Place of Trumpeting Inscription

Found at the Foot of the Corner It Fell From

In 1968, in the first season of the great excavation at the southern and south-western foot of the Temple Mount, B. Mazar's team recovered a large inscribed block from the debris beside the south-west corner. It is about 84 by 31 by 26 centimetres. Published descriptions of the stone differ on whether it is limestone or basalt, and this article does not pick between them. Its shape is the interesting part: the inscription is cut above a wide hollow worked into one face, which indicates the block was part of a parapet — a railing along the top of a wall — rather than a free-standing sign.

It carries two complete words in square Hebrew script, l-beit ha-teqi'ah, "to the place of trumpeting", and the beginning of a third word that is broken away. The two commonest restorations are lehakhriz, "to announce", and lehavdil, "to separate" or "to distinguish" — the second reading pointing to the Sabbath's boundary between holy time and ordinary time. Neither can be established from what survives, and the article names both rather than choosing.

The block was lying in the collapse layer on the Herodian street, together with the other stones levered off the platform when the city fell in AD 70. It had been at the top of the wall and it ended up at the bottom, where it stayed for nineteen centuries.

The Trumpet That Started the Sabbath

Josephus, writing about the temple in The Jewish War, describes the point at the corner of the roof where a priest stood to give notice by trumpet of the approach of the seventh day on the afternoon before it, and of its close on the following evening. The stone is a label for that spot. It is one of the very few objects from the Second Temple that is not a fragment of decoration or a coin but a piece of the building's working signage — the ancient equivalent of a sign on a door.

Behind it lies a long biblical practice. Numbers 10:1-10 establishes two silver trumpets, made of beaten work, blown by the sons of Aaron, to gather the congregation, to move the camp, to sound the alarm in war, and to mark the festivals and new moons. Psalms 81:3 calls for the trumpet at the new moon and the full moon on the feast day. Nehemiah, four centuries before Herod, describes ordering Jerusalem's gates shut as the Sabbath began, which is the same problem — a city needs to know, at a specific moment, that the day has changed.

This is not the only surviving piece of the temple’s public signage. One other stone survives: a notice in Greek that stood on the soreg, the low balustrade around the inner courts, warning Gentiles not to pass it. That is the Soreg Inscription, treated in its own article here. Between them the two stones mark the enclosure’s outer limit and its highest point, and both were meant to be read by people arriving rather than by people already inside.

There is also a small and human detail. The corner of the Temple Mount this stone stood on is the highest point of the whole enclosure, standing above the meeting of two valleys. A priest sent up there twice a week was climbing to the most exposed place in Jerusalem to be heard.

What Is Broken Off, and What Is Only Likely

The honest limit here is a missing word and an unfixed position. The inscription is incomplete, and its final word — the one that would say what the trumpeting was for — is exactly the part that did not survive. Everything a reader is told about the Sabbath announcement comes from Josephus and from the restoration, not from the stone, which says only "to the place of trumpeting" and then stops.

The stone's original location is likewise an inference. It was found in secondary position, in a collapse heap, and heaps move: it is very probable that it fell from the south-west corner directly above, since that is the nearest high point and the debris there is the platform's own, but nothing in the excavation pins it to a particular metre of parapet. Some scholars have connected the corner with the "pinnacle of the temple" of the temptation narrative; that connection is a guess about a Greek word, and this article does not make it.

One further piece of housekeeping. The inventory number given for the stone in many popular accounts could not be confirmed against any published museum record that would open to a check, so no number is printed here. The stone is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. That much is not in doubt, and a plausible catalogue number is not worth the risk of printing a wrong one.

Scripture references

• Numbers 10:1-10 — The two silver trumpets, blown by the priests for the assembly, the journey and the feasts
• Psalms 81:3 — "Blow the trumpet at the New Moon, at the full moon, on our feast day"
• Nehemiah 13:19-22 — The gates shut as the Sabbath begins — the same need for a public signal
• Matthew 24:1-2 — The buildings this parapet belonged to, and what was said about them

Sources

• Holding institutionIsrael Museum, Jerusalem — The Israel Museum, Jerusalem · The holding institution. Its online collection pages are rendered by script and returned no readable object record to an automated check, so no URL is given rather than an unverified oneSupports: Current location
• ScholarshipB. Mazar, The Temple Mount Excavations in Jerusalem 1968-1978: Final Reports — Benjamin Mazar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; series continued by others · Qedem monograph series, Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University. The excavation that recovered the block from the collapse layer. Print onlySupports: The find, its context and its date
• Primary textJosephus, The Jewish War IV.ix.12 — Flavius Josephus · The passage describing the place on the temple where a priest signalled the beginning and end of the Sabbath by trumpet — the practice the stone labelsSupports: What the sign was for
• EncyclopediaWikipedia: Trumpeting Place inscription

Further reading

• Wikipedia: Trumpeting Place inscription
• BiblePlaces: the southern Temple Mount excavations

Reflect

Someone had to climb to the highest, coldest corner of the city twice a week so that everyone else would know the Sabbath had begun. Whose rest depends on work you do that nobody sees?