How We Reconstructed the Lost Floors of Herod's Temple Mount

[00:00:00]November 25th, 1999. Jerusalem.

[00:00:04]The rumble of heavy machinery shatters  the vibrant hum of the Old City as excavators rip through the  surface of the Temple Mount.

[00:00:13]Commissioned by the Islamic  authority in Jerusalem, they dig a massive crater. In under three days, irreparable damage is done.

[00:00:24]Roughly 9,000 tons of soil are removed  without archaeological supervision, leaving behind a 350-truckload mountain of debris dumped into the Kidron Valley.

[00:00:38]However, two archaeologists,  Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Dvira, understood the historical  significance of this mound.

[00:00:46]In 2004, they launched the  Temple Mount Sifting Project, enlisting professionals,  volunteers, and even tourists to help sift through the literal tons of earth.

[00:00:59]Among the countless artifacts unearthed  were these curious stone tiles— pieces of a Roman flooring  technique called opus sectile.

[00:01:08]Unable to make sense of the jumbled fragments, they were stored away and forgotten. That is, until Frankie Snyder arrived.

[00:01:16]She unlocked the secrets of  Herod the Great and revealed the stunning patterns on the  floors of the Temple Mount.

[00:01:25]We modeled the entire thing,  and for the first time ever, we can now see the majesty  Jesus saw over 2000 years ago.

[00:01:40]First off, what is opus sectile? Latin for “cut work,” it’s the ancient Roman art of crafting intricate  floor patterns from polished stone tiles.

[00:01:52]These luxurious floors became  the ultimate symbol of prestige, adorning floors in cities like  Rome, Pompeii, and Herculaneum.

[00:02:02]Herod the Great introduced opus sectile to Judea, incorporating it into his many  palaces and the Temple Mount.

[00:02:12]The process of creating these striking  tiles was a marvel of ancient technology.

[00:02:18]“They would actually be cut with a saw, and use a certain type of sand in order to cut.

[00:02:25]And depending on your material, they would say, well, if it was sandstone, you went to this beach in India  to get the right kind of sand.

[00:02:32]And if you're working with  marble, you went to this beach.

[00:02:36]And the iron saw actually  would not be doing the cutting, rather the iron saw was  moving the sand back and forth in order to cut the tiles, much  like your diamond bits do today.”

[00:02:50]According to Josephus, an ancient historian, these specially cut tiles created  dazzling patterns that decorated the covered porches of the Temple Mount. But what did these patterns actually look like?

[00:03:05]And what can they reveal  about the temple Jesus knew?

[00:03:12]Soon after starting with the Sifting Project,  Snyder encountered these mysterious tiles.

[00:03:18]She was immediately fascinated. “I asked the archaeologist one day, is anybody looking at these tiles trying to recreate what the floors look like?

[00:03:27]And she said, no, right now  we’re just cataloging them.

[00:03:31]But if you’d like to try this, go ahead.

[00:03:33]And I said, well, yes, I have a degree in math. I really like geometry. So I’ll give it a try.”

[00:03:40]Early research by Assaf Avraham had already  identified several of the Sifting Project stones as opus sectile tiles. He proposed that Josephus, an eyewitness to Herod’s temple, was likely referring to this stone style when he described the floors, paving the way for Synder’s discoveries.

[00:04:04]Through carefully measuring  and cataloging each tile, she realized it could be  possible to reverse engineer the patterns of the Temple Mount. But this was a monumental task.

[00:04:17]Luckily, Herod left clues.

[00:04:20]Snyder began a comprehensive study of  all opus sectile floors built by Herod, like those in his palaces at Masada and Jericho. She then compared these findings to other Roman buildings of the period. From her research, she identified five key characteristics of Herodian tiles. First, each tile design was based on the Roman foot. Second, only geometric shapes like squares and triangles were  used to create the various patterns.

[00:04:54]Third, contrasting colors  were placed side by side.

[00:04:59]“This is black bitumen that was  used for a lot of the tiles, and this is a mock-up of a pink limestone. Whenever you put two tiles together, you put contrasting colors side by side. You didn’t put two tiles of the same color together.” Fourth, artisans modified popular Roman designs.

[00:05:18]And lastly, patterns were  repeated over large areas.

[00:05:23]She also catalogued the type of stones Herod used, including local bitumen and limestone.

[00:05:29]But Herod spared no expense, importing exotic stones from places like Greece and Egypt. “So most of our stones, all the colored ones, are coming in from outside of the country.” Sadly, these lavish stones attracted salvagers who pillaged the palaces  after they were abandoned, leaving only fragments and plaster impressions as traces of the once-stunning floor designs.

