The Ancients - Temple Mount

Episode Date: June 29, 2024

Temple Mount is one of the most sacred places in Jerusalem. A rocky outcrop that has become important for Islam, Judaism and Christianity and the acropolis of the ancient city, with links to figures like King David, Solomon, Herod, Jesus and Muhammad. It’s an area of the world rich in religious history.And in today's episode of The Ancients - the last in our Old Testament miniseries - we're going to be delving into the archaeology of this famous ancient site and exploring what remains of the glorious buildings that once sat atop this important mountain. To help, Tristan is joined by Jodi Magness, author of new book, Jerusalem Through The Ages, which chronicles the history of the holy city from its very beginnings to the Crusades.Presented by Tristan Hughes. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code ANCIENTS - sign up here.Vote for The Ancients in the Listeners Choice category of British Podcast Awards here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

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Folks, they created an NFL bet slip on the ProLine app, and with one scan, the bet is placed. They're all set for kickoff get same day cash payouts download the app and bet nfl in store with pro line 18 plus terms and conditions apply It's one of the holiest places in Jerusalem, this rocky outcrop that became important for Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The Acropolis of the Ancient City, a place that is rich in religious history,

with links to the likes of King David, Solomon, Herod, Jesus, the Pharisees and the Prophet Muhammad. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, almost a bonus episode to our Old Testament mini-series, where we're exploring the ancient history and archaeology of Temple Mount. Now, archaeological excavations of this mount have been extremely limited in recent history for pretty obvious reasons. It's a very sacred place. However, there is still plenty to talk about, from ancient water systems to the Western Wall. Our guest today is Dr Jody Magnus, who has been on The Ancient several times before to talk about topics varying from the Dead Sea Scrolls to Masada to the origins of Jerusalem.

Now Jodie, she is back to highlight what is known about Temple Mountain antiquity as she has just released a massive new book on Jerusalem, the history of Jerusalem. It's always a pleasure interviewing Jodie, and I really do hope you enjoy. Jodie, always such a pleasure having you on the podcast. Welcome back. Well, thank you for having me back, Tristan. You are more than welcome, because you have finally, we've been talking about this book for ages, but it's come to the time of publication, your new book, All About Jerusalem. ages, but it's come to the time of publication, your new book, All About Jerusalem. Now,

an episode with you, we have to focus in on some part of that, and we decided Temple Mount, because this incredibly important area of Jerusalem, I mean, its significance, its religious significance, I'm amazed by this. It stretches back deep into antiquity. Yes, it does, actually. It probably goes right back to the very beginning of Jerusalem's settlement. So if you want to understand the significance of Jerusalem, you have to do exactly what you're doing, which is focus on the Temple Mount. So it holds great significance today for three religions, if I'm correct. And given how religiously important Temple Mount is, as an archaeologist, does that make it difficult for archaeological work to occur on the Mount?

Yeah, well, before I actually answer that question, let me go back to something you said about the importance of the Temple Mount to three religions, right? The three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. So technically, the Temple Mount really isn't significant to Christianity, except that the destruction of the Second Temple was regarded by Christians as a fulfillment of Jesus's prophecy that the temple would be destroyed. of sort of religious importance in Jerusalem, moves a little bit farther away from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is believed to enshrine the spots where Jesus was crucified and buried. So the significance of the Temple Mount then for Christians is the fact that the temple's destroyed, which is a negative thing, right? But certainly for Jews and Muslims, the Temple Mount is extremely significant. That's right. About archaeological exploration, well, that's pretty much, I don't

want to say impossible, but extremely difficult, if not extremely limited, because there are two very important Muslim monuments today on the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock, which probably is located more or less where the ancient temples to the God of Israel were located. And then at the southern end of the Temple Mount, Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Temple Mount itself is under the jurisdiction of the Muslim religious authority, the Waqf. So no archaeological work really can be done on the Temple Mount now. There has been some work clearing spaces under Al-Aqsa Mosque at the southern end of the Temple Mount. We can talk about that more if you'd like. That's not been archaeological work per se. It's been work clearing out fills with stuff in it

and then dumping it outside the Temple Mount. But really, the existence of those monuments and the fact that it is so sacred precludes archaeological excavation. So that's going to also limit, in terms of our conversation, the kinds of remains you're going to say, well, what do we have left of this? And what do we have left of that? And because of the circumstances of what's there now, there are a lot of blanks that we simply can't fill in. Well, good to point that out straight away, Jodie, but let's see what we can talk about from the literature and the archaeology that we know of from Temple Mount. First of all, a geography question, a topography question, because what exactly is Temple Mount? What should we be imagining if we haven't visited Jerusalem?

So Jerusalem is basically a mountain town. It's built on top of a watershed, the watershed of the Judean hills or Judean mountains, about 800 meters above sea level. And the city, therefore, is built on uneven rocky ground with hills kind of separated by valleys. And the earliest settlement in Jerusalem, which dates to about 5,000 years ago, was located on a very low-lying and small hill, only about 11 acres in size, that is to the south of what we call the Temple Mount. And that hill is called the Eastern

Hill or sometimes the Southeastern Hill, and it comes to be known as the City of David because that is the area of the city that David reportedly conquered when he took Jerusalem. So that's the original settlement in Jerusalem. And that low-lying hill is kind of an elongated spur that goes from north to south. And as you go north, the bedrock rises up. And as you go south, the bedrock rises down. And on either side of that spur are two valleys. The valley on the east side is the Kidron Valley, which is a deep valley that separates that little hill from the next mountain or hill over, which is the Mount of Olives, which is a much higher elevation. And on the west side, it's bounded by a valley called the

