The Treasure of Solomon
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Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. Did the high priests in the temple in Jerusalem hide their most sacred items before the city was sacked by the Romans? Is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls actually a treasure map detailing these hidden wonders? And are there more great discoveries to be made under this ancient city?

We don't know much about Solomon himself, but we know a lot more about the treasure. The main thing in the first temple of Jerusalem, this is the one going right back to King Solomon's time,

was the Ark of the Covenant. If you know that the Babylonians are hammering at the gates of the city, they want to come in and they want to pillage and destroy, that you're going to hide it away somewhere. I think there could well be two, three, four more stashes of treasure down there in those caves under the Dome of the Rock. The Temple of Solomon was one of the great structures of the ancient world.

It's thought to have been built around 800 BC in the reign of King Solomon, a time of great wealth, prosperity and power for the tribes of Israel. It's said that the temple contained some of the greatest treasures ever known, including the giant candelabra, the menorah, the table of shrew bread and even the Ark of the Covenant itself.

The Ark of the Covenant was well worth having according to the Old Testament because it had this mysterious power. It was actually a weapon of mass destruction. It actually could knock out whole armies according to the Old Testament. So it had this legendary power. So it was worth having. You know, it was worth having for King Solomon and anybody else who could lay their hands on it. It would have been sought after. Treasurer Solomon was the treasure of a king.

who embodied the most incredible relics in history. You're talking the Ark of the Covenant, the Menorah, other relics from antiquity, and chalices that may have very well ended up as having been the Holy Grail. These were just some of the famous pieces. There were also thousands of smaller sacred objects, jewels, and case upon case of gold coins. So what happened to these treasures?

We know that the city was attacked and looted several times, most brutally in 70 AD, when the Roman general Titus pretty much leveled Jerusalem to the ground. But what happened to the treasures? In this episode, journalist Jamie Theakston investigates one of the greatest biblical mysteries of all time.

If we can imagine the scene and try to imagine the feelings and the hearts and minds of the priests, the Romans are at the door and they are in a particularly bloody-minded mood having had all the problems they've had in this province.

So what are the priests going to do? I can almost picture them as we talk about them. And normally figures of great dignity and solemnity, they are now picking up the ornaments from the temple, the treasures that they would normally bow to and venerate. These are now being scooped up like a scrap metal merchant gathers his merchandise.

and they are putting them in pockets, in holders on the side of the robes, and going down into that labyrinth. And we have to think of just how intricate the labyrinth is. It is a honeycomb of secret hiding places. And these, shall we say, not the most athletic of men, because you're normally of mature years before you become the high priest. And there they are,

ferreting their way through these tunnels, looking for places in which the wealth can be stored so that above all, the Romans won't find it. Historians believed that the treasures were taken back to Rome. That was until the 1950s, when a new discovery changed everything. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the hills of Qumran, just a short journey from Jerusalem,

They revealed a lot about the daily life in the temple at the time. One scroll in particular caught the academic's eye. It was a list of secret treasure deposits across the city where the high priests had hidden their most precious items in anticipation of the Roman invasion. And this threw an entirely new light on what might still be hidden under Jerusalem. It was to say in such and such a valley

next to a building, there is a cistern, and if you walk a couple of paces in that direction, at that spot, there are 12 talents of silver or something like that. And, you know, it's too vague. You can't really sort of find this treasure. So it means, in my opinion anyway, that it means that the people who wrote it knew exactly where these things were located. So frustrating as a

treasure map, but still evidence that the treasure was buried. Well, in antiquity, if your city was under siege, then the first thing you think about is to protect your family and to hide away your wealth. All that remains of the Second Temple of Solomon today is the outer wall. It's known all over the world as the most sacred prayer site for Jews, the Wailing Wall.

Is the Ark of the Covenant and other treasures buried somewhere beneath or behind these stones? An increasing number of people think it's a real possibility. Solomon was fabulously wealthy by the standards of his time. And we all know the various tales of Solomon's mines that brought back so much gold. Solomon was also supposed to have had access to jewels, to diamonds, and to all sorts of other precious stones.

Now, if those stones were put carefully away in this secret hiding place under the temple at Jerusalem, under Solomon's palace at Jerusalem, there could well be two, three, four more stashes of treasure down there in those caves under the Dome of the Rock.

There's a few ideas about what may have happened to these treasures because for one thing they'd have known they were going to be invaded. They'd have known that they'd have an army on their borders heading towards them. So there is a possibility that they would have made duplicates or made copies and then hidden the real treasure so that these items would have stayed. And certainly the Ark of the Covenant seems to linger for quite a while in Jerusalem before it disappears from the Bible.

When the ancients wrote their treasure maps, they were really quite explicit. They would say, "In the second door beneath the third step, we have put this much in silver." So it wasn't meant to be an exceptionally difficult

treasure or spot to find it. They wanted someone to find it, but only somebody who knew about it. So what we find today is that people are just stumbling across this stuff in their daily lives, in their garden, in that extra wing they're adding to their house. They're finding relics that have been there for 2,000 years. The possibility that some of the greatest treasures of antiquity are still buried under the Old City has attracted archaeologists and adventurers for centuries.

