The same evening back in Tel-Aviv they were invited to dinner at Shlomo’s mother’s just ten minutes from their hotel in a modern apartment building. She was a typical Jewish mother, wielding a rod of iron over her three sons of whom Shlomo was the youngest. She was immensely proud of Shlomo one Israel’s leading nuclear scientists whose work included the development of sophisticated scientific dating methods using isotopes, employed by Israeli and foreign archaeologists, including his brother Solly, a leading specialist in Late Neolithic History with the Israeli Department of Archaeology.
Mrs Klein’s apartment was a huge duplex where she lived alone, situated on the eleventh and twelfth floors facing the Mediterranean on one side, and the university campus on the other, though she was highly active in different women’s social and political associations, often hosting lobby related meetings in her comfortable home.
She was delighted to receive O’Connelly and was extremely curious about his relationship with Laura, which seemed to her as being something deliciously unkosher. All three of her sons were there – a command performance O’Connelly suspected in his honour. Drinks and appetizers were served on the terrace amongst potted palms and olive trees facing the setting sun as they chatted about books, archaeology and Shlomo’s contribution to science. Mrs Klein spoke of her late husband’s travels to Europe, often together, for their very successful family business; dried fruit. Shlomo’s mother was the matriarch, running the family business where a shekel was a shekel, closely watching over her sons, guiding their careers – even though the three were well into their forties – regally reigning over her large family with her daughters-in-law and grandchildren.
Dinner consisted of a series of spicy eastern plates, stuffed peppers, aubergines, fried chicken, fetta and mixed vegetables spiced with cumin served with an excellent Carmel Cabernet-Sauvignon.
Conversation turned to Eilat Mazar, who belonged to the maximalist school and whose discoveries were clouded by non-scientific biblical interpretation, anathema for Mrs Klein who saw it as a slight to her son’s work, even though Mrs Klein was a fierce nationalist and took the Hebraic Bible for the source of the sacred nations rights.
‘Mr O’Connelly,’ she said pronouncing his name slowly and carefully, her English was good but she spoke with a strong German like accent, ‘we have two schools of archaeology in Israel, the minimalists and the maximalists. The minimalists includes Silbermann and Finkelstein and the maximalists Eilat Mazar, who is excavating what she believes to be Kind David’s palace and will go to any length to prove that the Bible is a factual account of our history.’
‘She is sponsored by which organisation?’
‘You should know Mr O’Connelly that her excavations are carried out with the backing of the Shalem Centre and the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, both of which have a political agenda.’
‘A political agenda?’
‘Yes Mr O’Connelly, a political agenda, the Shalem Centre is highly politicised, extreme conservatives, who maximise the biblical connection to history.’
‘Ah yes, we were told about the Shalem Centre.’
‘It was her grandfather who did much of the early exploration work on the site and who taught her that the bible was the key to archaeological exploration in Israel.’
‘He’s dead now,’ said Mrs Klein forcefully, suggesting he no longer counted.
‘Yes mother,’ but apparently she has found some new things of interest, large stone masonry, I saw a photo of a beautifully carved capital for a column, proto-aeolic.’
‘It was under the remains of a Jebusite wall,’ said Solly. She suggested it had been destroyed by King David.’
‘There are also huge walls that she says could have been built by King David, part of his palace, going back to the end of Iron Age, around 1000BC. That fits in with her Bible theory when David was supposed to have conquered Jerusalem from the Canaanites.’
‘Tell him about the bulla Solly!’
‘Yes mother, they found a bulla or a used for documents. These were small pieces of flattened clay about the size of a fingernail stamped or marked with an inscription. This one has three lines of ancient Hebrew script’ he added looking to the eldest of the three brothers, Ziv, a bookish man specialised in ancient languages.
Ziv pulled out his wallet and extracted a small disc. ‘Look this is a copy of the bulla,’ he said passing it to Laura. Then taking a paper napkin he wrote something in Modern Hebrew. ‘This is what it says,’ Ziv said taking a piece of paper and writing, ליהוכל בנ שלמיהו בנ שבי, translated that means Belonging to Yehuchal ben Shelemiyahu ben Shovi. Yehuchal is mentioned in the book of Jeremiah, where there is a verse that says King Zedekiah sent Yehuchal son of Shelemiah to the prophet Jeremiah to pray for the people.’
‘So how old is that?’
‘Based on palaeographical analysis it dates from the late 8th or early 7th century BC, similar such bullae have dated to around 600BC.’
‘So you see by comparing the ancient script they dated the bulla to the period that corresponds to the end of the First Temple,’ Solly explained. ‘Therefore, according to this interpretation, she has discovered what appears to be an important public building, dating from around the 10th century BC.’
‘And in together with that,’ added Shlomo, ‘there are pottery shards that date to a period that corresponds to the supposed time of David and Solomon.’
‘The importance of this bulla is it that it is the first time a written text from the First Temple period has been found in the area of the Temple Mount itself.’
‘Naturally the Palestinian newspaper Al Quds says Mazar’s approach is an attempt to fit historical evidence into a biblical context,’ said Mrs Klein to complete the story.
‘I have to agree with their idea mother,’ said Shlomo, ‘though not for their political motivations. The fact is that the biblical text was written much later, so any link is purely coincidental, it is a contrivance by the maximalists to fit things together to suit their story.’
‘The Waqf, Mr O’Connelly, is a Moslem religious trust that administers the Temple Mount and has claims that there was never a temple there and to make matters worse our own Israel Finkelstein, who is the chairman of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology, says that the biblical accounts of Jerusalem of David and Solomon are essentially false including the idea that the city the centre a powerful monarchy.’