Tyropian Valley or the Valley of the Cheesemakers or sometimes called the Sasson Valley. Yeah, it reminds me of that scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian, Blessed are the Cheesemakers and the Purveyors of Dairy or whatever. Anyway, but it is an ancient name, Tyropian Valley. But at any rate, so what happens is if you look at the configuration of bedrock, that little hill, which here I'll refer to it as the City of David, even though I would prefer a more neutral term, and I use it in my book, the Southeastern Hill. But that little hill of the City of David slopes down in elevation as you go to the southern tip of it. But as you go north,

the bedrock simply continues to rise up. And so if you go continue north beyond the boundaries of the City of David, you get to a higher rocky outcrop, which is where the Temple Mount is. So the Temple Mount is basically located on what was originally a rocky outcrop that physically dominated the original settlement in the area of the city of David. Again, originally that was outside the original settlement, but after David dies and his son Solomon succeeds him, Solomon then expands the city to the north to include the area of that rocky outcrop where he builds the first temple dedicated to the God of Israel, Solomon's Temple. Solomon's Temple, then adjacent to it, just to the south of it, builds a palace for himself. And that rocky outcrop, therefore, becomes known as the Temple Mount. And it served as the Acropolis of the ancient city of Jerusalem, because like any ancient Acropolis, it physically dominated the city. It's higher than in elevation. It physically dominated it. And the most important

religious and political buildings, institutions were located on top of it. So that's really what that goes back to, whether Jerusalem had a pre-Israelite population. There were people living in Jerusalem before David reportedly took the city, right? And the biblical account, the biblical narrative refers to that pre-Israelite population as Jebusites. And we don't know whether the Jebusites were related to the Canaanites or not because the Canaanites lived in the rest of the country. So is it a separate population? Are they a type of Canaanites or whatever? But at any rate, we don't know whether that rocky outcrop already had some sort of religious significance to the

Jebusites, right, to that pre-Israelite population. It's been speculated that because it's sort of this natural, you know, rocky high point and all, that it did have some sort of sacred significance and maybe it was dedicated to their patron deity of the city, the god of the setting sun, their patron deity of the city, the god of the setting sun, Shalem. And then we get the name Jerusalem. So that's all speculation because we don't have archaeological remains that indicate that there was cultic activity up there before the time of David and Solomon. But at any rate, it's not unlikely. It seems kind of like a reasonable assumption. I mean, it certainly does when you look at other places in the world where the highest point in the landscape becomes the setting of a religious temple or something like that. And sorry if you've already mentioned it, Jodie,

is Temple Mount, the top of Temple Mount, the summit, is that the highest place in the surrounding landscape of Jerusalem? No, it's not. Ah, well, that's interesting. No, it's actually not. It's the highest point immediately adjacent to the City of David where the settlement is located. But again, if you just go east across the Kidron Valley to the next ridge over, that's the Mount of Olives. And that's actually the highest natural point in Jerusalem. So the Mount of Olives is like the highest. The Mount of Olives, by the way, is a ridge, not a mountain. But of Olives is like the highest now. The Mount of

Olives, by the way, is a ridge, not a mountain. But anyway, but that's the highest point. And also, if you go west across the Tyropean Valley, the next hill over, which is the western hill or the southwestern hill, that's also higher in elevation, much actually quite higher in elevation than the City of David. So it's rather that the Temple Mount is a continuation of that spur of the city of David. And therefore, if you're living in the city of David, right, which is where the original settlement was located, from that point looking northwards, the Temple Mount would therefore, you know, dominate the landscape. It's true, the Acropolis usually was the high point in the city, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it was the highest point in all of the area. And even if you

go to Athens, for example, you can see that the Acropolis of Athens is not the highest point in that whole area. There are other mountains around that are higher, right? But in terms of where the ancient city was located, relative to that rocky outcrop that is the Acropolis in Athens, that was, right, a natural high point there. Well, let's delve into the story of Temple Mount then. You mentioned how, you know, it's speculation whether this high area in the landscape was used by some of the earliest inhabitants of Jerusalem before the time of Solomon, according to the Bible. But if we focus in on the literature, is it around that time, I'm guessing around 1000 BC or maybe a bit later, that it appears Temple Mount starts to gain real

importance? Yeah, well, and so I'm really glad you qualified your question with according to the biblical account. Because most, if not all of our information, literary information comes from the books of the Hebrew Bible. And although the books of the Hebrew Bible do contain information that is historical, they certainly weren't written in the way that we would expect a modern history to be written today, right? Those weren't the standards of antiquity, even if you want to argue that they are somewhat historical. Anyway, so it's important to qualify that when we get information about Jerusalem or anything else from the books of the Hebrew Bible, we have to be very careful about how

we use it. We have to be critical, right? We have to realize that you can't necessarily take it at face value as literally true. And so as we go along the entire conversation in the back, even though I won't keep saying, you know, we need to keep this in mind, you have to keep in mind that when we get that information, it's not always necessarily completely reliable or even reliable at all. So it is true that the buildings on the Temple Mount would start to come into focus in connection with the activities of David and Solomon. So the biblical books that describe them, that refer to them and to their activities, yes, that is where we would start to get, you know, our information about the Temple Mount, right? Archaeologically, again, there's really not much to go on in terms of what

was on top of the Temple Mount. We do have archaeological remains from areas around or outside the Temple Mount, but not on the Temple Mount itself for the reasons we discussed at the beginning. Something that I'd like to ask, because I think we're going to be exploring more of this as the time goes on, is not just on the top surface of Temple Mount. Now, is it with the Temple Mount there's no natural water source? So that archaeologically means that in the past, there has been discoveries of remains of subterranean structures. I don't know if they go this far back, but this seems an important part of the story. And that question about the source of water, which we have not talked about so far,

is central to Jerusalem's story. So this question is, why did, so this gets a little bit away from the Temple Mount, but we'll come back to it. But the question is, why did people settle at that particular spot thousands of years ago, right? What was it about this spot that attracted people to settle down? And the reason is very simple. It has to do with water because we are in the Middle East and water supply is very limited. And you only have two seasons, a wet season, a rainy season, and a dry season. And even in the rainy season, which is in the winter, it doesn't rain all the time. And so any source, perennial source of fresh water, by definition would attract permanent settlement usually in a region like this. And that's exactly what happened in Jerusalem. So perennial source of fresh water, by definition, would attract permanent settlement, usually,

in a region like this. And that's exactly what happened in Jerusalem. So the reason why the earliest inhabitants settled on that little hill, the City of David, what we call the City of David, which is, again, a very small and low-lying hill. Why, for example, didn't they settle on the Mount of Olives, which is much higher in elevation? You would think that that's, you know, much more strategic or even the Southwestern Hill. And the reason is because the perennial freshwater spring in Jerusalem, which is called the Gihon Spring, comes out of the ground at the foot of the eastern slope of the City of David in the Kidron Valley. And so to be as close as possible to the source of water, they settled on that little hill. And then what happens over time is that that rocky outcrop to the north becomes the Acropolis, right? Becomes

