Hebrew Voices #23 – The Temple Floor Lady (Rebroadcast)

In this episode of Hebrew Voices, The Temple Floor Lady, I meet with The Temple Floor Lady, Frankie Snyder. Frankie works at the Temple Mount Sifting Project in Jerusalem, reconstructing ancient floors. Frankie explains how she pieces together the pieces of floor discovered in the archaeological excavations. I got excited when she showed me, and let me touch, the ancient paving stones that covered the surface of the Jerusalem Temple in the 1st century CE. Unlike a Mosaic, which makes use of uniform cubes, the "opus sectile" floors of the Temple were made up of light and dark stones from all over the ancient world, cut into diverse shapes and sizes, and fit together into a grand puzzle to form intricate patterns. As I was speaking to Frankie I realized the floor tiling of the "House of Prayer for All Nations" was a picture of God's people. Made up of diverse colors and shapes, coming from far off lands with different backgrounds and ideas, the nations flowing unto Jerusalem will prophetically fit together into Yehovah's plan of salvation for mankind!

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Transcript

 

Hebrew Voices #23 - The Temple Floor Lady

 

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Shalom, this is Nehemia Gordon. I am here with the ancient floor lady, who I will be interviewing today for Hebrew Voices. Her name is Frankie Snyder. She made Aliya to Israel in 2007 from the United States. And if you have an ancient floor, she's the one you come to. She's reconstructed, or is working on reconstructing, floors from a bunch of sites in Israel, mostly from the Herodian period, but also from the Crusader period. Shalom, Frankie.

Frankie: Hi, nice to have you here.

Nehemia: Yeah, so we're here at the Temple Mount Sifting Project where she works, and she's been showing me these different floors. And the reason I was interested in this is, there's this reference in Josephus that we were talking about. Josephus describes the Temple and the Temple Mount enclosure, where people would come from all over the world. And he mentioned how there were these open spaces, and the floors were paved. And those are the floors, a lot of those floors that you work with, right?

Frankie: These are the floors that I'm working with. Josephus says that the material was brought from lots of different foreign countries. It wasn't just local material. He says there were nice bright colors. And this is materials that we're actually finding among the debris from the Temple Mount.

Nehemia: I did a previous interview with Zachi Dvira, talking about the Temple Mount Sifting Project, and people should go back and listen to that in the archives. But for those who haven't heard that interview, what is the Temple Mount Sifting Project? And how do you get ancient floors, like what is that about? Tell us all about that.

Frankie: In the mid-1990s the Muslims were digging a new staircase to go down into a mosque area that they had developed. And in digging the staircase...

Nehemia: Up on the Temple Mount.

Frankie: Up on the Temple Mount. They removed over 400 truckloads of dirt, and unceremoniously dumped it into the Kidron Valley. This material, we then took from down in the Kidron Valley, and we took it to a project that was developed called the “Temple Mount Sifting Project.” And we started sifting through all this dirt to see if there were any artifacts in it. And lo and behold, there's a lot of stuff in there. And among all this…

Nehemia: What's a lot of stuff? Give me a number. And what I didn't mention is that you actually have a bachelor's degree in math and statistics, and a master's in Jewish Studies from Hebrew College in Boston. So, you're not only the floor lady, you're also the statistics person. Give me a number of how many… Like, are we talking about thousands of artifacts were discovered from the Temple Mount Sifting?

Frankie: We're talking about hundreds of thousands of artifacts.

Nehemia: Hundreds of thousands of artifacts.

Frankie: A lot of it are things like pottery shards, which we have to sort through and figure out which ones can give us information. But we have over 6000 coins. Just in this floor tile category, I have between 500 and 600 tiles right now that I've put into this category of tiles that were cut, polished, shaped to make beautiful geometric patterned floors on the Temple Mount. Among all this material, we have different people who are working on different categories of materials. We have people who are working with arrowheads. We have several people who are working with pots.

Nehemia: And you're the floor lady?

Frankie: And I'm the floor lady. I do the floors.

Nehemia: And you know what excites me about this is, I think about how there were these ancient pilgrims who had come up to Jerusalem…And specifically I say “pilgrims” because they would come for the chagim, which really are pilgrimage feasts. And for example, we have these descriptions of people coming all the way from Babylon to Israel to participate in the Passover sacrifice. And so, I imagine what it'd be like to an ancient Jew 2000 years ago in the 1st century, and you come on these dirt tracks on camels all the way from Babylon. And you arrive and you walk up into the entrance of the Temple Mount, and what they see are Frankie's floors, and they've been destroyed.

And now you're putting back together what our ancient Jewish ancestors would have seen when they arrived and they walked into the Temple. That excites me. And the feet of Jews in the 1st century, walking over these tiles right over here, you know, they would have put their feet on those tiles. And it's amazing to me that you can pull these tiles out and put them back together. The types of floor you're dealing with is something called “opus sectile.” Tell us what that's about.

Frankie: The word "opus" is Latin, it means "work.” The word "sectile" is the word that "section" comes from. It means “to cut". So, the tiles were cut and worked, meaning they were cut into geometric shapes.

Nehemia: So why do we have a Latin name for a type of tile in Israel?

Frankie: Oh, because almost any kind of work that has to do with marbles and flooring came to us out of Italy. The work was done there. And, of course, the ancient language that has been applied in Italy was Latin, so it applied to all…

Nehemia: And in fact, if I'm not mistaken, even the best floor tiles today, marble tiles come from Italy, don't they?

Frankie: They have great ones out of Italy.

Nehemia: You were telling me that Herod imported this technology into Israel, right?

Frankie: Yes, King Herod was the first one who brought this technology over here. He used these fancy floors in his palaces, and he used them on the Temple Mount. And, of course, nobody knew that he used them on the Temple Mount until these tiles started showing up in the Temple Mount debris, at which point people were saying, “Whoa, wait a minute. These really fancy floors also existed up here.”

Nehemia: Okay. And there'll be a picture of what these looked like, because it's hard to imagine. I'll post it on nehemiaswall.com, on my website, if you're listening to the podcast in iTunes or something like that. So, go to nehemiaswall.com and find the ancient floor lady and you'll see the picture of what this looks like. We have these things over here, describe what they look like.

Frankie: Okay.

