Archaeologist is expert on ancient Israel
You could say archaeologist Gabriel Barkay has the dirt on ancient Israel, about 400 truckloads of it.
Barkay has been the director of the Israel Excavation Society Sifting Project since 2004, sifting soil from the Temple Mount area of Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of finds in the dirt have revealed human activity on the site of the Temple Mount covering 15,000 years.
Barkay will give a lecture, “Bible & Archaeology: The Time of David and Solomon” at 7 p.m. Monday at Covenant Presbyterian Church, 230 E. Jefferson St.
Barkay's presentation is an interfaith collaboration between Congregation B'nai Abraham, Grace @ Calvary Evangelical Lutheran Church and Covenant Presbyterian Church.
“Cantor Michal (Gray-Schaffer) sent an email to me and Pastor Tara (Lynn) at Grace @ Calvary saying she had the opportunity to get this man in the Butler area to give this talk,” said the Rev. Jim Swanson, pastor of Covenant Presbyterian.
Gray-Schaffer said the event is at Covenant Presbyterian because the B'nai Abraham synagogue is undergoing renovations.
Barkay's trip to the United States is through Classrooms Without Borders, an independent organization under the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, said Classrooms representative Melissa Haviv.
“We specialize in professional development seminars for educators and seminars on the Holocaust and Israel as part of our programming,” said Haviv.
“Barkay is a specialist in the Temple Mount, and that's very important,” said Haviv. “And he is a veteran of the Six-Day War (of 1967.)”
Gray-Schaffer met Barkay in Jerusalem last fall when she was on a tour of the Holy Land with a group of rabbis.
“We met at the dig and you don't usually get to hear him speak,” Gray-Schaffer said. “He spoke to us about 90 minutes, and we did some sifting.”
Gray-Schaffer said Barkay is sifting through tons of soil removed from the Temple Mount and moved to a nearby hillside.
Barkay was born in Hungary in 1944, and immigrated to Israel in 1950. After graduating from Hebrew University summa cum laude where he studied archaeology, comparative religion and geography, he graduated summa cum laude from Tel Aviv University with a Ph.D in archaeology in 1985.
He has participated on various levels in numerous digs and discovered the Silver Scrolls, two silver amulets from the late seventh century B.C. that contain the Priestly Benediction (Numbers 6:24-26), which are the earliest recorded biblical verses that mention the name “YHWH.”
This makes the amulets the oldest Biblical inscriptions ever found, predating the Dead Sea Scrolls by at least 400 years, and the first mentioning the name of the Lord.
More recently, a 2,700-year-old clay seal was unearthed within the ancient City of David.
Under Barkay's direction an archaeological team at the Israel Excavation Society Sifting Project sifted through the dig site's debris and discovered the now-famous “Bethlehem Seal” dated to the 7th century B.C.
Barkay was the first to translate the seal's significant three-line inscription which says “In the 7th year, Bethlehem, for the king”.
His previous excavations include the Megiddo, Lachish, Momshit and Susa sites in Iran. He has concentrated on sites in Jerusalem since the 1970s, participating and directing at various levels.
He has also worked on the Siloam village cemeteries of nobility, which included Ketef Hinnom, from which he discovered an early church, possibly St. George's, which contained the cremation burials of members of the Roman army in burial caves.
Barkay is the recipient of the 1996 Jerusalem Prize for Archaeological Research and is a professor at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv.
He has spent more than 30 years teaching at the American Institute of Holy Land Studies.
