Tonight at dinner, I was talking with Orit about the Jerusalem Archaeological Park, and how fascinating it is to be able to walk among the ruins and touch the stones and inscriptions. I told her that I was especially impressed by the trumpet-blower's stone.
"You know it is a replica," she asked me. "Right?" I was crushed. No, I didn't know it was a replica. I probably would have known if I had actually listened to my audio tour or read some of the literature I brought back with me, but I didn't. I really thought I was standing there running my fingers across a two-thousand year old inscription. But of course not. The top of the stone was removed and replaced with a copy. The original, Orit informed me, is displayed at the Israel Museum. She could tell I was disappointed. "It is a very good copy," she said in a consoling voice.
Happily, it seems that everything else in the archaeological garden is authentic. We talked about the inscription high on the wall of the Temple Mount, the one that is the same text as the verses from Isaiah quoted at the top of this blog. She told me about the debate within the archaeological community about why that verse would have been inscribed there, and why so high up. The prevailing theory is that by the time the words were carved into the stone, the surface of the land around the Temple Mount would have been about the height of the inscription. Another interesting detail: where the quotation says, "Your bodies will flourish like the grass," the text of the inscription reads, "Your bones will flourish." Orit told me that gravesites have been excavated around that site, and it is possible that the verse was inscribed and the text altered to mark the cemetery.