Nehemia: What are you holding, because this is audio, they can't see it. Tell us, what are you holding here?

Frankie: What I'm holding here is a reconstruction of what I think one of the patterns was that was used on the Temple Mount. Now, what I have to do, because all I have are a bunch of loose tiles, I have to mathematically go back and reconstruct - reverse engineer, this is reverse engineering - you have to go back and try to reconstruct what the floor might have looked like, based on the sizes and the shapes. Herod had various characteristics to his floors. He had very specific sizes that he was using.

Nehemia: What are the sizes? You were telling me they…

Frankie: He was using the Roman foot as the basis to his floors. So, once I get a pattern made, it had better be a Roman foot, otherwise I didn't get it right.

Nehemia: Or it could be from a different period. And you were showing me before, you have floors from the Crusader period…

Frankie: Which is not the same cut.

Nehemia: …and possibly slightly from before the Crusader period.

Frankie: Yes, and those are based on the inch, so it's a different cut and shape.

Nehemia: So, if you find a little square piece of stone that's highly polished and it's an inch by an inch, you know it's not Herodian. You know it's from the Crusaders?

Frankie: Right, it’s going to be from the Crusaders. Whereas these, I look at the type of materials. Herod liked to use some local materials. One of the main ones that he used that’s local is something we call “bitumen.” It's actually bituminous chalk. It comes from down by the Dead Sea, the area around Nabi Musa. It is a black tile, and it's relatively easy to cut. Considering some other stones, it’s relatively easy to cut. It could be very highly polished, and it made a great stone. This was used then contrasting with bright colored stones. Some of the bright colors are imported, some of them are local.

Nehemia: Let me describe what I'm looking at. What she's holding is...and you'll see a photo, like I said, in nehemiaswall.com under the ancient floor lady. But there’s a square here…

Frankie: Eight-pointed star.

Nehemia: …and around their edge, there's this like carpet edge, sort of, which is you said one-eighth of a Roman foot.

Frankie: One-eighth of a Roman foot.

Nehemia: And it's black and it's white, alternating colors. In the middle is an eight-pointed star, and the eight-pointed star’s actually made of these different triangles of stone. This isn't even a triangle. I don't know what you call this shape.

Frankie: It's a kite shape.

Nehemia: A kite-shaped piece of stone. And the middle is a square piece of stone. It's really intricate, how they did this. Mosaics is what a lot of people think of, which is different colors...

Frankie: Mosaics are little, tiny cubes.

Nehemia: Right they're little cubes.

Frankie: These are not cubes; they’re much larger.

Nehemia: These are much bigger, and a lot of them are triangular and different shapes. And maybe a mosaic, in some ways, requires more planning, I don't know, because...I don't even know how they do that with all the colors. But this is definitely very intricate work. You know, in mosaic, everything is square, so it's probably pretty standardized and relatively easy to prepare the pieces. Here, you had to make all these different shapes.

Frankie: They had to be very accurately cut, very accurately polished. Because these things fit together so well that you see no mortar in-between the pieces.

Nehemia: I want to read some sources here, ‘cause we love sources here at Hebrew Voices. And these are sources that you sent me, I'm not going to pretend that I'm also that smart and found them myself. Josephus, who's writing in the 1st century, writes in "The War of the Jews" 783, he's describing the palace at Masada. And he says, “The floors of the edifice were paved with stones of various colors." And probably before anybody excavated Masada, they thought that was a mosaic. And now that they've excavated it...

Frankie: There are mosaics, however...

Nehemia: And there are mosaics, they're very beautiful ones. But this is almost certainly...the word there is "poikilos” in Greek. And one of the things that we discussed before we started the recording, is that Josephus used the exact same word to describe the floors of the Temple Mount, that they were poikilos, that they were multicolored. And probably it's what we're looking at right here, this opus sectile which is these little triangles and squares all fitted together in an intricate kind of way.

And then, Herod's palace in Jerusalem also in Josephus War 544, it says, "One cannot describe the variety.” And again, poikilos, the paving stones, the stones which would be rare in any other place were brought here in great quantity. And you showed me something, I couldn't even believe it. It was a piece of alabaster that was used, a white alabaster used on the floor. And what did you say?

Frankie: People always say, “Who would use alabaster on the floor?” Only Herod.

Nehemia: Right, and alabaster, what comes to mind is in the New Testament, there's a story of the woman who had the alabaster jar. And in it was some kind of precious oil, anointing oil or something like that, or a precious perfume. Because alabaster was a very rare material. It was very valuable, probably very difficult to cut, I would think, a very hard material, and he put it on the floor.

Frankie: He put it on the floor.

Nehemia: And you were telling me he also had a bathtub made of alabaster.

Frankie: Yeah, he had a bathtub made of alabaster. Now, this was a local alabaster that came from a cave here in Israel. And right now, the archaeologists that are at the Israel Museum are trying to track down...

Nehemia: They're trying to find where it came from, wow.

Frankie: They are working with some Geologists that are trying to figure out where this bathtub came from, because it is the size of today's bathtub.

Nehemia: Oh really?

Frankie: Yeah, it's about the size of today's bathtub, you sit down and relax in it.

Nehemia: Which is very small, in my opinion.

Frankie: Yeah, but it's a solid block of alabaster.

Nehemia: Wow, and he actually took alabaster slabs and put them on the floor as part of this opus sectile. You know, different shapes and sizes. Maybe it was the leftover from the bathtub that he used to make the...I don’t know.

Frankie: It is. That’s what I think that the one I showed you a few minutes ago, that little square there, it's probably left over from the bathtub.

Nehemia: They said, “Let's put it on the floor.”

Frankie: Let's put it on the floor.

Nehemia: And then here's the quote I found, Josephus War 552. This is the key passage, here's Josephus describing the Temple. And he says, “The open-air courtyard was completely paved with stones of poikilos,” in Greek, “of various types and colors.” And I'm looking at not only the type of stone that Josephus describes, I'm looking at the actual stones that Josephus describes that were pulled out through this Temple Mount Sifting Project.