the Temple Mount of the city. And so what that means is that, no, you're right, there were no sources of water. There are no sources of water on the Temple Mount. In fact, there aren't any freshwater springs anywhere else in what became the walled city of Jerusalem. I mean, the water had to be either stored in cisterns over the course of centuries or brought in by aqueducts, which were built in various periods. So in the earliest periods of settlement in Jerusalem, and I got kind of bogged down in this in my book because there's no easy way to go around it. But the earliest inhabitants in Jerusalem, and by which I mean both the pre-Israelite and the early Israelite populations, a lot of their building activity focused on access to the water in the spring,

particularly in times of war, in times of siege. Because of course, when you're being besieged by an enemy, you want to have safe access to the water, and you also want to prevent the enemy from having access to the water. So there's a really fascinating and quite extensive system of these water tunnels and channels that were built around the Gihon Spring over the course of the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age. So again, the earliest periods of Jerusalem's existence. Age and into the Iron Age. So again, the earliest periods of Jerusalem's existence. But that also means, by the way, that on the Temple Mount, which is farther to the north, you don't have a source of fresh water. And so the only way that you can provide that particular spot with water is the way the rest of the city was, either with cisterns or later, not in this period, with aqueducts. So there is a very extensive system of cisterns, subterranean cisterns or later, not in this period, with aqueducts. So there is a very extensive system of cisterns, subterranean cisterns, that kind of honeycomb the area under the Temple Mount. But look, cisterns are almost impossible to date. I mean, there's just, how can you tell when that

cistern originally was cut? But to my knowledge, we don't have evidence of any of those cisterns going back as far as, let's say, the Bronze Age, Iron Age. As far as I know, they're all later in date, so after 586 BC, right? But there might have been. I mean, it's not impossible. I should also mention that one of the features of originally Solomon's Temple, but then also later, is that in the inner courtyard of the temple was a gigantic basin for water that was called the yam that contained water for ritual ablutions by the priests. So certainly there was a concern with providing water. Water was something that would have been needed in fairly large quantities for the sacrificial cult, for the sacrifices. So it's not impossible that there may have been, you know, some cisterns on the Temple

Mount that already go back, you know, before 586 BC. The problem is, again, archaeologically trying to date or document them, right? I will say that there's also one of the great things about archaeology is that archaeologists all disagree with each other and have different theories, because the evidence is so patchy that you can fill it in in different ways, right? And make different theories. So there is a minority, but kind of a vocal minority, school of thought that says that the earliest settlement in Jerusalem was not in the city of David, but actually was on the Temple Mount, a theory called the mound on the mount. So that theory is, well, the Temple Mount is a natural high point. It would make sense. This is where the original settlement was located. It is a minority opinion, although it has some very highly regarded others, it puts the original settlement quite far away from the source of water. And so that just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. And then

the second thing is that even though it's impossible to excavate on the Temple Mount, these fills under Al-Aqsa Mosque at the southern end of the Temple Mount have been removed and have been sifted through for finds. And in those fills, and also in excavations around the Temple Mount, very little has been found in the way of archaeological artifacts that date back that far, that date all the way back to the time of like the Bronze Age and then into the early Iron Age, the time of David and Solomon. So it's a theory that really lacks both, you know, common sense support, but also actual, the limited archaeological evidence that we have does not support it. you know, a couple of chats ago about the origins of Jerusalem, which was really good fun. Let's kind of go back to Temple Mount. And you mentioned in your answer there names such as Solomon, but also the date 586 BC. So let's get towards that time of 586 and the story of Temple

Mount. Because what is the story of the first temple on Temple Mount? And ultimately, what happens to it in the early 6th century BC. So again, qualifying according to the biblical account, right? The first temple dedicated to the God of Israel was built by Solomon. So we're talking roughly mid first half to mid 10th century BC. We don't have archaeological remains of that building or that we can identify or of the Temple Mount in that period that we can identify, but we have descriptions in biblical sources. We also have archaeological remains of other temples in the area from this period that might shed light on what that temple would have

looked like, what Solomon's Temple might have looked like, including a couple of temples, at least a couple of temples that are Israelite temples, meaning temples that were built by the Israelite population and not by non-Israelite populations. One that has been undergoing excavation and is still undergoing excavation just outside of Jerusalem at a place called Motzah, and that dates, as far as I recall, to the 10th, 9th century. So really very, you know, pretty much contemporary with Solomon's temple. the 10th, 9th century. So really very, you know, pretty much contemporary with Solomon's temple. And so altogether, the evidence that we have suggests that the temple was a building,

a rectangular building with a flat roof that stood in the middle of, you know, one or more courtyards, had an altar for the sacrifices in front of it. The temple building itself was divided into three successive rooms. The innermost room was the Holy of Holies, where originally the Ark of the Covenant would have been placed, right? So before 586 BC, the Ark of the Covenant would have been in that innermost Holy of Holies. And this is actually quite typical of all ancient peoples, that that innermost room would have been considered to be where God dwelled. The presence of God dwelled in that room, and therefore, access to that room was restricted because, you know, ordinary people and even most of the time priests couldn't go directly into the presence of God himself. And so, basically, what you have

is an arrangement where you have conceptually, we say conceptually, they actually, this is how they thought, right? That the presence of God dwelled in that innermost room. And then everything that you have around it is to serve God for his pleasure, right? So in front of that, you have a room where you have a table where bread was placed, you know, for God. And then you have the altar in front where food is being offered, you know, sacrificial meat is being offered to God. And the priests are there, you know, serving God and his needs and being the

intermediaries between his people. And, you know, so the whole complex basically is to serve God and to make God happy. I mean, really what you want to do is you want to keep, no matter who you are in antiquity, when you're worshiping a God, you want to make sure you're making that God happy so that the God will do good things for you. And in this case, the expectation was, of course, that the God of Israel would be happy and therefore would protect his people, whether it's from enemies or from disease or starvation or, you know, whatever. So that's why you're doing all of this. I like to say that, you know, one of the problems that I have with the way people, a lot of

