The archaeologist Dr. Gabi Barkay came to Israel at age 6 with his mother and father, on board the ship Kommemiyut, one of the ships that smuggled Jewish immigrants into Mandate Palestine. This was the vessel's last voyage bringing Jewish immigrants to Israel before it was sold to iron traders. As part of the events of a national conference hosted by the Israel Exploration Society, the Kommemiyut sailed past the coast one last time, possibly hinting at the future of the child it had carried from the Budapest ghetto to the land of Israel. Since then, 66 years have passed, and it seems almost arrogant to attempt to sum up in a single conversation with Barkay the progress Israel has made in archaeology since it was founded, or his personal contribution to that progress. Barkay has been involved in so many studies, excavations and events relating to local archaeology that it's doubtful a single interview will do it all justice. Although he has never worked for the Israel Antiquities Authority -- Barkay says he prefers a university framework that offers freedom of opinion and thought -- he has acquired an international reputation thanks to two things: The first is the historic discovery of the Priestly Blessing Scrolls, the most ancient archaeological discovery of a biblical text dating to the period the Bible is believed to have been put together. The discovery of the scrolls had wide-ranging influence on biblical research, and the assessment of its historical reliability. The second is the project of sifting dirt from the Temple Mount. Barkay describes the Mount as "a black hole in the history of archaeology in general and Israeli archaeology in particular." The less successful substitute for excavations at the Temple Mount is the project that sifts through the dirt dug up from the Mount and thrown away by Muslims in what then-Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein termed "a kick to the history of the Jewish people." Barkay, along with his young colleague Tzahi Dvira, has spearheaded the project for 12 years and is trying to save a little of that history. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have already taken part in the unusual ongoing archaeological event, which has turned up just as many tiny finds dating back to the days of the First Temple, the Second Temple, and later periods. When I ask Barkay how he sees the claims by a few archaeologists that in recent years he has stopped acting independently and has sometimes aligned himself with a religious and nationalist agenda and narrative, and that there is great doubt to the truth of biblical stories, he suggests we get things straight. Barkay says that "the role of the Bible is not to prove archaeology [right], and the role of archaeology isn't to prove the Bible." "As an archaeologist, I'm not trying to prove anything. I want to find out what was. If my findings contradict what the Bible says -- fine. If my findings match what the Bible says -- that's also fine. I have no intention of proving or disproving anything. My approach is detached from any ideology. I'll accept anything that is discovered, but on the other hand, I'm not detached from the world." Which means? "I'm Jewish -- very Jewish, a believer, a member of the community, who goes to synagogue. I'm like a chest of drawers. When I'm busy with archaeology, I open the scientific drawer. When I go to synagogue, I close it and open the religious drawer, and the contents of one don't mix with that of the other. I know that what the book of Joshua says about Joshua's 'leaps' [conquests] from the north to the south of the land of Israel and the extermination of the Canaanites at sword's point isn't an accurate historical account. Things didn't necessarily happen that way. I know that every historic source contains the writer's bias, and that the historical truth is much more complicated. "In the book of Joshua, which is not historical, the 12th chapter contains a list of 31 kings that Joshua defeated, and we know that in the late Bronze Age there were about 30 Canaanite city-states in the land of Israel, so therefore this is a report that conforms to history. It's written in Joshua 11:10 that 'Hazor formerly was the head of all these kingdoms.' We know from archaeology that Hatzor was in fact the largest of the Canaanite cities. This means that in the book that contains absolutely unhistorical stories, there are also true accounts that pass archaeological tests." Professor Ze'ev Herzog wrote in 1999 that after 70 years of diligent excavation in the land of Israel, archaeologists had reached a frightening conclusion: "These things never happened. The deeds of the Patriarchs were folktales. We never went to Egypt, and we never came back from there. We never conquered the land, and there is no sign of the empire of David and Solomon." "That's utter nonsense. You need a very keen blade to separate certain details that are historic from others that were written in later times and are essentially myths. A generalized statement like that is impossible. It's like saying: We have a problem with our son, so we'll toss him out the window. We have a problem with the text of the Bible, so we toss it out? There are so many examples of the biblical text as a historical source matching and coinciding with archaeological discoveries, how can we say, 'These things never happened'-" Barkay recalls the Lachish excavation, in which he played a central part for 15 years. "In nearly every layer of the dig there, which represents a different period, we found archaeological evidence [of things] that are recorded in historical sources, too. Layer 2 is mentioned in Jeremiah, and layer 3 -- where Assyrian King Sennacherib launched an attack on King Hezekiah of Judea -- is mentioned in the books of Isaiah and 2 Kings. In layer 5, you find Lachish among the cities under siege by Rehavam, son of King Solomon, and when you get to the