‘We are not arguing with Israel Finkelstein mother,’ said Shlomo with a hint of exasperation in his voice.
‘I know Shlomo, but I don’t like playing into the hands of the Waqf.’
‘Shlomo could you tell us more precisely where Eilat Mazar is working and what the City of David is?’ Asked Laura trying to escape Mrs Klein’s derive into politics.
‘A good point Laura,’ said Shlomo. ‘To answer your question the City of David is where ancient Jerusalem stood, to the south of the mountain where the Temples is supposed to have stood, it the most central place in our Jewish religion because it is where the Bible says King David brought the Ark of the Covenant, and where King David’s palace was built by King Hiram of Tyre, the Phoenician ruler who was David’s ally against the Philistines.’
‘Tell them about the illegal excavations.’
‘Yes mother, I was getting to that! The Waqf has been carry out work for years under the Haram, they sealed up the ancient Hulda Gates entrance to the Temple Mount on the southern wall and buried the adjoining steps and sealed an underground water cistern. Then in 1999, they bulldozed and paved over almost six thousand square meters of the Esplanade, secretly dumped the rubble in several places around Jerusalem, mainly in the Kedron Valley, that’s to the east of the Old City. More than one hundred truckloads of rubble and earth were removed.’
‘That’s awful,’ said Laura.
‘Going back to the question of Solomon,’ said O’Connelly wanting to clarify the many references to his time in de Lussac’s work. ‘Correct me if I’m
wrong, but I believe there is no mentioned of him in any text or inscription outside of the Bible itself. There are many ruins in Israel corresponding to the period in time when Solomon is said to have lived – Hazor, Megiddo, Gezer – dating from about the tenth century BC, but is there no clue concerning the existence of Solomon?’
‘Is that important, isn’t the Bible sufficient?’ said Mrs Klein.
‘Mother,’ said Shlomo in a slightly exasperated tone, ‘as we’ve explained many times the texts are nothing more than compilations, based on earlier writings and oral accounts. All through history these have been modified for a multitude of reasons, problems of translation, transcription, insertions, political and religious motivations. That’s why we need some kind of corroboration, like in Egypt, Assyria, Greece or Rome, where inscriptions not only confirm events in the country itself, for example the name of kings or battles, but also make reference to conquests and events in the countries of their allies or enemies.’
‘I see,’ said O’Connelly, ‘so the question is whether the story of Solomon could have continued to exist five hundred years after he had lived.’
‘Exactly, remember writing was almost non-existent in those small towns, there could have been oral traditions. But if he ruled a kingdom of any size why are there no inscriptions or references in Egypt or Assyria, two great powers who were successively present in the region. Why is there no evidence of his great capital Jerusalem apart from a few skimpy remains?’
‘You tell me.’
‘The role of us archaeologists is investigate the remains of the past, to try to piece together facts relating to historical events, but not only by uncovering old stones, but also by interpreting the smallest signs of human activity, from pottery, coins, jewellery, wood, ivory, fire, bones and on very rare occasions textiles.’
‘What about written evidence?’ he said turning to Ziv.
‘Yes we use epigraphical references that we try to compare with the physical evidence, for example the remains of pottery.’
‘How does pottery help?’
‘Each site in each region used different kinds of pottery in terms of manufacture, form and decoration. The wonderful thing about pottery is that it survives times! So we have pottery shards everywhere from the very first potters in Neolithic times until today. We can analyse the composition, compare the designs and build up a time scale and a relationship between the different traditions.’
‘So what about here in Megiddo have you found any evidence that corroborates biblical texts?’
‘There is no evidence of any significant kingdom here in the region during the tenth-century BC. The main architectural constructions found here in Megiddo, and also similar sites such as Hazer and Gezer, date from the ninth century BC.’
‘I thought this was an important site?’
‘My dear friend, if Megiddo was in Greece or some other place in the ancient world, what importance would it have?’ he laughed.
‘I don’t know,’ said Laura a little embarrassed.
‘I will tell you, not very much, a few clues to the existence of a couple of insignificant kingdoms that lay on the crossroads between two mighty powers, Egypt and Assyria, which is very briefly mentioned in a few inscriptions from the ninth century BC onwards, a small town repeatedly destroyed by passing armies, a trivial detail in the ancient struggle for power in the eastern Mediterranean!’
‘I see.’
‘There is absolutely nothing here that relates to King Solomon or Israel, if you want something like that I suggest you talk to Eilat Mazar in Jerusalem, one of our maximalist colleagues, she’s a senior fellow at Shalem Centre in Jerusalem.’
‘We know a little about here work and the fact that she considers that there is little doubt that King David’s palace was situated in Jerusalem.’
‘Correct, she has used Biblical texts in her search to locate the palace, according to which it was built with the help of King Hiram of Tyre. She believes that the remains of the palace are situated just outside the northern fortifications of ancient area, in what is called the City of David. Those ruins date to the Jebusite period, that is to say Canaanite, probably the tenth century BC. She points to passages in the Bible that describe King David in the City of David, descending from his residence to the fortress. In other words she literally accepts the biblical text.’
‘The City of David is where compared to the Old City?’
‘The site of ancient Jerusalem, or the City of David, lies between two valleys on a ridge south of the Temple Mount, it is a very small oblong area of about only four hectares.’
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Masada
The Legacy of Solomon Page 41