people look at the ancient Israelites and early Jews is that they tend to think of them as different and unique from everything else around them, everybody else around them, when in fact, really, they're doing just the same things that everybody else was doing. You have to understand the way they worship their God within the context of the larger ancient Mediterranean world and Near East. and this was what people did when they worshipped God. It's a very different way of interacting with the divine from the way that most Westerners today would interact with the divine. It is a very interesting way of how they worshipped according to the accounts in, say, the Ark of the Covenant. And I know that there are some people who debate whether there was something inside the Ark of the Covenant

that no one was allowed to see and so on and so forth. Yeah, no, no. There were supposedly, of course, the tablets of the commandments, right? The Ten Commandments were- PAUL Alongside the tablets, yes. LESLIE KENDRICK Right, right. Anyway, so today, when most Westerners interact with God, if they believe in God, and the belief is God is all around us all the time, right? And you go into a church or a synagogue or a mosque and you pray, around us all the time, right? And you go into a church or synagogue or a mosque and you pray,

but the idea is God is everywhere. And you as an individual can either individually or in a congregational setting worship God through prayer and that kind of thing. But that's not what ancient people thought. Ancient people, including the Israelites and the early Jews, believed that gods, their gods, dwelled in other places. Didn't dwell everywhere, didn't dwell among humans, but dwelled in other places. So, for example, if you were the celestial gods, then the celestial gods dwelled up in heaven. You think about the Olympian gods on Mount Olympus in Greece, then you have gods that dwelled underground. They're called chthonic deities, right?

And so if you were worshiping one of those gods and you wanna interact with them, whether to ask them to do something for you or protect you or whatever, you need to somehow entice them to come to you. And so what you do is you offer them something good. Now, if you're worshiping a celestial deity and the God of Israel was a celestial deity

who dwelled up in heaven, then you have to somehow get something up to heaven. How do you get something up to heaven? Well, you build an altar on a high point, a natural high point, because you want to get as close as possible to the God. You build an altar, and then you take the most precious kind of food that you have in antiquity, which is meat, which was very expensive. kind of food that you have in antiquity, which is meat, which was very expensive. And so you take a nice animal and you slaughter it and you butcher it and you then burn some of that meat on the altar and the smoke rises up to heaven and the God up there smells the meat. And it's like,

I'm going to go down and check that out, you know, and they're having some barbecue down there. So, you know, then you've now, what you've done is you've enticed the God to come down to you. And once the God has come down to you, you want to make sure that the God doesn't just eat and run. You want to keep him hanging around. So you build them a nice house to live in, which is a temple building next to the altar. And then you keep the sacrifices going, which is what happened in the Jerusalem temple. They had, they had sacrifices going 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to keep the presence of God dwelling in his temple and therefore dwelling among his people and protecting them. Right now, if you think about before all of this, when, according to the biblical account,

the Israelites were wandering through the desert. So they don't have a temple because they're wandering in the desert. So they don't have a temple because they're wandering in the desert. So how do you, what do you do? I mean, you want to have God, you want to keep him with you, right? You want to keep that presence with you. So what you do is every, first of all, every time you camp, you erect kind of a portable temple building, if you wish, the tabernacle, like a temporary tent-like structure. Then outside it, you have an altar and you offer the sacrifices on the altar. The presence of God himself was sort of symbolized by this chest, the Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, which contained those tablets, right? That is the

symbol of the presence of God himself, which is then carried around with you as you're wandering. And every time you camp, then you build that temporary tabernacle structure. You put the ark in it, you have the sacrifices offered outside it. And the chest itself, the ark was actually considered not technically the presence of God, but his footstool. He's actually envisioned as being enthroned and his feet are resting on the footstool. And so, because of course, God is enthroned, God is a king, right? And so what happens then is that when David takes Jerusalem from the Jebusites, the ark and the tabernacle had been moved around to various places in the interim. He brings those to Jerusalem and puts them on that rocky

outcrop. And then subsequently, again, according to the biblical account, Solomon builds a permanent dwelling, a permanent house for the God of Israel with the Ark of the Covenant inside the innermost room in the Holy of Holies. But again, because the God of Israel is a celestial deity, interactions with him pretty much always took place, of course, on these natural high points. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not.

Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Well, let's move on and let's talk about the end of the First Temple. As we get nearer, I feel like we might be able to see more archaeology either on or near the mound as we get more down through the centuries. I mean, first of all, Jodie, what does happen to the First Temple, the Temple of Solomon? In 586 BC, the Babylonians, who were the dominant power in the ancient Near East at the time, conquered the Kingdom of Judah,

which was the territory around Judah, which was the territory around Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the capital of that kingdom and forced the inhabitants, basically the elite inhabitants of Judah, mainly Jerusalem, but not only, into exile in Babylonia. And when they destroyed Jerusalem, they destroyed the temple, Solomon's temple, the first temple. And then what happens is eventually the Babylonian empire collapses and the Persians become the dominant power in the ancient Near East. This is about 60 to 65 years later. And at that point, the Persian king, whose name is Cyrus, issues an edict allowing those exiles from Judah to return to their homeland and rebuild Jerusalem

and the temple. And so the temple is rebuilt. It's a new temple, so it's called the Second Temple, but it's apparently built on the same spot where the First Temple had been located. And it was then consecrated in 516 BC. And so that then begins in Jewish history, a period that we call the Second Temple period. then begins in Jewish history, a period that we call the Second Temple Period. And that Second Temple existed until 70 AD, when it was destroyed by the Romans at the time of the First Jewish Revolt against the Romans. So that period, Second Temple Period, which ends in 70, encompasses also the time of Jesus for people who are interested. However, in the first century BC, so 500 years after it's consecrated, the second temple was rebuilt on a much larger scale by King Herod the Great. And so basically the temple that

Jesus would have visited would have been the second temple, but as it looked after it had been rebuilt by King Herod the Great. The overwhelming majority of what we have left of anything associated with the second temple, which again is primarily not the temple building itself, but the area around it, the overwhelming majority of that is from Herod's rebuilding, because he just rebuilt it on a massive scale. He basically pretty much doubled the size of the area around the temple building, right? He made the Temple Mount much bigger. And in fact, when you look at the area of the Temple Mount today, it pretty much is still a product of Herod's rebuilding.

