View of the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives. I am standing on Jewish graves. Normally this would be considered disrespectful, but in this country, you can't go anywhere without running into a grave. One of the guys actually fell into a Muslim grave, quite funny actually. In order to be buried on the Mount of Olives, one must be very wealthy, or someone of great importance, such as a priest or rabbi. As we were standing here today, Bill had us take a moment of solitude, reflecting on the fact that soon enough, it is likely that we will be like those below us.

Zechariah 14, 4On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split into two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half ot eh mountain moving north and half moving south. 8. On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea and half to the western sea, in the summer and in winter. 9 The LORD will be king over all the whole earth. On that day there will be one LORD, and his name the only name.

Jesus was there the night before his death in the garden. He ascended from there, and he will descend back to there upon His return. It's amazing to think that mountain will split into two (fresh water will fill the Dead Sea, the east sea), but even more amazing that He will again stand there.

This is the Western Wall of the 2nd temple of the Jews. This is what remains of the temple, begun by Nehemiah and Exra, finished by Herod the Great, and destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24:2 that the temple would be destroyed, "not one stone will be left on another." The Jews of his day thought that was inconceivable, but it happened, and today, they still mourn for it's destruction. This wall has also been called the wailing wall. Many Jews pray here, and it's common for people to write a prayer down and put it in a crack in the wall. The wall is also segregated. Kind of funny actually, the men have this huge section of the wall, and the women a much smaller section, but there are many more women than men. The women seem to be very devoted, when some of them pray on the wall, you will see them backing away from it, so as not to turn their backs on it.

A view looking up at the wall. The papers are sticking out of cracks.

We got to help the Temple Mount Antiquities Salvage Operation. In I think 1996, the Muslims wanted to create fire escape exits on the south side of the temple wall. Herod, when he expanded the temple on the south side the mountainside in with arches. The Muslims cleared out the side of the mountain, and used those arches for fire escapes, because under the temple are rooms for Muslims to pray, and there was no way out for them in case of an emergency. In front of those arches they cleared out layers and layers of debris and just dumped it near the City of David.
"The Muslims have always forbidden any archaeological excavation on the Temple Mount, because it is their holy site where Mohamed "descended into heaven." They want to forget, ignore, and pretend that there was never a Jewish temple on the mountain, because acknowledging the Jews were there first would be like saying their god was first, and Allah would not be the only god.
Because archaeologists have never been able to excavate on the temple mount, all the debris dumped in the valley is the opening to a new field in a sense. Debris has been found from the first temple period, 586 BC, to the Ottoman period in the 1500's. Thousands of years of materials have been found.
Basically, to sum it all up, what we did was called sifting. Each of us took a bucket of debris, emptied it onto a holey metal cage, that had a ditch underneath. We rinsed of the pieces, and sifted through them, sorting our findings into different categories; pottery, metal, bones, special rocks, mosaic, coins. We really didn't find anything too special, a couple people found some coins which were, basically, our group lost. Though we did find a piece of mother of pearl which the excavator said was a good find =)