Temple Mount Sifting Project

And the value of small finds, be it a bead or a scarab or a bula or something like this, is that we know where it came from because it can help us in the identification and the dating of that particular stratum.

So our expertise in wet sifting, I had worked for two years as a supervisor on the Temple Mount Sifting Project in Jerusalem.

And it was at that time that I made up my mind, this is really a game changer.

But all of that material we were working with in Jerusalem, it was out of context.

It's possible that some sort of Christian structure was on the Temple Mount at the time, and it was not abandoned after all.

This is based on pieces of a late antique church found by the Temple Mount Sifting Project, an Israeli archaeological project sifting through 9,000 tons of soil dug out during a controversial renovation by the Waqf in 1999.

Regardless, the Umayyad started construction on the Dome of the Rock and completed it sometime in the 690s, according to an inscription inside the building itself.

And although its octagonal shape is unique for Islamic architecture, this was not a unique shape for nearby Byzantine churches and shrines at the time.

We are looking at its original state of preservation, but the building as we see it today has undergone countless renovations over the centuries.

Before the 16th century, for example, the exterior was decorated with mosaics rather than the tiles that we see today, which in and of themselves are 20th century replicas of Ottoman-era tiles.

The Temple Mount Sifting Project, which I mentioned earlier, possibly has discovered thousands of fragments of this original mosaic, some of which are covered in gold.

You can see them right here on the screen.