They were scooped up by the Waqf, the Islamic authority in the Temple Mount, dumped in the Kidron Valley, brought over to Emek Tzurim where the Temple Mount Sifting Project gathered them. And now, Frankie has put them back together so I can see what Josephus saw. I'm getting excited, Frankie. Frankie, how did you start doing this? You told me you started working at the Temple Mount Sifting Project two weeks after arriving in Israel, and you started as a volunteer.

Frankie: I started as a volunteer.

Nehemia: And I just want to jump forward. You were telling me, recently you gave a lecture to 40 archaeologists on how to put these floors back together. And you weren't trained as an archaeologist. You do have a master's in Judaic Studies.

Frankie: Yes.

Nehemia: But you weren't formally trained as an archaeologist. But you were giving a lecture at the Israel Antiquities Authority to the archaeologists, on what exactly?

Frankie: It was on how to put a floor together when all you have is a box of rocks. They had given me this box of rocks from Banias, which is a town way up north in Israel. And there was a building that was found there.

Nehemia: And that was Herod's son, wasn't it, who built that?

Frankie: No.

Nehemia: Oh no, that was built by Herod.

Frankie: This one we think is built by Herod. Most of the town at Banias was built by Herod's son. This was an isolated building in a different part of the city and it appears to have been built by Herod.

Nehemia: And for those who read the New Testament, Banias was called at the time, Caesarea Philippi.

Frankie: Caesarea Philippi, yeah.

Nehemia: Right, Caesarea Philippi, and that's the place where Jesus asked his Disciples, “Who do people say I am?” Matthew 16 or something.

Frankie: Yeah, and Peter answers.

Nehemia: Okay, but that's a different discussion. So, you found the floor that would have been there, you know, now, I'm exaggerating, but this may have been the floor where Jesus asked Peter...We don't know that. And it was in the palace, but whatever, so he probably wasn't. He was probably out somewhere in the city.

Frankie: This particular floor, we just had a box of rocks. We did not have the impressions from the floor like we do in Jericho, where they have all these beautiful impressions on the floor, so you know what the floor looks like.

Nehemia: So, explain that. You excavate the floor and instead of finding the triangle, you find the imprint of the triangle in the plaster where it's set.

Frankie: In some places, like at Masada and at Jericho, when they excavated there, they found a floor with tile impressions down in it. In some places they were even a few little tiles left over, and they found loose tiles there, so then you know the shape.

Nehemia: So that's pretty easy to reconstruct, you just put the tile back where it fit in the plaster.

Frankie: It's easy to reconstruct because you know, the pattern that's on the floor. Remember now, these are not just a basic checkerboard pattern like you're used to see on other floors.

Nehemia: No, these are complex patterns.

Frankie: Very complex patterns.

Nehemia: This is a fancier floor than I have, from 2000 years ago, you know, whatever, I've got the simple…we call it “balatot,” you know, tiles.

Frankie: So, if you have just the tiles themselves coming in all these different geometric shapes, then what you have to do is, you have to work with them geometrically. You have to measure the sides, you have to measure the angles, remember those cumbersome protractors that you used in school and you thought you would never use again?

Nehemia: This is your background in math and statistics.

Frankie: Right. So, you'd measure all these, and then you can determine how you can put these together because they're only gonna go together several ways in order to create a pattern. So, you know, I have to be very selective as to how you do this.

Nehemia: So, what were you explaining to the 40 archaeologists in this Israel Antiquities Authority lecture?

Frankie: Oh, I was just explaining to them...

Nehemia: How to do this.

Frankie: Yeah. First off, I tell them, I'm not an archaeologist, I'm a mathematician. And one of the archaeologists says, “Well, sometimes it's better not to be an archaeologist, because you don't come with any preconceived ideas as to how this has to go together. You can think outside the box.” So, I was showing them by working with characteristics of Herod's floors, how he used a contrasting light, dark, light, dark, light, dark as he moves through it, that it has to be based on the Roman foot. That it has to be very well prepared, since you have no mortar sitting in between these, so you can't have gaps.

Nehemia: They're very tight, the pieces together.

Frankie: They’re extremely tight. So, given all this, there's only certain ways these tiles go together. And using mathematics and geometry you can actually work out then how to reconstruct this, how you can put it back together again in the pattern that he would have used.

Nehemia: So, you've given what I'm gonna call the “definitive lecture” on how to do this, to the 40 archaeologists in the Israel Antiquities Authority. Now let's go back to 2007. Two weeks after you made Aliya, and you're a volunteer at the Sifting Project, who taught you how to do this?

Frankie: I taught myself how to do it.

Nehemia: That's awesome.

Frankie: I taught myself how to do it.

Nehemia: How did that happen? You tell me the story.

Frankie: I was working on a pile of rocks, and in this pile of rocks we kept finding these geometric-shaped tiles. And as I was bringing them into the archaeologist, I say, “Oh, here's another one. Here's another parallelogram. Here's another parallelogram.” And one day, I brought to the archaeologists a large parallelogram. An hour later, I brought her a small parallelogram, and I put one on top of the other and said, “Here’s your rocks for the day.” And she looked up to me and she says, “Oh, look. It's a daddy and a baby. Oh, isn't that cute?”

So, I actually took the small stone then, and I moved it around on the large one. And I said, “Tali, it is a daddy and a baby.” I said, “Look, they have the same sized angles on all the corners.” So, then I ask her, “Is anybody working here now with these tiles, measuring the sides, measuring the angles, trying to figure out how you can reconstruct the patterns?” And she says, “No, we haven't gotten that far yet. What we're doing right now is just collecting.”

Nehemia: Collecting rocks.

Frankie: “Here, do you want to do that?” And I said, “Sure.” And my first question to her was then, “Do you have a protractor here?” And she goes, “A what?” So, I explained, “The little semi-circular thing to measure angles with.” And she says, “Oh,” and she gave me the Hebrew name for it, because she knew the Hebrew name. And she says, “No, we don't have one of those around here.” And I said, “Okay, I'll get a protractor and I'll get started tomorrow.” So, that's how I got started with it.

Nehemia: And you were showing me you've got a little bag here with a protractor and a compass.

Frankie: I have my little pencil case with my protractors and compasses.

Nehemia: And I'll be honest, I don't know that I own a protractor or a compass. If I do, I wouldn't know where to find it, and haven't used one probably since high school. And here, you're actually using them. And without them you wouldn't be able to reconstruct these ancient floors.

