-Nephtoah (Josh 15:9; 18:15). Egypto-Canaanite temples are known from this era at Beth-Shean, Lachish, Timna, and Ashkelon. Barkay therefore dates the St. Étienne finds to the 13th century B.C.
- Lagrange’s pottery was not saved, so the dating rests on stone objects and his records.
Conclusion
Barkay concludes there was “probably” an Egyptian temple on the road north from Jerusalem to Shechem. The takeaway is a methodological warning: the paucity of evidence about ancient Jerusalem makes negative arguments dangerous, since this evidence survived only through chance and careful record-keeping.
Sidebar: “What’s It Say?”
The article closes with a puzzle: a roughly 5-inch inscribed stone from the École Biblique that resembles hieroglyphs but was not identified as Egyptian by Egyptologists, Northwest Semitic epigraphists, or cuneiformists. Readers were invited to propose readings.
Critical Notes
- Barkay’s language is hedged (“probably,” “seems likely”). The temple is an inference from scattered, mostly unstratified finds, not a excavated structure.
- The key weaknesses are the lack of pottery and stratigraphic context, the loss of original excavation material, and the fact that the main architectural piece (the slab) was interpreted by Vincent differently.
- The Amarna references and the Merneptah-era toponym identifications (Sar-ram/Salem, Mey-Nephtoah) are suggestive but depend on Aharoni’s proposed identifications.
- The article is a popular-format piece in BAR; Barkay’s fuller argument appears in his IEJ 46 (1996) article, cited in note 19.
Follow up prompt: Has there been any follow-up?
Response – Yes, there has been some follow-up, though I could only see snippets of most of it. The full texts are behind the BAS Library paywall or in journals I couldn’t open.
Barkay’s original scholarly publication
The BAS article points to a fuller treatment: Gabriel Barkay, “A Late Bronze Age Egyptian Temple in Jerusalem?” Israel Exploration Journal 46 (1996). Later BAS articles also cite it for the Amarna-period material. I haven’t been able to read the article itself.
Peter van der Veen, “When Pharaohs Ruled Jerusalem” (BAR 39:2, 2013)
This is the most direct sequel. Van der Veen says his article grew out of Barkay’s 2000 piece. His team reports considerable additional evidence for an Egyptian presence in Jerusalem toward the end of the Late Bronze Age, in the 13th century B.C.E. under the 19th Dynasty. That supports Barkay’s dating. Several details differ from Barkay, though:
- Capital: Van der Veen notes that Barkay himself preferred “Egyptianizing” over “Egyptian” for the capital found in secondary use in a Garden Tomb wall.
- Statuette: Barkay thought the figure was male, probably Amon or Ptah. Van der Veen describes the 1975 find as a headless seated female deity, probably Sekhmet. His footnote also records Barkay’s identification and Giveon’s view that it was Ptah.
- Alabaster vessels and stele: He considers the alabaster vessels almost certainly burial gifts, and he calls the stele funerary, suggesting it came from a nearby cemetery. That reading points toward tombs rather than a temple, which cuts against the temple hypothesis (Barkay had argued the capitals and offering table ruled out a tomb origin). From the snippets, van der Veen’s emphasis is on Egyptian presence, not a confirmed temple.
- New finds: His team located an additional alabaster lid found around 1960, and a fragment of an Egyptian statue of a high-ranking male official in an IAA warehouse. They also cite an Amarna letter mentioning a fortified house for Egyptian archers at Manahat, with a Late Bronze Age village excavated there.
Critical responses
One published dissent, initialed A.K., calls for absolute rejection of the temple idea. It describes the finds as a strange assemblage of Egyptian objects from different periods, only some found in the same place, and says the capital looks like a Crusader capital to the writer. The snippet doesn’t show the full citation, so I can’t tell you exactly where or when this appeared. It fits the weaknesses I noted earlier: lost pottery, no stratigraphy, and objects of mixed date.
Broader Late Bronze Age Jerusalem evidence
These don’t bear on the temple directly, but they relate to Barkay’s methodological point about absence of evidence:
- In 2010 Eilat Mazar’s Ophel excavation produced a 14th-century B.C.E. cuneiform fragment, described as the oldest written document found in Jerusalem and possibly part of a royal archive. Mazar suggested it was likely part of a message from the king of Jerusalem, possibly Abdi-Heba, to Egypt.
- Christopher Rollston published a response questioning the proposed genre and setting of the fragment. He also noted that the authors themselves concede the dating is complicated by the small sample of sign forms.
Suggested next steps
If you want to go deeper for your research, the most useful items to track down would be the 1996 IEJ article, van der Veen’s full 2013 text, and the source of the A.K. critique. I can look for the critique’s origin, or search for other Egyptian-presence studies (for example, work on Egyptian garrisons and Late Bronze Age Jerusalem), if you’d like.
Sources:
Rollston, Antiguo Oriente 8 (2010)up articles or other info about the findings in the article?
When Pharaohs Ruled Jerusalem, BAS Library – See PDF in the BAS subdirectory.
Endnote 3, Queries & Comments, BAS Library
Oldest written document found in Jerusalem, ScienceBlog