final Canaanite layer, which was terribly destroyed in a huge fire, you recall Joshua 12, which tells of the destruction of Canaanite Lachish by the Israelites, and you go on and reach the most ancient layer, where Lachish is mentioned in Egyptian sources." Barkay has plenty more examples of biblical texts aligning with archaeological finds, but my questions steer him toward the story of the discovery of the Priestly Blessing Scrolls, a discovery that knocked down a few of the "Bible deniers'" key arguments. How were these scrolls discovered? "I got to Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem, which is where I found the scrolls, through theoretical calculations. I tried to put myself in the shoes of the ancient residents of Jerusalem and ask myself where I would hold various activities that were part of the city but not inside it. For example: Where would I bury the dead? Or grow vegetables? Where would I set up army camps or quarry building stones? I looked for places that would meet the paradoxical demands of close enough and far enough. "When I checked the map, these all coincided at the site where St. Andrew's Church is located today, near the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. I also discovered that Josephus Flavius' literary description put the siege camp of Pompeus in 63 B.C.E. there; that this was where Titus ' fortifications had been when he laid siege to Jerusalem in 70 C.E." And what did the excavations there reveal? "An initial survey of the site turned up many First Temple-era ceramics. In 1975, when we got there for the short excavation season, I discovered an unknown ancient church from the Byzantium Period; remains of a paved road leading from Jerusalem to Bethlehem; and graves of cremated soldiers of the 10th Roman Legion, which sacked the Second Temple. Also -- seven burial caves from the First Temple Period. In one of them, the Priestly Blessing Scrolls were discovered in 1979. Except then, we still didn't know what they were." Do you remember the stages of the discovery? "Of course. The First Temple-era burial caves had been largely destroyed and looted, but one of them had special architecture. In one of its rooms, there were three raised shelves. One of them featured a long pillow, with six headrests carved out of the stone intended for six of the dead. Under the shelf with the multiple headrests, the opening of a repository was discovered." What is a repository? "It's a place where, in the First Temple period, relatives of the deceased would place alongside the body objects that included domestic objects, food, drink, jewelry and other items. The worldview in the First Temple period was that the dead continue on with their lives, that the family of the deceased was responsible for supplying all their needs. "At the time, we were working with a group of children from the archaeology club of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. One of those kids was an unusual 'nudnik' [pest]. I thought, we'll put him in the repository, and he can clean the face of the rock there. I assumed that one had been looted like the ones in the other burial caves, but after some time, I feel someone tugging on my sleeve. I turn around, and see that nudnik holding two complete vessels from the First Temple period in his hands. I almost strangled him. That was irregular -- removing vessels. He shouldn't have touched them but called me in." Barkay and the pest hurried back to the repository. "Only then did I realize what had happened. The ceiling had apparently crumbled, covering up the contents. At first, I only saw the upper part of the rockfall, and like the looters, I thought it was a boulder. That kid led me to the discovery of my life, and I felt great excitement take hold. I sent all the children home. This was the first unlooted repository in Jerusalem, and the only one of its kind found to date. "I put together a team of university students, and we started working around the clock, 24/7. I took care that no one bothered me. We tied a big dog outside the cave. We also put a girl out there with a box full of all sorts of trinkets I'd bought in the Old City, so if anyone came and asked what we'd found, she could show them the 'discoveries' there. I was afraid all of Jerusalem would show up, so sometimes you excavate by trickery." What was the next stage? "We worked for a week, with electricity we pulled from St. Andrew's Church. The minister at that time was a former student of mine. That helped. In one room, we found over 1,000 items: hundreds of intact clay vessels, 40 iron arrowheads that were used in battles in Jerusalem by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, and about 120 silver objects. One day, one of the workers, Judith Hadley, who is now a professor of Bible studies in the U.S., called me in and pointed out something in the dirt that looked like a cigarette butt in a gray-purple color. Later we found another similar object, this time the size of half a cigarette butt. After sifting and cleaning, it was clear that these were silver scrolls that had been rolled up, but we couldn't open them." The silver "butts" were brought to the Israel Museum's laboratory, and three years passed before a way to open them without causing damage could be found. Barkay says that only there, "under an advanced microscope, did an inscription jump out at me, and the first word I could make out contained the name of the resident of the Temple in Jerusalem: Yahweh. "To anyone who understands a bit about prayer, it was clear that this was the Priestly Blessing. The tests confirmed my guess. It turned out that the scrolls, which were apparently used as amulets, contain an abbreviated version of the Priestly Blessing we know from Numbers. On the little silver scroll from Ketef Hinnom was written: 'May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord make his face shed light upon you and