Tag Archives: Jewish temple

Concerning Jerusalem temple location from western set of stairs

My previous post discussed the location of a curved  eastern stairs into the inner courtyard. This post concerns a western stair location. I suspect some straight stairs which were part of the Temple’s Cheil lies buried below the present staircase to the  west of the Dome of the Rock. If ever archeological evidence finds some straight stairs under the upper half of the current Muslim stairs just to the west of the Dome of the Rock, the finding of these stairs helps to confirm my location of the temple. You may read and see my diagrams from this link on this blog.  (other blog entries have links to other papers and website.)

Link to my temple paper.

The  origin of the present staircase  may be part of a staircase going up from the west to a Roman pagan temple or equestrian statue of the Emperor Hadrian on the site of the Jewish Temple’s Holy of Holies, The Muslims then built the Dome of the Rock on the Jewish temple site, and incorporated this staircase into their design. The present staircase looks fairly new, but I believe it is on the site of the first Muslim staircase going up to the building from the west. This would have been one of the four original staircases going up to the platform (the southern staircase between the Al aksa and the Dome of the Rock being the most important or most frequented. This staircase is one of two built within the platform while the others were built outside. Also this staircase is the deepest or longest of the two.

The Jewish temple’s axis line would have been south of the Muslim Dome of the Rock axis line. The Muslim staircase is not directly in back of the building, but shifted to the south. In fact, the Jewish temple’s axis line runs on or vcry close to the bottome of the Muslim staircase. this axis line also runs close to the northern edge of the staircase.

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