Frankie: That’s right.

Nehemia: That's pretty cool.

Frankie: So, then I started studying all the different Herod's floors. One of the first ones that I went to visit with one of the guys, Asaf, who was at the project, we went to Masada, because we knew that Herod has used the floors there, we'd seen pictures. So, we went to Masada and they let us actually go down onto the floors, which the general public can't do, and get closeup pictures.

Nehemia: And these are floors that were preserved intact?

Frankie: Some of these are preserved intact.

Nehemia: Or some of them were reconstructed?

Frankie: No, these ones that are preserved intact at Masada. These were Herod's floors from 2000 years ago. We were able to go down onto the floors to take pictures.

Nehemia: Is this in the bath house?

Frankie: This is in the bath house up there.

Nehemia: Okay. I was there a few weeks ago.

Frankie: We'd go down on the floors, look at them, take the measurements of them, see how they're reconstructed.

Nehemia: And there are impressions there of the pieces in the plaster.

Frankie: There are impressions and there are some still in the floor.

Nehemia: Some actually in the place? Okay.

Frankie: So, we started by going there, looking at that, and that's where our research started was on the floors at Masada.

Nehemia: Wow, so from the floors at Masada to the floors of the Temple Mount. And I just can't get over this. I want to read this again. It's from Josephus, The Jewish War, chapter 5 section 2. He says, one more time, "The open-air courtyard was completely paved with stones of poikilos of various types and colors.” And my hand is now touching the floor that Josephus described in a book written 2000 years ago that you reconstructed with your own hands, that you taught yourself how to reconstruct. That's unbelievable. That's gotta be pretty rare in archaeology.

You know, my bachelor's degree was in archaeology. And one of the things that we learned is that what Josephus does is pretty amazing, that you could take a description of an actual building and go back to that building. You know, a lot of times in archaeology you'll have descriptions of cities, or in ancient sources, you’ll have descriptions of cities, and you can excavate that city. Or you’ll have descriptions of certain types of, I don't know, a Roman road or something, and you can find that road.

But here it's an actual floor from an actual building. And here it is, reconstructed. That's pretty special. And now, I'm sorry, I'm gonna get emotional. This is a floor, like I said, where people would have come 2000 years ago, and when they came up to the Temple after their long, dusty pilgrimage from all over the Mediterranean and all over the Jewish world, they would have stepped on this floor, and they would have seen this.

Frankie: And this is a floor that Jesus would have walked on when he was there.

Nehemia: Wait a minute. The ancient floor lady, the Jewish person working at the Temple Mount Sifting Project is telling me this is the floor Jesus would have walked on. And you know, there's a story in the New Testament where Jesus, or Yeshua as he was known 2000 years ago, Yeshua was teaching in the Temple. And he could have been teaching on this floor. He was teaching somewhere on this floor, whether it was this actual section, we don't know. But he could have been sitting, this little 12-year-old boy, on this particular spot of the floor, or somewhere nearby, for sure. And this is what he would have seen. This is amazing.

Frankie: Let me tell you a story that will directly relate Jesus to being on these floors. This type of floor usually has a roof over it, meaning it probably was not out in the very center where it would get rained on and the sun would be on it, but rather it was over in the open porticoes that went around the outside edge.

Nehemia: Tell us what an open portico is. I know what it is.

Frankie: A portico is a roofed porch. When Herod expanded the Temple Mount, he put these roofed porches around the east, north and west side of the Temple Mount.

Nehemia: Basically, it's a line of columns which holds up a roof so you don't have to stand in the blazing sun of the Middle East.

Frankie: Yeah, a very wide, covered porch.

Nehemia: Because when you think of “porch” we think of something else. I think sometimes we'll call this a “colonnade.”

Frankie: A colonnade, okay. At the southern end, Herod put a giant building called the Stoa. And this was a building that had four rows of columns holding up a huge roof over it. It was like a great, huge pavilion that was totally open on the north side, so that everybody in it could be seeing everything that was going on out at the Temple Mount, but they would be in the shade instead of out in the sun.

Nehemia: And that's probably where you'd teach. You probably wouldn't teach out in the blazing sun.

Frankie: Right, not in the blazing sun. You'd be under one of these shaded porticoes, or colonnades along the side. And that's probably where these floors were. They had some protection from the sun, some protection from the rain. Yet any place you were standing in the courtyard, you could see all these things all the way around it, whereas the tiles out in the middle of the courtyard probably would have been much larger tiles.

Nehemia: And you have examples of that. And actually, if people go back and listen to the original interview that I did with Zachi Dvira from the Temple Mount Sifting Project, there's a photo of him holding…

Frankie: A large tile.

Nehemia: …a giant, compared to what you're holding here, piece of bituminous chalk…

Frankie: Limestone.

Nehemia: …limestone or whatever, and that would have been out probably in the big, open sun blazing spaces.

Frankie: Yes, where the smaller ones would have been in slightly more sheltered, but it's totally visible from the whole courtyard.

Nehemia: And these are still open areas, because there aren't walls. I mean, I guess there’s a wall on one side.

Frankie: No, no. It's just colonnades, columns. But the story of Jesus talking about the widow's mite, right? It says he's sitting in Solomon's porches with his Disciples, and they're looking towards the Treasury, and they see the lady putting her coin into a charity box out there. Now, the Solomon's porches that he's talking about, this is this colonnade, this covered-over porch sitting on the east side of the Temple Mount. And he's looking sort of through the gateway that goes on into the more enclosed portion of the Temple Mount where the Temple was standing. And they're watching the lady put her tiny little coin in, and then this rich man is being so scornful of her and her tiny, little coin. But it said he and his Disciples are sitting in Solomon's porches, and he is teaching them there.

Nehemia: And that could be this.

Frankie: So, what are they sitting on?

Nehemia: Wait a minute.

Frankie: They're sitting on these floors.

Nehemia: Wait a minute, hold on. So, this is the floor. This is the actual floor. I don't know if it's the actual spot, but it is the actual floor.

Frankie: It is the actual floor.

Nehemia: Where Yeshua sat with his Disciples, and they were watching this woman put the widow's mite… Wow, that's pretty cool.

Frankie: This was in that story.