give you peace.' The words 'and be gracious unto you' and 'lift his face unto you,' which are found in Numbers, were left out of this shortened version." Excavations and soccer Barkay's discovery sparked an enormous change in thinking, and Barkay and his discovery had their detractors. The find contradicted, for example, the supposition of Julius Wellhausen, the well-known 19th-century German biblical scholar and orientalist, father of the documentary hypothesis. According to Wellhausen, the Priestly Blessing dates to the Second Temple era. The fact that the silver scrolls were identified as belonging to the First Temple period challenged everyone who followed Wellhausen. Answers were demanded of Barkay, and within a few years he provided them. The scrolls were tested again and reconfirmed as dating from the time of the First Temple. Moreover, computer imaging made it possible to make out another verse, this one from Deuteronomy 7:9: "Your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments." Barkay notes something wonderful: "The larger scroll contains both the Priestly Blessing and a declaration of faith. These are the earliest verses that are similar to Bible verses. They came hundreds of years before the famous scrolls in our possession." But violent protests by the ultra-Orthodox cut off Barkay and his team's work at the burial caves. Mickey Levy, who at the time was chief of the Jerusalem District Police, recommended that Barkay, who was being threatened by the haredim, move to a new home and change his telephone number. Barkay continued to work until he was forced to stop. He is still furious at the "extremist, anti-Zionist haredi circles." Barkay goes back in time: "In 1936, the Israel Exploration Society was excavating at Beit Shearim. The graves of the authors of the Mishnah were discovered there, the graves of the generation of Rabbi Judah the Prince, and no one bothered them. What is more respectable than the crowds of people who now visit those graves, which have been declared a World Heritage Site? Is that disrespecting the dead? That's honoring the dead!" The haredim argue that even touching or dealing with the bones of the deceased is disrespectful to them. "We need to respect the dead, follow Jewish law, and Jewish law -- although I'm not a rabbi -- does not disallow moving the bones of the dead. My friends and I don't need bones. Those extremists portray us as being thirsty for soup made of the bones of our forefathers. That's crude slander. Archaeology is the weak link, so it can be attacked. Those extremists didn't fight that way against soccer games on the Shabbat or against public desecration of the Shabbat." Barkay tells of "rabbis who took part in archaeological excavations of Jewish graves, such as Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Toledano, who participated in the excavations at the Tiberias hot springs, and later became the chief rabbi of Tiberias and religious affairs minister of Israel. Moving a person's bones from the grave has been done since the deed of Rabbi Akiva, who purified Tiberias and allowed human bones to be moved. For some people, Judaism has become a cult of the dead. It's a terrible, awful thing." Barkay regrets that "since then, and under the instructions of the attorney general, nearly no excavation takes place in burial caves." He sees this as a bitter loss. "The graves were made by living people, not the dead, but through them we can learn about their worldview, their culture. Where would we be today if we hadn't excavated burial caves? Almost all the exhibits in the Israel Museum come from graves. The Priestly Blessing Scrolls came from a burial cave. It's a bottomless source." Barkay makes reference to the burial inscription of King Uziah of Judea, whose wording demonstrates that the king's grave was moved to make room for new homes. The standard haredi question put to archaeologists repeatedly is: Would you want your grave to be dug up in a few hundred years? Your father's grave? "Yes, definitely. Yes. I'd be happy if thousands of years from now, someone would give me back my lost honor, excavate my grave, learn from me, learn something about our time, just as long as they treat my remains with the appropriate respect." He dug up the palace of Ahasuerus Gabi Barkay was born in 1944, the day his mother, Rachel, arrived in the Budapest ghetto. His father, Eliezer Breslaver, who later hebraicized his last name to Barkay, was imprisoned in a Nazi labor camp in the Ukraine. The young Barkay and his mother avoided the death march from Budapest to Vienna. In January 1945, the Red Army entered the ghetto and liberated them. "Many owe their death to Josef Stalin. I owe him my life," Barkay says. The family remained in Budapest for another six years. His mother taught Hebrew, and one of her students was Hannah Szenes. Rachel Barkay's twin brothers were murdered by the Nazis. One of them, who had been married for only a week, went out to buy cigarettes and never came back. "Apparently, he was shot and thrown into the Danube by Hungarian Nazis. The other one disappeared," Barkay said. After the liberation, Eliezer Breslaver reunited with his wife and only then met his son, Gabriel. Later, Barkay's father would become president of the Jewish National Fund in Hungary and establish the Israeli delegation in Budapest. He was arrested for Zionist activity by the Communist regime but managed to swallow documents for emigration to Israel before he was sent to prison. Later, the Jewish Agency got him out. The ruler of Hungary at the time was the Jewish dictator Matyas Rakosi, who was bribed to allow 3,000 Jews to leave for Israel, among them the Barkay family. The family made its way to Jerusalem, where Barkay attended the Hebrew Gymnasium high school. As a child, he enjoyed wandering around, collecting ceramic shards and reading about the history of Israel and archaeology. In 1964, he