We're going to explore Herod in detail because it is such an important part of the story of Temple Mount in antiquity. I mean, just before we get there, because of course, Herod is at least some 500 years after the building of the second temple. is at least some 500 years after the building of the second temple. Archaeologically wise, because I've got in my notes names like Nehemiah's Wall and so on, do we have any evidence either on or around Temple Mount where we can learn a bit more about how it was being used during those centuries before the time of King Herod? Look, so the Temple Mount all throughout time, right from the start with Solomon, consisted of the actual temple building and an open paved space or courtyard, one or more open or paved

spaces or courtyards around it. And these open paved spaces were used for various purposes, including places where pilgrims could come and congregate, but also commercial activities. It was normal in the ancient world for there to be commercial activities, trading, buying and selling going on in the precincts of a temple. So the open spaces around the area of a temple building, not in the temple building itself, of course, but in these kind of open air spaces. So in a way, this kind of complex functioned analogously to what some of your audience might think of as a Greek agora or a Roman forum, right? It's kind of analogous to that. And if you think of those kind of spaces, an agora or a forum, they too had big open paved areas that either had a temple building in them or adjacent to them.

So it's kind of like that. And that's what we have to imagine. The difference here is in the details. In other words, are there specific buildings, you know, that we know of adjacent to the second temple, as opposed to just, you know, saying generically, well, we know that there was a building with an open space. And do we have remains of them? So here again, we get into the problem of, you know, scholars having different opinions about what we can identify as belonging or not belonging to these pre-Herodian temple buildings, even to the extent of not knowing exactly how big the pre-Herodian temple mount was. I mean, scholars don't even agree on that.

And so it's kind of hard for me to answer that. One of the things you might be looking for is that Nehemiah reportedly built a fortress in Jerusalem called the Bira, which apparently was adjacent to the temple. And it may have stood on the spot where Herod later built the Antonia Fortress, which is at the northwest corner of the Temple Mount. There are many reasons why that's kind of a logical spot. It's a natural high point that kind of physically domin of the Temple Mount. There are many reasons why that's kind of a logical spot. It's a natural high point that kind of physically dominates the Temple Mount. But again, there's no agreement among scholars about whether that is where the Bira was located and whether we have any actual remains that you can identify of it.

There are different interpretations of the Bira. Some scholars even suggest that the entire city was a Bira. And so it's hard to say. What Nehemiah, by the way, is I think probably best known for is not so much that, but rather having rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, the walls of the settlement. Because what happens is that when the city is resettled by these returning exiles, they take the walls of the city of David, which were lying in ruins, and they patch them up and rebuild them. And that is given a lot of attention in the book of Nehemiah, right, that rebuilding.

But that's not directly connected to the temple itself. The temple itself features more in the book of Ezra, where Ezra gathers the people of Judah, Judea, Yahud, into the open square adjacent to the temple and reads to them the new laws that they're supposed to observe, right? So that's probably a little bit more connected to the temple. CB Fair enough. I mean, I'd like to ask one other question though, kind of on that Hellenistic period, because I remember another interview we've done in the past was all about Jewish burial and these amazing tombs that you find in Jerusalem, that Hellenistic influence you have there. And let's say like with Stonehenge and you see later generations, they know how important Stonehenge obviously was for their ancestors. They build their barrows around it. The Giza Plateau,

later elites have their own tombs next to the Great Pyramids. Do we see around Temple Mount Jewish elites or figures from this pre-Herodian period also deciding that they want to bury themselves near this incredibly important place? Right. So let me just clarify and say that if we're talking about Nehemiah, we're not yet into the Hellenistic period because the Hellenistic period is the period beginning you know, beginning with the conquest of Alexander the Great. So that would start for Jerusalem in 332 BC. And Nehemiah is earlier, we're in Persian period, right? Alexander conquered the Persian empire. So we're pre-Alexander, pre-Hellenistic. But that said, there are a couple of exceptions to this, but pretty much overall, the Israelites and Jews afterwards did not bury their dead within the walls of a city. They buried their dead outside the walls

of the city. And when Jerusalem, the city of David, becomes the city of Israelite settlement, pretty much, you know, almost right from the start, it becomes natural to bury your dead, of course, not within the walls of the city. Again, there's a couple of exceptions, but we'll ignore that for now. So not inside the walls of the city, but rather outside the walls, but adjacent to the city. So your necropolis is outside the city, but adjacent to it. And that means the slopes of the Mount of Olives, because the Mount of Olives is just across on the Kidron Valley there. And so in fact, we do have ancient tombs on the down there at the bottom of the slopes of the Mount of Olives, sort of as you go down into the Kidron Valley. So absolutely, I mean, that's something that went on for a long time. But I should also say that we

do have ancient Jewish tombs from other, and Israelite tombs, from other areas around the city of Jerusalem, including to the north of the city, including to the south of the city. So yes, I mean, to answer your question, yes, but it's really a function of the fact that the burials are happening outside the walls. And if you think about it also, this was the case in a lot of instances, for example, in ancient Rome. It's not exactly the same thing, but there's something a little bit analogous where if you go, for example, on the roads outside of Rome, you see the roads lined by these prominent tombs, right? So kind of, not exactly, but a little bit reminding you of that. Well, let's move on and let's actually get to the Hellenistic period now, Jodie, as we move

forwards chronologically in time. We mentioned earlier the Acropolis on Athens, and I know that there are certain rulers like Demetrius who takes residence on the Acropolis and like takes advantage of the money and stuff like that and makes it his own residence rather infamously. When we get to the rulers, let's say the time of Herod, but even before Herod, do we get these late rulers of Jerusalem? They know the importance of Temple Mount and so they decide to kind of closely align themselves with it by establishing, let's say, a royal palace or a royal fortification on top. And by the way, in Jerusalem, that starts at the beginning with Solomon, because Solomon built his temple on the Temple Mount just to the south of the temple. So in the area between the temple and then as you go down towards the city of David, that's where Solomon's palace was located.