Nehemia: I'm not a Christian. But to me, this is so cool, because this is a piece of history. And like I said, whether it's coming from the Christian perspective, it was Yeshua who sat on this spot, or if you're coming from maybe a more Jewish perspective, and it was the Jewish pilgrims.

Frankie: Yeshua was Jewish.

Nehemia: No, no, absolutely. But I'm saying, for me, that's an important part of history. But also, for me, what I really connect with is a Jew coming from Rome, from Iberia or North Africa, or someplace like that in the Jewish diaspora, coming on the long dusty road off of a boat. And he finally reaches Jerusalem, and he walks up and he's walking across these stones.

Maybe I connect with that because I came from a far-off land and was able to come up to the place of the Temple. So that's exciting to me, and there’s this one passage that you also sent me from the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's 5q15, which means it was a scroll found in the fifth cave at Qumran. There aren’t too many scrolls from the fifth cave. And it's describing here, it says, "And all the streets of the city were paved with white stone, marble and jasper".

And before your discovery, the Temple Mount Sifting Project, people thought that was some kind of fantasy, some kind of fantastic, eschatological description of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. And now we're sitting here at the Temple Mount Sifting Project, looking at these stones, and you're telling me one of the stones was alabaster.

Frankie: Yes, alabaster stone.

Nehemia: So, I mean, so there really were precious stones. There was marble. I don't know what jasper is, or if that's even a correct translation of the Hebrew.

Frankie: The archaeologist who’s been researching that particular scroll said, “Yeah, this is some kind of fantasy.” But then he said, “No, it's not some kind of fantasy.” He said, “The person who wrote this had probably been in Jerusalem. He'd been walking around the Temple Mount courts. He saw all these beautiful, beautiful stones in pavements that you walk upon.”

Nehemia: And a lot of these stones are imported from foreign countries. To him, you know, a piece of marble would be something that maybe he never saw in his whole lifetime, except for at the Temple.

Frankie: The majority of the stones that we have here that are not local stones are imported from Turkey and from Greece. We have some from Tunisia, that yellow one in the stone over there, there's a chunk of yellow, that is from Tunisia, the alabaster.

Nehemia: From Tunisia. So, let's get some context here. You know, today we're used to seeing exotic materials from all over the world, and we go on the Internet and we see things from Mars, and you know. But back then, these things had to be dragged on the back of donkeys, and then they gotta be loaded on boats and carts, and it was a very big deal.

Frankie: Even when it got here to Israel, it was brought into Jaffa harbor, the southern port of today's Tel Aviv. It went to Jaffa harbor, had to be loaded on an oxcart, and then it had to be transferred to Jerusalem. Now, up to Jerusalem, you have to realize that Jerusalem is a mountain town. It sits on the top of a mountain. We are sitting here, our elevation at this point here is like 2700 feet, okay, which means that oxcart has got to go from an elevation of zero to 2700 feet to get all this material up here to the top of the mountain, in order for it to be used. Now, if the material was being used down in Caesarea…

Nehemia: It’s a lot easier.

Frankie: That's much easier. That material was used down there, but that’s a port. It’s easy to do.

Nehemia: This reminds me of when I was in Nepal, and I did this trek in the mountains. And as you would go deeper and deeper into the mountains, prices would go up. And the reason they'd go up is everything was carried on someone's back. And we would actually see people passing us - because I'm kind of a big guy who walks slow - but these young, big strapping Nepalese guys were literally passing us at very quick paces, with giant duffel bags on their backs, full of anything anybody would use that was a manufactured product up in those mountains that had to be brought in on someone's back.

Frankie: Coffee, sugar.

Nehemia: Anything, right. Especially coffee, we need coffee. And back then, of course, it probably wouldn't be on somebody's back, because they had roads, it would have been on an oxcart, but it really gave me a perspective. So, literally the prices would go up as you would go deeper and deeper on the trek. I remember a bottle of water was like, I don't know, five cents or something in the city and it was like $1. Imagine that, 20 times increase by the time you get out into the... And of course, here a bottle of water is like $2.50 but whatever, that's Israel. But in Nepalese terms, for a Nepalese person, that's a lot of money. And only tourists were buying that, so it really gave me some perspective.

So, this was carried in. So, this guy who's writing this Dead Sea Scroll, he describes this thing that modern researchers thought was fantasy until you discovered it. And you put it back together and you realized- this probably isn't fantasy, he's probably describing something he actually saw. That's exciting to me.

Frankie: That’s what he’s seeing. But it's not just the streets. When you're talking then about a street, you're not talking about something a car is driving on. You're talking about a walkway.

Nehemia: Not to mention the Hebrew word for street is “rekhov” which in ancient Hebrew, usually meant a square.

Frankie: A walkway.

Nehemia: Well, not just a walkway.

Frankie: Or a square.

Nehemia: It may have actually meant a public square…

Frankie: Public square.

Nehemia: …from the word “rakhav” which is "wide.” Today, we say “kikar,” but in Biblical Hebrew, rekhov was the public open spaces from the word rakhav. So, I think that's really exciting to me, because a lot of times I'll hear textual scholars will dismiss something read in an ancient text, and they'll say, “Oh no, that's fantasy.” And then the archaeologists go and they uncover it. That's amazing, that's pretty cool. That in and of itself is cool.

Tell us about these floors from the Crusader period. You stay there. I'm gonna go get a piece of a Crusader period floor and bring it back, and have you tell the story. So, what are we looking at now, Frankie, ‘cause they can't see it?

Frankie: Now we're looking at another floor that's made out of cut tiles. But these are much smaller than the previous ones. Some of these are only about a quarter of an inch in size.

Nehemia: Some of these are really tiny.

Frankie: 1-inch squares, and other ones are only like about a quarter of an inch, other things are maybe an inch long and a half an inch wide.

Nehemia: So, this is much more intricate…

Frankie: A much more intricate pattern.

Nehemia: …which if I didn't know anything I'd say was probably from a later period because it's so much more intricate. What is it?

Frankie: This is a floor that we have reproduced from, again, all the little pieces that were found within the debris on the Temple Mount. And we realized that this replicates a floor that we can still see today in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher here in Jerusalem. But because this material was up on the Temple Mount, it means this was a floor just like the one in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but it was up on the Temple Mount. And in this particular case, parts of this floor still exist today inside the Dome of the Rock.