began studying archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His teachers were some of the beacons of their generation: Yigael Yadin, Michael Avi-Yona, Ruth Amiran and Nahman Avigad. As part of his studies, Barkay was assigned to a French team that was excavating a grand palace in Iran. "There were many signs it was the courtyard of the pavilion of King Ahasuerus as described in the book of Esther," he says. Later, he went on to survey the Shiloach compound, where the burial cave systems of the Judean elite were mapped. Barkay completed his doctoral thesis on the boundaries of Jerusalem at the end of the First Temple Period. He determined, in contrast to the prevailing belief, that Jerusalem in that period had been larger than it was thought to have been and encompassed the City of David, the Temple Mount, the area of today's Jewish Quarter and neighborhoods outside the city's northern wall. Today, many agree with him. In the Yom Kippur War, Barkay was part of an IDF survey cell assigned to map the Bashan region between the Golan Heights and Damascus. How did the 1967 Six-Day War influence Israeli archaeology? "Immensely. Imagine that in your house, you have a closed room that you never enter, and suddenly the door opens, a door that from a historical perspective is where Israeli nationhood in the time of the Judean kingdom came into being. That's where the Israelite consciousness was created, in places like Shilo, where the Mishkan lies; in Hebron, where David was crowned king; in Samaria, the capital of the Jewish kingdom. "These areas were excavated in the past, but not by Jews. From 1948 to the Six-Day War, Israeli archaeology gained vast experience, and we put it to use in united Jerusalem after 1967: Binyamin Mazar at the foot of the Temple Mount walls; Nahman Avigad in the Jewish Quarter; Ruth Amiran at Masada; Yigal Shilo in the City of David. It was a time of exceptional growth." In Jerusalem we've excavated a lot, but very little in Judea and Samaria. "Right. Unfortunately, politics and archaeology go hand in hand. They are intertwined, and because Judea and Samaria's legal status is unclear, excavations there have been limited." Where in Judea and Samaria should we have excavated and didn't, or done too little? "Thus far we haven't touched Tel Bethlehem, David's birthplace. We don't know a thing about it. We've hardly dug in Hebron; in Shilo -- only the tiniest bit. Same in Nablus, although large-scale, important work has been done on Mount Gerizim. The sin at the Temple Mount Barkay's heart is heavy over what is currently taking place at the Temple Mount. Barkay, one of the heads of a public committee to prevent the destruction of Temple Mount antiquities, winner of the Jerusalem Prize for archaeological research and the Moscowitz Prize for Zionism, says that "the Temple Mount remains a black hole. A disgrace to the State of Israel and to the archaeology of Israel. Because of politics and the sensitivity, it has never been excavated. This isn't likely to change in the foreseeable future. This is the reality there, but the Israeli government could have prevented the damage to the Temple Mount antiquities." According to Barkay, "Israel hasn't decided yet what it wants to do about the Temple Mount and how it wants to see it in the future. This opened the door for things that shouldn't have been done, and the serious crimes committed against the antiquities by the Muslim Waqf and extremist elements like [leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement] Sheikh Raed Salah. We didn't know how to prevent it. Just like the state sinned in its treatment of Holocaust survivors who live among us, the Temple Mount lives among us -- the survivor of a glorious past, and the state has neglected it. This invites challenges to our ties to the place and to historical facts, to the extent that when I go to the U.S. and England to lecture, I'm asked what proof is there that there was ever a Jewish Temple there-" What are the most significant finds from the sifting of Temple Mount dirt? "The most significant ones are those that allow us new [insights] into the history of the Temple Mount. For example, we recreated patterns of colored floor tiles that were cut into geometric shapes in the Crusader period. These samples are identical to the ones in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the church in Ein Kerem, and apparently come from inside the building of the Dome of the Rock before Saladin destroyed them in his occupation. "Another find allows us to recreate the patterns of the floors from the days of the Second Temple [similar] to stones found in the Herodian palaces. Twenty percent of what we find dates to the First Temple period, including a royal signet ring from the time of Hezekiah, about a dozen bullae, one of which belonged to the son of a priestly family, and more." I ask Barkay to name the three greatest achievements and three notable failures of Israel archaeology since the founding of the state. In his opinion, the three notable failures are the difficult reality on the Temple Mount; the cease to excavating graves; and the little focus on Muslim archaeology, an issue he says is "dragged out for political reasons, a loss stemming from the political conflict. It's not too popular to deal with it, and less popular to fund it." Barkay believes that the three greatest achievements for Israel archaeology are "the extensive archaeological excavation in the Judean Desert, including Masada, Ein Gedi, Qumran, the Bar Kokhba scrolls and letters; the archaeology of Jerusalem -- the discovery of the Priestly Blessing Scrolls, the excavations at the slope of the Temple Mount, the City of David waterworks and the collections of bullae discovered by Dr. Eilat Mazar; and the ability of archaeology to renew and complete the picture from the Bible, and together with it to draw closer to knowing the historical reality."
