The Temple Warning inscription, also known as the Temple Balustrade inscription or the Soreg inscription,[2] is an inscription that hung along the balustrade outside the Sanctuary of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Two of these tablets have been found.[3] The inscription was a warning to pagan visitors to the temple not to proceed further. Both Greek and Latin inscriptions on the temple's balustrade served as warnings to pagan visitors not to proceed under penalty of death.[3][4]
A complete tablet was discovered in 1871 by Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau, in the ad-Dawadariya school just outside the al-Atim Gate to the Temple Mount, and published by the Palestine Exploration Fund.[1][5] Following the discovery of the inscription, it was taken by the Ottoman authorities, and it is currently in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. A partial fragment of a less well made version of the inscription was found in 1936 by J. H. Iliffe during the excavation of a new road outside Jerusalem's Lions' Gate; it is held in the Israel Museum.[1][6][7]
^ abcCorpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, Jerusalem, Part 1, Walter de Gruyter, 2010, ISBN 9783110222203, page 42
^Magness, Jodi (2012). The Archaeology of the Holy Land: From the Destruction of Solomon's Temple to the Muslim Conquest. Cambridge University Press. p. 155.
^ abBickerman, Elias J. "The Warning Inscriptions of Herod's Temple"' The Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 37, no. 4, 1947, pp. 387–405.
^Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Charles Clermont-Ganneau: Une stèle du temple de Jérusalem. In: Revue archéologique. Band 23, 1872, S. 214–234 (online), 290–296 (online): quote: "...on s'engage sous une assez longue voûte ogivale, à l'extrémité de laquelle on remarque, à main droite, la porte Bâb-el-Atm, par où l'on a sur la mosquée d'Omar une merveilleuse échappée. A main gauche, et faisant face à cette porte, on voit, donnant sur un petit cimetière musulman, une sorte de baie grillée, pratiquée dans un mur construit en gros blocs à bossages (à forte projection) et flanqué d'une espèce de contrefort du même appareil. Le cimetière ne contient que quelques tombes de cheikhs morts en odeur de sainteté, et appartenant probablement à la Médrésé (école supérieure) qui s'élevait jadis derrière ce mur d'aspect si caractéristique... J'arrivai ainsi jusqu'à la Médrésé, où j'entrai, introduit par un des habitants qui fit d'abord quelques difficultés à cause de la présence du harim, mais dont il ne me fut pas malaisé de faire taire les scrupules. Une fois dans la vaste cour décrite plus haut, je fixai.d'abord mon attention sur les deux tarîkhs arabes, qui, du reste, sont déjà connus, puis je commençai, suivant la méthode qui m'a toujours réussi, à examiner de près, et pour ainsi dire bloc par bloc, les constructions adjacentes. Arrivé à la petite voûte faisant face au grand liwân, je découvris tout à coup, presque au ras du sol, deux caractères grecs gravés sur un bloc formant l'angle du mur sur lequel reposait la petite voûte: 0 C'était évidemment la fin d'une ligne qui s'enfonçait verticalement dans la terre. Frappé du bel aspect graphique de ces lettres, je commençai, avec l'aide d'un des musulmans habitant la Médrésé, à gratter et creuser pour dégager quelques autres caractères. Après quelques minutes de travail, je vis apparaître un magnifique 1 de la belle époque classique, comme jamais il ne m'avait été donné d'en relever dans les inscriptions que j'avais découvertes jusqu'à ce jour à Jérusalem. Évidemment, j'avais affaire à un texte important par sa date, sinon par son contenu; je me remis à l'œuvre avec une ardeur facile à comprendre. Le musulman qui m'aidait, s'étant, sur ces entrefaites, procuré une fas ou pioche chez un voisin, la fouille put être poussée plus activement. Je vis successivement apparaître les lettres El, dont la première, l'epsilon, confirmait la valeur épigraphique du 2; puis le mot , étranger, que je reconnus sur-le-champ. Ce mot me remit aussitôt en mémoire le passage de Josèphe qui parle d'inscriptions destinées à interdire aux Gentils l'accès du Temple; mais je n'osais croire à une trouvaille aussi inespérée, et je m'appliquai à chasser de mon esprit ce rapprochement séduisant, qui continua toutefois de me poursuivre jusqu'au moment où j'arrivai à la certitude. Cependant la nuit était venue; je dus, pour ne pas exciter les soupçons des habitants de la Médrésé par une insistance inexplicable pour eux, suspendre le travail. Je fis reboucher le trou et je partis très-troublé de ce que je venais d'entrevoir. Le lendemain, de grand matin, je revins avec les instruments nécessaires, et je fis attaquer vigoureusement la fouille. Après quelques heures d'un travail que je ne perdais pas de l'œil, et pendant lequel je vis naître un à un et copiai avec des émotions croissantes les caractères de la belle inscription que j'ai l'honneur de soumettre aujourd'hui à l'Académie, le bloc et toute sa face écrite étaient mis au jour."
^Israel Museum, ID number: IAA 1936-989
^Iliffe, John H. (1936). "The ΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ Inscription from Herod's Temple". In Palestine. Department of Antiquities (ed.). Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine. Vol. 6. Government of Palestine. pp. 1–3. During work on the construction of a new road outside St. Stephen's Gate, Jerusalem, by the Municipality of Jerusalem, during December 1935, the remains of a vaulted building of late Roman or Byzantine date were found. Beneath this building was an unpretentious tomb-chamber, cut in the rock, with the (shallow) graves excavated in the floor; it was approached by a stairway in the familiar manner and yielded a number of pottery lamps of a mid-fourth-century A.D. type.' An apparently rebuilt wall belonging to the vaulted building (itself evidently later than the fourth-century tomb below) yielded a fragment of a stone bearing a Greek inscription, which, on examination, proved to be a second copy of the Greek text of the stelae erected around the inner court of the Temple of Herod, forbidding foreigners, or Gentiles to enter, on pain of death... It is possible that this second inscription may have been intended for a less conspicuous position than, say, the Clermont-Ganneau copy, and have been, accordingly, assigned to an inferior workman... The only plausible explanation would seem to be that suggested above for our Temple inscription, i.e. that it was placed inconspicuously, and therefore no one cared.
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