Nehemia: Wow, that's amazing. So, there's a floor that was built in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. A similar floor was then built in the Temple Mount, and you found pieces of that similar floor from the Temple Mount.

Frankie: Yes.

Nehemia: And then part of this floor still exists.

Frankie: Yes, inside the Dome of the Rock.

Nehemia: Now, when you reconstructed this, had you seen the one in the Dome of the Rock?

Frankie: I saw the picture in the Dome of the Rock.

Nehemia: You did, okay.

Frankie: When I saw the picture, I realized, “That's strange. This is the same floor that is over in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.”

Nehemia: That's interesting. I gotta stop here and think about this. One of the things we'll hear a lot is that the Muslims built everything up there in the Temple Mount, that's what they'll claim. But you're saying one of the floors in the Dome of the Rock was actually built by the Christians, the Crusaders?

Frankie: Yes, during the Crusader period, the Dome of the Rock was turned into a church. The large stone in the very center of the Dome of the Rock was covered with a huge marble slab, and an altar was placed on top of it.

Nehemia: And when we say "altar" we mean a Christian altar…

Frankie: A Christian altar.

Nehemia: …not to say we're sacrificing bulls or whatever.

Frankie: A Christian altar for offering the mass was placed right in the very center of the Dome of the Rock on top of this marble slab.

Nehemia: Okay. I think most people don't know that; that's very interesting.

Frankie: That's right. Then the building was being used as a church. For about 100 years, this building was used as a church. Now, in one portion of the Dome of the Rock, they actually made this really fancy floor. Where this fancy floor stood was between the altar platform, where the priest would be saying the mass, and the area where the congregation would be standing. There was a little strip of floor in-between, and they put a fancy floor there.

Nehemia: Okay, and we know that because part of it’s still preserved.

Frankie: We know it's still sitting there. It’s still there.

Nehemia: And today, it's probably covered in carpets, I would guess.

Frankie: It has some throw rugs that are over it. And certain pictures taken from cameras that were mounted way up on the top of the Dome of the Rock looking down, if you know exactly where to look, you can see some little pieces hanging out from the edge of the carpet.

Nehemia: So, they’re hiding it?

Frankie: Yeah.

Nehemia: But it’s still there.

Frankie: You can actually see it.

Nehemia: So, how did you reconstruct this? You were telling me what you did at the Church of the Sepulcher, how you went there…

Frankie: At the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I discovered that there were floors in that Church, there are two different patterns of floors we discovered in the Church…

Nehemia: What is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, for those who don't know?

Frankie: This is the Church that was built around two different places in the life of Jesus. First, we have the hill of Golgotha, or Calvary, which was within this Church. And also, within this Church…

Nehemia: And for the Jews, that's where Jesus was crucified.

Frankie: Crucified, right. And then beside that, just a few meters away is the place where Jesus was buried. It was a cave burial place. Later on, the cave roof and sides were taken away.

Nehemia: But it’s the same space.

Frankie: But it's the same space.

Nehemia: As they used to say in Saturday Night Live, “We've replaced the handle and the head, but it occupies the same space.”

Frankie: Yeah, it occupies the same space. That area is the place of Jesus' burial and Jesus' resurrection.

Nehemia: According to the Christian belief.

Frankie: According to the Christian belief, yeah.

Nehemia: And I should point out, that's actually according to the Catholic and the Greek Orthodox and a few other of the, I guess, traditional denominations. But if you ask the Protestants, they'll point to a different spot, which is called Gordon's Golgotha. Nothing to do with me. And that's actually outside of the walls of the Old City.

And there's a big controversy about whether that was inside the walls or outside the walls, because if it was inside the walls at the time of Jesus, then obviously he wouldn't be buried there. They didn't bury people inside of a Jewish city. That's probably a discussion for a whole different episode.

But this is what Christians...really going back to the time of Helena, the mother of Constantine, she came and she had a dream. In the dream she was told, “This is the spot where the true cross would be found.” And they went and they dug there, and she supposedly found what she called the “true cross,” meaning the original cross. But really what that means is since the 4th century, this has been the spot where many Christians believed was the site of the crucifixion.

Frankie: They venerate this as the site of the crucifixion.

Nehemia: Right. And so, in the time of the Crusaders, actually one of the main reasons for the Crusades, if I remember from history, was that they were saying Christians were being barred access from this particular Church.

Frankie: Yes, they were barred access.

Nehemia: And that led to this massive European invasion of the Holy Land of Israel. So, this was a big deal for them, and these floors were found. Now tell us, how did you reconstruct this floor?

Frankie: Let's go back in history. When the Crusaders came in, many of their churches had been either totally or partially destroyed by the Muslims. And once the Crusaders came in, then the Christians were allowed to reconstruct, refurbish these churches. So, at that point, a lot of these floors were reconstructed. And in some of the chapels there in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Crusaders laid down new floors. Some of them are very simple floors with larger stones, and some of them are extremely ornate like these particular two models that I have here with very tiny, very intricately cut tiles.

Now, at the same time, the Crusaders have also taken over the Temple Mount. They turned Al Aqsa mosque into the headquarters for the Knights Templar…

Nehemia: Move along.

Frankie: …and they turned the Dome of the Rock into a church. And they refurbished these areas to make them look more like a church than like a Muslim mosque or a Muslim building.

Nehemia: I see, so adding the floor made them more comfortable in that building, something familiar.

Frankie: Right, yeah. And where the floors would sit would be in a place where a Christian would've put a floor, based upon the orientation, the way that the church would be oriented in the building.

Nehemia: And it just occurred to me that Muslims probably wouldn’t invest a lot of effort in a floor in a mosque because, you know, it hurts your knees to kneel down on anything but carpet, and so the floor wouldn't have been all that important. But for the Christian who's standing on the floor, that would have been much more important…

Frankie: Yes, so it was lovely floor.

Nehemia: …because they would have removed it. That's very interesting, I never thought about that.

Frankie: So, it turns out there are two different floor patterns that we have been able to reconstruct from all the debris, the artifacts we found in the debris from Temple Mount, that actually match floors that are in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Nehemia: You actually told me the story of how you went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, holding these pieces.

