Trumpeting Place Inscription

Confirms the Herodian Temple ritual of trumpeting to herald the Sabbath described by Josephus, and marks the precise location of this priestly function.

The Trumpeting Place Inscription is one of the most evocative single objects to survive from the Jerusalem Temple of Herod the Great. It was found in 1969 during excavations led by Benjamin Mazar at the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount, just below the junction where the massive retaining wall of the Temple platform meets the paving stones of an ancient street below. The stone had fallen during the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, tumbling from a great height and landing among other collapsed masonry on the street below. Despite the fall, the inscription it bore was preserved clearly enough to be read.

The block itself is made of Jerusalem limestone, the same cream-colored stone used throughout Herod the Great's massive building program in the late first century BCE. It measures approximately 2.43 meters in length and weighs several tons. The inscription is carved in Hebrew letters in a formal, clear hand, reading 'lbeit hatqiah l...' which translates as 'To the place of trumpeting, to [herald]...' The final word or words of the inscription are broken away, but scholars reconstruct the full text as something like 'To the place of trumpeting, to herald the Sabbath.' This reconstruction is supported by comparison with Josephus's writings.

The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, writing in the late first century CE, described the Temple's southwest parapet as the location where a priest would stand to blow a trumpet, announcing the beginning of the Sabbath on Friday evening and its close on Saturday evening. His account in Jewish War 4.9.12 describes the precise corner where this occurred. The stone's inscription, found exactly where Josephus placed this ritual, confirms both the location and the function. It is a rare instance where a physical artifact and a written ancient source reinforce each other with this degree of precision.

Benjamin Mazar's excavations at the southern and western walls of the Temple Mount began in 1968 with the approval of the Israeli government following the Six-Day War in 1967. Mazar, a prominent Israeli archaeologist and a grandfather of Eilat Mazar who would later excavate the City of David, directed the project until 1978. The excavations cleared an enormous amount of debris from the Temple's destruction, uncovering the Herodian street, Robinson's Arch (the remains of a stairway bridge leading from the street up to the Temple platform), ritual bath complexes (mikvaot), shops, and other structures. The Trumpeting Place stone was among the first major finds of the project.

The inscription was transported to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where it is currently on display. A cast of the stone, clearly labeled, is also shown near the original excavation site as part of the outdoor archaeological park at the Jerusalem Archaeological Park. Visitors can stand at the spot where the stone was found and look up at the corner of the wall from which it fell.

The inscription is important not only for what it says but for what it tells us about Herod's Temple administration. That a stone was carved and placed at the trumpeting location shows that this was an officially recognized, formal function of the Temple, not simply a custom. The investment in carving and installing such a marker reflects the careful organization of Temple ritual under the Second Temple period priesthood.

• A carved Hebrew inscription reading 'To the place of trumpeting, to [herald the Sabbath]' was found at the base of the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount in 1969
• The stone block is made of Herodian Jerusalem limestone and weighs several tons; it fell during the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 CE
• The find location at the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount exactly matches the description in Josephus (Jewish War 4.9.12) of where priests blew the Sabbath trumpet
• The inscription is the only known physical artifact from Herod's Temple that directly identifies a specific ritual function performed at a named location
• The stone was found during Benjamin Mazar's large-scale excavations south of the Temple Mount, which also uncovered the Herodian street, Robinson's Arch, and multiple ritual baths
• The original stone is now in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; a cast marks the discovery site in the Jerusalem Archaeological Park

The use of trumpets in Israelite and Jewish worship is well attested in the Hebrew Bible. Numbers 10:2 records God's command to Moses to make two silver trumpets for calling the assembly and for signaling the movement of the camp. Nehemiah 4:20 describes trumpets being used to gather the people during the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls. First Chronicles 15:24 lists priests appointed to blow trumpets before the ark of God. By the time of Herod's Temple, this tradition of priestly trumpeting had become formalized into a daily ritual marking the Sabbath, as Josephus describes. The Trumpeting Place Inscription shows that this priestly function was embedded in the very architecture of the Temple, with a designated location carved in stone at the top of the southwest parapet. The stone's discovery at the base of the western wall, among the rubble of the Temple's destruction, also connects to Jesus's words in Matthew 24:2 and Mark 13:2, where he predicted that not one stone of the Temple would be left on another. The collapsed stones found by Mazar's team, including this inscribed block, are direct physical evidence of exactly that destruction in 70 CE.