Oh, his palace, right. That's right. So Solomon's palace was located on the Temple Mount. So that tradition of having the ruler's palace adjacent to the temple or a temple starts all the way with the beginning in Jerusalem. But to answer your question, yes, that does continue, or at least we see it in various periods. And so in Jerusalem, for example, I know what you're thinking of the time of the Hasmoneans, right? So who are the Hasmoneans? They're the successors of the Maccabees. So what happens is, is that after the conquest of Alexander the Great, the Jews come under the rule of Alexander and his Greek successors.

And that begins a period that we call the Hellenistic period. And then in the middle of the second century BC, the Jews revolted against one of Alexander's Greek successors. This revolt was led by a family called the Maccabees. As a result of that revolt, the Jews were able to establish independence from Greek rule. Then a kingdom was established under the Maccabees and their successors. And the Maccabees and their successors then are known by their family name, which is the Hasmoneans. So Jerusalem, the sort of really importance of this for Jerusalem is that up until the time when the Hasmonean kingdom is established,

Jerusalem was really a small minor backwater for the Persians, for the Greek kings. I mean, you know, it's mean, it's just this little mountain town that has no real significance. But once the Hasmonean kingdom is established, of course, Jerusalem is very important for the Jews and it becomes the capital of the Hasmonean kingdom. And we begin to see Jerusalem increasing in size, growing in size. And part of this is that the Hasmoneans then build stuff in Jerusalem. And one of the things that they build, and since Jerusalem's their capital, if it's your capital city, you need a palace in it. So they build a palace and that palace, it was the palatial rooms, at least at the beginning, because when they first become

kings, there's no palace at all for them. So the initial palace that they build is inside a fortress that's called the Barris. Now there's, again, a lot of controversy about where exactly the Barris was located. There's also some confusion because there are references to an earlier non-Hasmonean Barris from the Hellenistic period in Jerusalem. And so there's a lot of confusion about it, but it's, you know, again, logical and likely that it was located in the same spot where probably the Bira of Nehemiah was located and later the Antonia Fortress of Herod. So in that same spot on the northwest corner of the Temple Mount. And so that barracks that was built early on by the Hasmoneans apparently contained palace rooms, palatial rooms that were the residence of the Hasmoneans, apparently contained palace rooms, palatial rooms that were the

residence of the Hasmoneans until not too long afterwards, they built a real palace for themselves on the southwestern hill. And at that point, the southwestern hill really becomes the place where the palatial residences are located. And later when Herod builds himself his own palace, it's on the southwestern hill. You've kind of preempted my next question there, Jodie, because we cannot not talk about Herod when talking about Temple Mountain antiquity. I think this might be the last big chapter before we start wrapping up because time is sadly slightly against us. However, Jodie, we get to the time of King Herod. And how does this figure, who of course now is infamous, notorious from the Bible, but don't think of him just from the Bible, he has an extraordinary story.

How does King Herod revamp the Temple Mount? Well, yes, that would take us a whole other hour, wouldn't it? But the short story is that number one, Herod rebuilds the actual temple building, of which we have no archaeological remains. So again, to know what that looked like, we're dependent on things like ancient historical descriptions, comparisons with other ancient temples in the area. There are a couple of very schematic depictions of the facade of that building, one on a coin and one in a later synagogue fresco at Dori Ropus. So they give us an idea of what that building would have looked like, but the actual physical remains of the building we don't have.

But then, of course, in addition to rebuilding the actual temple building, he also rebuilt and expanded hugely the open courtyards surrounding that building, which become the esplanade that we call today the Temple Mount, right? The platform of the Temple Mount. And that we do have a lot of remains of because again, most of what you see today is a product of Herod's reconstruction. And that included the actual expanded platform around the three sides on the top of the platform. So on the north, east and west sides, there were colonnaded porches, porches columns that provided shelter for pilgrims

from the sun and the rain. And then running along the south end, a huge building called the Royal Stoa or Royal Basilica, which was basically a public building for different kinds of commercial activities and judicial activities. Again, recalling that these kind of big open spaces were commercial areas and not, strictly speaking, religious areas, as we tend to think of the Temple Mount today. So that's on top of the Temple Mount. And then, of course, once Herod expands the area of the esplanade, he encloses it within a wall, what's called in Greek a temenos wall, which is kind of a wall that encloses, we think of it as sacred space. Of course, not all the Temple Mount was sacred space, but anyway, a Temenos wall. And in order to provide access in and out through that wall,

he built a number of gates. And the remains of many of those gates can still be easily seen today. So we have, among other things, substantial stretches of the original Herodian Temenos wall around the Temple Mount. A lot of the platform itself, even though, again, there's been later rebuilding, we have parts of the upper wall of the Temenos, which have since collapsed and been rebuilt. We have parts of that. We have parts, not in situ, but not in their original position, but parts of the Royal Stoa or Royal Basilica, building pieces of that that later collapsed and have been found. The gates, a lot of the Royal Stoa or Royal Basilica, building pieces of that that later collapsed and have been found. The gates, a lot of the gates again,

either have survived either whole or in part and can still be seen. Some of them were continued to be used and may have been rebuilt in later periods. The southern end of the platform, which Herod extended over an area where the bedrock drops off, was supported on a series of underground arches or vaults

that now are called Solomon Stables. And those are still there, even though apparently they too were rebuilt in later periods, but that's still there. And so we actually have quite a bit of the Herodian Temple Mount, even if we don't have the actual temple building. The closest we come to having something associated with the actual temple building are two Greek inscriptions from a little stone barrier called the Soreg. So basically, again, the Temple Mount was a big open commercial space. And I think people don't realize this, but non-Jews, Gentiles could go onto the Temple Mount. So it's again, a big area of commercial activity. So the area around the outside of the temple building, and by the way, the temple building itself, which stood probably where the Dome of the Rock is today, had a series

of courtyards around it that were then enclosed within its own fortification walls. So the temple had its own fortifications in the middle of the Temple Mount, but around the outside of those fortifications was a low stone barrier, which was called the Soreg, which marked the area into which non-Jews could not go. In other words, non-Jews could not go into the temple itself. They were allowed on the Temple Mount, but they couldn't go into the sacred area marked off by the Soreg. And we have two Greek inscriptions that were set into that low stone fence, which is really interesting. They prohibit non-Jews from entering within that area on pain of death. One inscription is complete, one inscription

is fragmentary. The complete inscription is on the third floor of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. So if anybody is ever there, they can look for it. Nobody ever goes up there but me. Pinpointing it exactly there, Jodie. That's an expert right there and then. Well, it's an amazing, it's actually an Indiana Jones moment when you go up there. Because the Istanbul Archaeological Museum is fabulous, right? It's got amazing stuff in it. But most people who go visit the first floor where you have the Alexander Sarcophagus and maybe make it to the second floor where you have stuff from Troy. But most people don't go up to the third floor, which is finds from neighboring lands. And there on the third floor, it's just filled with all sorts of stuff and a lot of it on the floor. And there on one side of this sort of very large room is this block, this complete inscription

from the Soreg in Jerusalem, which is like the last surviving piece of the second temple. It's unbelievable. And it's on the floor. There are no guards up there because nobody ever goes up there. So I've been up there several times. Every time I go, I go and look at the inscription, right? And, you know, I've been tempted to sit on it. It's a big block of sand.