[00:05:56]Yet even these sparse remains  held valuable evidence.

[00:06:00]See, to save costs, Herod’s masons  cut the imported tiles very thin, maximizing the number of tiles from each block, while local stones were left with a thicker depth.

[00:06:13]“So when you go and you find a floor and  all that's there are tile impressions, if you see these deep cut  V’s down into the plaster, then you know it's either the bitumen  or the limestone that was used there.

[00:06:29]But if you notice that it’s very, very flat,  then you know that it was an imported tile.

[00:06:35]This clue, along with Herod’s Third  Characteristic of contrasting colors, told Snyder what shapes, patterns, and  colors were used in the palace floors— even when nothing remained  except for a few broken tiles.

[00:06:50]But Snyder’s greatest discovery was the  key that unlocked the entire puzzle.

[00:06:55]Nearly all Roman patterns used isosceles  triangles with 45-degree top angles—but not Herod.

[00:07:03]He created a shape uniquely his: what Snyder calls Herod’s Triangle.

[00:07:09]“It is a triangle that has  the same height as its base.

[00:07:14]So it’s like a triangle that  is built inside of a square.

[00:07:19]It has angle measurements of 52, 64, and 64. It’s just different from regular triangles.”

[00:07:26]This special triangle forced the surrounding  tiles to also have unusual angles.

[00:07:32]The result? A completely unique floor plan. While an odd triangle might seem insignificant, it told Snyder the tile shapes and angles  to look for in the Sifting Project.

[00:07:45]If she found a stone of the  right material with these angles, then she knew it was Herodian. Now, with this data, she could finally build the floor patterns that likely covered the Temple Mount.

[00:08:02]Of the tens of thousands of tiles  that once decorated the Temple Mount, about 100 have been recovered by  the Temple Mount Sifting Project, identified by their unique  shape, angle, and material.

[00:08:16]Although ancient salvagers had  claimed most of the Herodian tiles, Snyder realized that the missing pieces could  create a photographic negative of the designs.

[00:08:27]By taking patterns from Herod’s palaces—like  the pinwheel and four-pointed star— and accounting for the angles of Herod’s Triangle, she filled the gaps with corresponding tiles discovered in the Sifting Project. This led to these seven patterns, which Snyder believes likely  adorned Herod’s Temple Mount.

[00:08:50]However, this pattern, the  eight-pointed star, was special.

[00:08:54]Though common in Roman design, Herod again left his unique signature on it. But first, Snyder had a problem.

[00:09:02]“And we had one of these kites and I had been  looking at that thing for a couple of years going, what do I do with this kite-shaped tile?” Unable to find a home for this odd tile, she turned to solving Herod’s  eight-pointed star pattern.

[00:09:15]“And the way you generate this, I figured out, was you draw a square the size of your triangle, put a Herod’s triangle, overlay  them in each of the four directions.

[00:09:26]So four triangles, north, south, east, and west. When you do this, you can then draw a square right in the center and then above, below, and on four sides, here you have four more Herod's triangles.” “And it turned out that once I figured out how to draw this star using four Herod’s triangles. Here sits the kite.

[00:09:47]You know, it fits in absolutely perfectly.” This confirmed that the eight-pointed star was indeed a pattern on the Temple Mount.

[00:09:57]Using Snyder’s seven patterns and following her Five  Characteristics of Herodian Tiles, for the first time ever, we have  brought the Temple Mount back to life.

[00:10:09]Glistening in the sunlight, these polished  stones adorn the floors of the covered porches, the Royal Stoa, and perhaps  even the Temple itself.

[00:10:19]At the center of the large floor patterns, we placed Herod’s most intricate design—the eight-pointed star. Simpler patterns, like four-pointed stars and pinwheels, radiate outward, each measuring one Roman square foot. Finally, the borders come alive with contrasting foot-long Herodian Triangles. Following Herod’s Fifth Characteristic, the patterns seamlessly cover the expansive  Temple Mount in magnificent fashion.

[00:10:50]These tiles witnessed some of the most  pivotal events in the New Testament.

[00:10:56]Jesus walked these very floors  as he taught His disciples, drove out the money changers in the Royal Stoa, and healed the blind and lame.

[00:11:06]Peter stood on them as he delivered his sermon  following the miracle at the Beautiful Gate.

[00:11:12]And they bore silent witness  to the Temple’s fall in 70 AD.

[00:11:17]You can’t help but wonder: If these stones could speak, what marvelous stories would they tell?