Frankie: The tiles.

Nehemia: Tell us about that, that's a great story.

Frankie: When we first found the tiles and we realized this was a floor in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in order to verify it, I went with my little bag of tiles and a camera. I went to the Church, sat down on the floor, placed my tiles on top of their matching tiles. The same size, the same shape, the same color, the same workmanship. Placed my tiles on top of their tiles and took a picture of it.

Nehemia: Just to give the context, there are thousands of pilgrims, Christians who are coming there every day, passing through. And here is...

Frankie: An archaeologist.

Nehemia: This Jewish lady who's on the floor with little pieces of the tile. What did the monks who run the place, or the Priest, what did they say?

Frankie: You have to dress appropriately, so you put on your sweatshirt that says "archaeologist,” that helps. Number one, they realized, “Okay, she's up to something.”

Nehemia: There's some crazy woman on the floor with little pieces of Lego or whatever, little stones.

Frankie: So, I put them on the floor, took the pictures, in order to show people, we have found exactly what is in the Church. Therefore, there was something like that up on the Temple Mount. Now, the question is, does the floor still exist today?

One of these patterns, we know the floor still does exist. We know a portion of this floor is inside the Dome of the Rock. The other one, we have not found the location of that floor yet. It may have been totally disassembled, totally thrown apart many, many years ago. We don't know. There may still be a portion of it around. The problem is that it's very difficult for archaeologists to have access into Muslim buildings on the up on the Temple Mount. It's very difficult for us to go in there. Secondly, once you go in there, the floors are covered with carpets. So, even if you were walking on this stone floor...

Nehemia: And they're not gonna let you remove the carpet.

Frankie: Right, so we can't go in there and remove them at all.

Nehemia: This is kind of ironic, I want to go back to the Herodian floor before we end. I'm going to take another piece of Herodian floor.

Frankie: He's grabbing a different pattern over here.

Nehemia: Oh, I don’t wanna break that. Oh wow, this is amazing, this piece. Okay, so this is beautiful, there are these triangles.

Frankie: It looks like a pinwheel spinning.

Nehemia: Yeah, if I spun this, I'd get dizzy, but it's beautiful. And these pieces of…What is that material?

Frankie: This is gray limestone around the outside. This stone in the middle is kind of yellowish and pink. This is called "giallo antico" meaning “ancient yellow.” This is from Tunisia.

Nehemia: Oh, this is the piece from Tunisia, wow.

Frankie: That’s the piece from Tunisia. This stone right here, this black chunk that's part of a triangle, this is the black bitumen, the bituminous chalk that comes from down by the Dead Sea. And then this is called “artist's choice.” I needed a strip to go along the side and what I chose...

Nehemia: And you knew it was white and black alternating.

Frankie: Yeah, so in here I needed some kind of an alternating light color. And what I chose is the piece

of stone that is called “Breccia di Aleppo.” It's not really from Aleppo, but it's called “Breccia di Aleppo.”

Nehemia: And have you found pieces of that in the excavations?

Frankie: Yes, we have found pieces of this. But what I used was a picture from the Internet of this kind of marble and photocopied to fill in the space in here. So, you see this beautiful yellow-blue-grey.

Nehemia: So, part of this is the original stones, a part is reconstructions. And some of it is, as you say, it’s the artist's creativity. But then other pieces you actually found.

Frankie: Yes, these are actual ones.

Nehemia: And this is a floor that would have been up on the Temple Mount. Can I get spiritual now? Would you be offended?

Frankie: No, not at all.

Nehemia: I want to get excited here. So, here's this black stone. And you said this came from down by the Dead Sea. And here's another stone…

Frankie: This is a black limestone, it's local.

Nehemia: …also locally, from a different area of Israel. And here's a piece of yellow stone from Tunisia.

Frankie: This is probably from Turkey or Greece.

Nehemia: Wow, so here's the spiritual picture I'm getting looking at this floor, because these are the floors that the pilgrims from throughout the Jewish world would have come and they would have seen. And we know that there were Jews who came to the Temple Mount especially for the Passover sacrifice, and for Sukkot. They would come from all over, and maybe it was something they got to do once in their lifetime. If you weren't from Israel, it would have been a very big deal to come all the way from anywhere in the Mediterranean or Iraq, what’s today Iraq, in that time Babylonia, all the way to Israel would have been a very big deal. And so, we have these stones that also came from very far away.

Frankie: All around the world.

Nehemia: And these remind me, these stones, of the yellow Jew who maybe came from Tunisia, which at the time was a Roman province. And then there would… may have been a black Jew who came all the way from Ethiopia. We have descriptions of that. And you have these gray pieces and these, you know, white people, all these different colors and stones. And they're all brought together at this place in the Temple Mount, just like the people who were brought together all at the Temple Mount. And we can actually touch these floors, they've been reconstructed.

And you know, I hate to say this, but I feel like I've got to give thanks to the Waqf, because there was the Islamic Authority who illegally, and really barbarously, came and scooped out, I think it was something like…

Frankie: 400 truckloads.

Nehemia: ....400 truckloads which was like 9000 tons or something. Zachi says in the first interview the exact number. But they came and they scooped it out, and only because of that now today, and through the efforts of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, we can now actually put these back together. Because if they hadn't done that, we wouldn't have known this floor existed. We'd be reading the Dead Sea Scrolls and say, “Yeah, that was somebody's fantasy, you know, he was on LSD or something, or the ancient equivalent of it.”

Or we'd read in Josephus and say, “Oh yeah, he's exaggerating. He can't really mean that.” But now we get to see it. And I'm excited about this. I'm excited that this floor has been brought together, and now the people from all over the world, just like these stones, are being brought back together. I think this is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. I know that's outside your purview as an archaeologist. So, I'm going to now preach as what I am, which is somebody who loves Scripture.

I see this as this is a picture of Scripture to me. There's this color and that color, and it's from this country and that country. And it paves the floor of the Temple Mount, and it's not just the mosaic where everything is a cookie cutter piece. In the mosaic everything is a perfect cube, and you put them together to make the mosaic. Here each piece is unique - maybe not unique, but they're different patterns. This stone is different from that stone, which is different from that stone, is different than that stone. And I'm seeing people coming together.

