Excavations at the Temple Mount

rdf:langString Excavations at the Temple Mount

rdf:langString A number of archaeological excavations at the Temple Mount—a celebrated and contentious religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem—have taken place over the last 150 years. Excavations in the area represent one of the more sensitive areas of all archaeological excavations in Jerusalem. The first were undertaken by the British Royal Engineers in the 1860s in the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem and subsequently the PEF Survey of Palestine. Since Israel took control of the Old City in 1967, archaeological excavations in the vicinity of the Mount have been undertaken by Israel and the Jordanian/Palestinian-led Jerusalem Islamic Waqf. Both excavations have been controversial and criticized. Israeli and Jewish groups have criticized excavations conducted by the Waqf, the Muslim authority in charge of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In 2016, UNESCO criticized the Israeli excavations, under the pretext of the Israeli aggressions on Al-Aqsa Mosque, after Israel prevented UNESCO experts from accessing the holy sites there.