I've been tempted to sit on it and have my picture taken sitting on it but I couldn't bring myself to do it. So I have a picture of me in the book sitting next to the inscription but it's really unbelievable when you go up there and you see that. So that's where the complete inscription is. There's a same inscription, but fragment of an Greek inscription that's on display in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. So we do have that. And there's an interesting passage in Josephus where Josephus describes the Solreg and describes the inscriptions. He says

there were alternating inscriptions in Greek and in Latin, prohibiting Gentiles from entering within this area on pain of death, very closely matching what we see written in the inscriptions themselves. So in terms of what we have archaeologically remaining from the temple and the temple mount, here it's temple and temple mount. The answer is for the temple building itself, very little unless you count the two Solreg inscriptions. But the temple mount itself, we actually have quite a bit, including, well, then there's a whole other thing, the Antonia Fortress, right, at the northwest corner, which is outside but just adjacent to the temple mount at the northwest corner. So we actually have quite a bit, even if we don't have the physical remains of

the temple building itself. And that's the whole thing. The whole podcast is about the wider Temple Mount. It is not just the temple, so it's really good to highlight. And correct me if I'm wrong, but also is this, I mean, Herod, he brings some iconic pieces of Roman architecture with him. Is this the time where we start seeing aqueducts coming to Temple Mount too? Yeah. You know, interesting. I never thought of Herod as a Romano-phile or whatever, but his architecture is really interesting. And there's been a lot of discussion about it because he incorporates all sorts of different influences, Hellenistic, Roman, Nabataean. His mother was a Nabataean, so she was an Arab woman from the area to the southeast of Judea. And so, it's a really interesting blend that is quite unique. But yes,

he absolutely does incorporate, among other things, aspects of Roman architecture and Roman technology. And he does build an aqueduct. Now, I should mention that we have two main aqueducts that supplied Jerusalem with water in the latter part of the Second Temple period, so Hasmonean period and Herodian period. One of them is the low-level aqueduct, and the other is the upper-level aqueduct. So the low-level aqueduct was actually built by the Hasmoneans to bring water from an area in the area of Bethlehem today, where there's actually some quite copious springs, and that area is called Solomon's Pools now. There's actually some quite copious springs, and that area is called Solomon's Pools now.

So that aqueduct brought water to Jerusalem, and that supplied the Temple Mount under the Hasmoneans. That brought water and filled, we talked about the cisterns before. So a lot of those cisterns apparently were developed at this time and cut at this time, and then were filled by water that was brought by that aqueduct. Herod builds another aqueduct to Jerusalem, but it actually didn't go to the Temple Mount. It supplied the area on the Southwestern Hill, which is where he built his palace, right? And some of the other, right, buildings, public buildings on the Southwestern Hill. But yes, absolutely. Herod did incorporate, you know, Roman kinds of technology. If you're

talking about aqueducts and you want to see like what you might think of as a classic Roman aqueduct built by Herod, go to Caesarea on the coast, which Herod, of course, built in honor of Augustus and named Caesarea, where the remains of an aqueduct that Herod built still can be seen coming in on the north side of the city on, you know, the arched bridge that you think of as kind of the canonical Roman kind of aqueduct, right? The aqueduct is the actual channel with the water in it. Sometimes the channel was supported on an arched bridge, but it didn't have to be. So the aqueduct is just the channel, right? So when we say Herod built an aqueduct or the Hasmoneans built an aqueduct, it doesn't necessarily mean. It just means that when the water is flowing and it flowed by gravity, if you're reaching a point where the ground level drops off, then it might be supported

on a bridge with arches, right? And that's where you get that image from. But it doesn't have to be. It just is the channel itself. CB Right. Okay. I didn't know that. Fair enough. So maybe not as monumental as sometimes you have in your mind. Okay. So at the time of Herod, he's revamped the Temple Mount, that massive redoing of the temple, but also the Antonia Fortress and all these other buildings too. What happens to Temple Mount in those decades following the death of King Herod? Because it becomes the centre of quite a vicious war, if I'm not mistaken. Right. And one thing I'll point out also is that although reportedly the temple building itself was

completed during Herod's lifetime, the Temple Mount, which was a huge building project, reportedly was not finished, completed until just before the outbreak of the first Jewish revolt against the Romans. And even then, there are areas around the Temple Mount, especially at the northwest corner, which look like they were never finished. This is not so surprising when you consider the scale of the construction, right? But what happens then is that in 70 AD, the Romans take Jerusalem and destroy the city of Jerusalem, including the temple itself. And the city then lies in ruins for quite a while until about 60 to 65 years later when Hadrian, the Roman emperor, rebuilds the city as a pagan Roman city called Aelia Capitolina, establishes apparently a new temple or shrine

on the Temple Mount dedicated to the new patron deity of the city, no longer the God of Israel, but the chief deity of the Romans, Capitoline Jupiter. If we have difficulty talking about what the two temples looked about what the two temples looked like, the two temples to the God of Israel, it's even harder with whatever there was to Capitoline Jupiter. We really have no remains at all. And so there's actually a big disagreement among scholars and archaeologists about whether there even was some sort of a building, shrine, or temple dedicated to Capitoline Jupiter on the Temple Mount or not. I'm with the people who think that there was something. It may not have been a big