Frankie: Even in here there are three different kinds of triangles. There's this little one here, there's a skinny one here, and then this wide one here, that's three different kinds.

Nehemia: And they all come together, and they form this beautiful picture. And I think that's what's happening with God's people from around the world. They're coming from this perspective, or from that country, and with this color, and that idea. And they're coming together, and they're coming to this place to Jerusalem, just like was prophesied in Isaiah 2, of the people from all the nations coming and flowing to Jerusalem and saying, “We have heard that God is with you.”

Frankie, thank you so much for coming…

Frankie: Thank you.

Nehemia: …and talking with me about this. I'm excited now. Now I want to start the interview, because now I'm all excited, but we're gonna wrap it up. Thank you so much. We are here in Jerusalem with the ancient floor lady. Shalom.

This episode of Hebrew Voices was sponsored by two servants of Yehovah El Elyon. Todah. Thank you.

You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

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Nehemia Gordon holding re-assembled floor tiles that covered the Jerusalem Temple in the 1st Century CE. Each square is made up of twenty or more stones of different colors and sizes from all over the ancient world. The Temple was covered with over 1.5 million squares like these!

Nehemia Gordon holding re-assembled floor tiles that covered the Jerusalem Temple in the 1st Century CE. Each square is made up of twenty or more stones of different colors and sizes from all over the ancient world. The Temple was covered with over 1.5 million squares like these!

Frankie Snyder works at the Temple Mount Sifting Project in Jerusalem, reconstructing ancient floors. She is an expert in the study of ancient Herodian style flooring and succeeded in restoring the ornate tile patterns using geometric principles, and similarities found in tile designs used by Herod at other sites. Frankie was born in America and moved to Israel in 2007. She holds a B.A. in Math and Statistics and a M.A. in Jewish Studies from Hebrew College in Boston.

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  • daniel says:

    Beautiful tiles. Never imagined they looked like that. Perhaps they’re the oldest examples of Abstract Art Deco known to exist. Thanks Frankie and Nehemia. Can somebody say “Restoration of All Things”?

  • Cambra says:

    Todah rabah, Nehemia and Frankie Snyder. What a rich, insightful program! I am overdue to return to Yerushaliyim, Yah willing. What an honor it would be to meet with Frankie Snyder and those working on this project. Nehemia has such blessed work. Thank you for sharing.May you both be most prospered in your endeavors ?️?

  • This is the floor of the Royal Basilica.

  • Yemina G. says:

    I am thankful you shared this because I was able to go to this site today. We found a good number of artifact pieces, including mosaics. The highlight was finding something from the Crusaders era. Todah.

  • Danny says:

    This is a very valuable interview. Thank you Nehemiah. Only one thing: it is extremely important that the lady is allowed to finish her sentences, please, and her explanation so we can get the most of her knowledge. It is amazing the fact that God gave the blessing and honor of reconstructing these temple floor tiles (the Messiah’s temple) to this Israeli lady who dearly holds Yeshua with such a loving and respectful actitud shown in her words regarding him. Big lesson for all of us. One more temple part we have for the building of the 3rd temple where Mesiah will return, this time as King.

  • Linda Stark says:

    Nehemia’s excitement and these floors reminds me of the teaching from our senior pastor, always showing that God loves everyone of us, sizes shapes and colors, personalities etc…..

    1Pe_2:5  Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

    Eph_2:21  In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:

  • Brenda Paulson says:

    Wow what a wonderful insight. I never thought the floor tiles would be like that. I always imagined the floor as the same as the Western Wall stone. The beautiful correlation of the tiles to Yah’s people was so heart touching. I agree, a fund raising project for quilt and cross stitch patterns would be wonderful. They would make beautiful wall hangings, challah covers, or table runners for Feast or Shabbat tables.

  • Janice says:

    Wow! What an incredible woman doing amazing work. Thanks for sharing.

  • Even though this was the second time I heart this I loved it. Hope to see Some of it in real Life someday soon
    I really enjoying Hebrew voices!! Keep up the good work also with the Aviv Search!

    Judith

  • Analil says:

    The different shapes and colors of the floor and Yah’s people coming together! Santoooooo!

  • dotco8 says:

    Wonderful!

  • Jeanne Caillet says:

    Nehemia, I’ve always appreciated the oppunity you gave me to “sift” the dirt from the Temple Mount, tell the story, and share a rock from the mount. Hope all is well with you. Jeanne

  • Somehow those cubic forms in the stones reminds me of a tesseract cube. As a passionate artist for Yehovah and a Temple freak I find this topic superb interesting! Going to listen to this soon…

    • Loved the show! It has been always important to me both spiritually and emotionally how the people and things looked in the Biblical Israel. That helps to make difference between Roman error and Hebrew Truth. Nehemia’s spiritual insight in the end was very thought provoking.

  • Hiltona Castleberry says:

    Awesome show. I loved hearing about this!

  • Shoshannah Congdon says:

    Mentioning that the illegal removal of the dirt is a blessing because it allows people to find what was in the Temple, was a good point. As Yoseph said to his brothers what you meant for evil YHVH meant for good. Thank you both for presenting the historical information. It is very inspiring.

  • Kirk and Sandra Iventosch says:

    Fantastic episode! I loved the analogy of the floor and Yah’s people. Thanks!

  • Mary Wittman says:

    Favorite one yet

  • Diana Roach says:

    Just too cool!! Thank you for sharing! My mother used to do mosaics, some with the little glass squares and some with shaped tiles and sea shells. Lots of work. These are so nice and this Hebrew Voices is wonderful!! Thanks again.

  • Linda Sprague says:

    Once again providing us here in the Western World with info that brings history to life. Thanks to you both.

  • Dot Olsen says:

    I too was thinking of quilt patterns! This episode was FABULOUS!!! I had no mental picture for the flooring under the porticoes until now. I would like to know if the Temple Institute is working with this lady to incorporate any of these patterns into their plans for the Third Temple. Thank you for this very instructive and inspiring presentation!

  • Vicki Acker says:

    Thank you Nehemia and Frankie Snyder. Just an idea for a fundraiser. These would make beautiful quilting patterns under a collection of ‘A Treasury of Ancient Israel Temple Patterns.”