(E4) The Untold Story of the “Temple of Solomon” at Tel Moza

The accidental and exciting discovery of a temple that existed and operated throughout the days of the First Temple, at a distance of only seven kilometers from Jerusalem, allows a unique and one-time glimpse, at least for now, of the way in which temples operated and developed in the first millennium BCE, right at the same time as the Temple, which according to the biblical description existed, operated and developed in the exact same period of time, in the capital of the Kingdom of Judah. Tracking the processes of change and development in the Moẓa Temple over the hundreds of years of its activity allows a possible archaeological point of comparison to the development processes of the temple in Jerusalem, about which there is information only from the biblical descriptions. Moreover, the archaeological research of the Moẓa Temple also allows us to explore what the relationship was between the two communities that lived around the two temples: the community that lived in the Moẓa Valley and for whom the Temple in Moẓa was its central place of cult, and the nearby community that lived in Jerusalem and its immediate surroundings, and for which the Temple of Solomon, built at the top of the Temple Mount, was its central place of cult.