temple. Maybe it was a shrine. I think that there was. But anyway, but then what happens is that eventually, not too long after that, in the centuries afterwards, Jerusalem becomes a Christian city, right, as the Roman Empire becomes a Christian empire. Whatever there was on the Temple Mount, whether it was a shrine or a temple to Jupiter or whatever, would have been then torn down when Jerusalem becomes a Christian city. And then in the subsequent centuries, the Temple Mount just lies in ruins. It becomes a garbage dump because the Byzantine Christians who, you know, now Jerusalem is part of this Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantine Christian Empire, viewed the ruins of the Temple Mount as a visual fulfillment of Jesus's prophecy that the temple would be destroyed,

and therefore a visual illustration of the triumph of Christianity over Judaism. And their focal point moves not too far away to the area of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I should mention that, you know, also in those intervening centuries, whatever was left of the actual temple building, so it would have been lying in ruins, but in antiquity, everything got recycled. Nothing went to waste. So the pieces, the architectural pieces of the ruined temple building, the stones, the columns, whatever was part of it, that they would have all been stripped away, removed, carted off, and built into other buildings, reused in other buildings. Even roof beams were reused, and we know that from various

sources. So in these intervening centuries, the Temple Mount was both a garbage dump, but whatever reusable building parts were there, building pieces were there, would have been removed. And so by the time we get to the late 7th century AD, when the early Islamic rulers, the Umayyads, build the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, and the Dome of the Rock specifically, apparently, where the earlier temple had been located, there would have been very little, if anything, left. This is after hundreds of years of that original temple building. And what they would have done then is cleared away whatever garbage had been dumped there and was lying around and would have cleared the area, I think,

down to bedrock, which at that point is very high because the Dome of the Rock, it's an outcrop of bedrock, would have cleared the area down to bedrock in order to establish the foundations of the building on bedrock. We're talking now about the Dome of the Rock. So sometimes people ask me, well, do I think that if we could excavate under the Dome of the Rock, which I'm not advocating, but if we could, would we find remains of the ancient temples? And I actually think that we wouldn't find much, if anything. And the reason is because a lot of it would have been carted away long before the Dome of the Rock was built, but also the clearing activities to establish the foundations of that building on bedrock would have cleared away anything also

that remained. So I think that if you could excavate under the Dome of the Rock, if you did find anything, most of it would consist of cuttings in the bedrock from the earlier buildings, but not much in the way of the actual buildings themselves. That's what I think is the logical scenario there. But it's important to realize that by the time the Dome of the Rock was built, the Temple Mount had been lying in ruins for centuries, and very little would have been left of the Second Temple building. Well done. That was amazing, going through those centuries so rapidly. And it's so interesting, though, as well, isn't it? No, it absolutely is, following the First Jewish Rev revolt and how it kind of falls into ruin before the emergence of Islam and the reinvigorated importance of Temple Mount. I've got to therefore ask, and this is kind of my ignorance talking

because I've never been there and I don't know it enough. I mean, what then is the story of the Western Wall? Is the Western Wall, that's on the Temple Mount if I'm correct. So does that have its origins in the second temple? How does that kind of link into the ancient story of Temple Mount? Yeah, by the way, you're not the only one. It's very common to read or hear in the media, for example, that the Western Wall is sacred because it's the sole surviving remnant of the temple. That's what I hear, yes. I've written many letters to editors correcting that mistake because it's a very common misperception. The so-called wailing wall, and it's kind of a pejorative term, a better, more neutral term is the Western Wall because it's part of the Temenos Wall that Herod built on the western side of the Temple Mount.

So it's actually not part of the temple itself. It's part of the Temenos Wall, and it's actually not unique. We have plenty of other stretches of the original Herodian Temenos Wall. The actual temple building was up where the Dome of the Rock is in the middle of, or probably in the middle of the Esplanade there. So that actually doesn't become the tradition that that spot where the Western Wall is now doesn't really become sacred until later centuries. And primarily, not only actually, I think there's earlier traditions about this, but primarily after 1564, I think it is, there was an earthquake that ruined some of the, because what happens is, is that in, you know,

in the centuries after Jerusalem becomes a Christian city, and then, you know, going on from there, buildings get built, you know, the area around the Temple Mount gets densely built up, and buildings get built right up against the wall, the Temenos Wall. And there still are buildings today built up against it on various sides. So if your building's built up, it makes it inaccessible. You can't get up to the wall, the Temenos Wall. So I think it was 1564, there was an earthquake that ruined some of these buildings that were adjacent to that area where the Western Wall is. And it made that part of the wall accessible. And that's when, you know, Jews begin to congregate precisely on that spot in order to mourn the destruction of the temple.

It's also, I think, not coincidentally, pretty close to where the original temple building would have stood because it's just to the west of where the Dome of the Rock is located. But technically, any stretch of the Temenos wall around the Temple Mount could be equally sacred in the sense that it's all part of the same thing, right? But it's not part of the temple building. Well, that's a bit of myth-busting right there. What a great way to end the episode, Jodie. This has been an incredible run through the story, the archaeology of Temple Mount, stretching thousands of years in ancient history. Jodie, last but certainly not least, you have written a massive book which talks all about this with the Temple Mount, but also the whole story of Jerusalem and it is called? It's called Jerusalem Through the Ages, From Its Beginnings to the Crusades. Well, Jodie, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to

come back on the podcast today. Thanks for having me, Tristan. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Jodie Magnus talking all of things Temple Mount in antiquity. I hope you enjoyed today's episode, the last in our Old Testament miniseries this June and early July. I hope you've enjoyed this miniseries. It's been fun exploring these various objects, stories, people, these narratives of the Old Testament and the influences for them. It was a real pleasure to interview the likes of Irving Finkel, Dylan Johnson, Felicity Cobbing, and of course, Jodie Magnus. So make sure you listen to the other episodes in this mini-series. They were fantastic. If you'd also like more Jodie Magnus,

then well, I've got good news for you. You can listen to our episodes on the ancients, on Masada, on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the origins of Jerusalem, Jewish burial, at the time of Jesus. We have done episodes on all of those topics with Jodie. Just search those names in the ancients archive. They'll pop up and go listen wherever you listen to the ancients. Last thing from me, wherever you are listening to the podcast, make sure that you are subscribed, that you are following the ancients so that you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week. That's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.