One of them, Shimon Gibson, has spent decades exploring the hidden tunnels, nooks and crannies of Jerusalem in the pursuit of its ultimate prize. You have two treasures really. You have the Solomonic treasure and you have the Roman period treasure, or let's say the treasure from the time of Jesus, yes, which is then taken away as spoils to Jerusalem. So the first treasure, we really don't know where it's located. I mean, it's a possibility.

I would think it's quite logical that if you know that the Babylonians are hammering at the doors of the city, the gates of the city, they want to come in and they want to pillage and destroy, that you're going to hide it away somewhere.

And that means that one has to think about subterranean spaces beneath Jerusalem. This is where you hid things. If you had an enormous amount of money, if you had some treasure, you would find some subterranean space and you would hide it there. Shimon, you've written a book about this network of tunnels that exist beneath Temple Mount.

Yes, there's something like 45 subterranean spaces and channels and systems beneath the Temple Mount. Most of them are, or all of them actually, are inaccessible for Westerners ever since

The beginning of the 20th century when the last of the Westerns or the travelers and explorers went in. So really there's a labyrinth, a kind of sort of warren of all of these tunnels and chambers and systems beneath the Temple Mount. The truth is that much of the ancient treasure of Jerusalem has been dug up and sold by serious dealers in the city over the years.

Everything from simple pottery cups to more elaborate items like jewelry, silver, coins and even weapons. Much of what's sold in the markets is fake, but if you look carefully enough, and with a bit of luck, you can still find items that are possibly two, maybe even three thousand years old. But if you really want to see the best relics, then you need to visit one of the major antique dealers in Jerusalem.

They're the people who the tomb raiders and relic hunters take their prized finds to first. Jamie was tipped off that Khader Beydoun was one of the best dealers in town. Wow, this is amazing. So I'm after some treasures from King Solomon's time. Do you have something like that? So how old is this? Solomon time. Yeah? King Solomon time. So this is what, 2,500 years? 2,700 years. Wow.

And then I have a helmet. Okay, this is from a similar, same era? Same period. Okay, so who would have worn one of these? This is for ceremony they use it, but not for fight. So what is this made of? Bronze. This is bronze? Made of bronze, yeah. Okay, and the sword as well? The eye here, glass. See the eye? Yeah. That is beautiful.

And the sword here, that would have been used... This is bronze. That's for fighting. Right, okay. And how much would this cost me? This will cost 7,500. 7,500 shekels. Dollars. Dollars? Yeah. Really? Is that your best price? My best. Really? You can do better than that. Something sweet to your deal as a gift. Right. I can give you a coin. Okay, that's amazing.

This is the second temple coin, the silver shekel. Wow. And is this worth a lot of money? It's worth a lot of money, yes, because it's silver. Okay. There's such an amount of treasure that has been hidden in places that are probably common. That's the best place to hide something. And people are finding this, and if they give it to authorities, they won't get any money. So they want to sell it. It's very much a black market, but it exists, and you don't have to look very hard to find it.

So you don't bring just anyone in here? This is for serious collectors, who are collecting these items for many years. And these have all come up from down in the ground? From excavation, underground, tombs and other things. Right.

Treasures are extremely expensive. And I don't think you can walk into an antiquities shop in Jerusalem and say, "Show me your treasures. I'm willing to buy." -But we can try. -You can try. -Give me a go. -Are you gonna try? -We might find a menorah in a back room somewhere. -You can always try.

By law, Israeli law, you can sell antiquities and you have shops which cater to those who would like to buy objects and antiquities, lamps and bowls and all sorts of sculptures and so forth.

You also have another Israeli law which forbids illegal excavations. One law is in opposition to the other. So there's a bit of a problem there. As a result of that, you get this loophole and things are illegally excavated, including treasures.

Some of them are mundane objects. The mundane objects turn up in the shops which are in the old city of Jerusalem and elsewhere. And tourists passing by can pick up an object and they get a certificate and they can take it back to their country of origin. But the treasures usually are hidden away. They're not accessible. And they're smuggled out of the country. And then they turn up in different collections all over the world.

Recently, a colleague of mine, Doron Ben-Ami, he found a hoard of 240 gold coins of Heraclius, the last Byzantine emperor who ever ruled Jerusalem. So here and there, there might be luck, but these are just hints to the wealth that Jerusalem once had.

Jamie's search for the lost treasures of King Solomon takes him underneath Jerusalem into the ancient caves of Zedekiah and the hidden passages that led to the Old Temple, coming up when Forbidden History returns. Journalist Jamie Theakston is investigating the mystery of the great treasures of King Solomon, which disappeared from Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago.

It's possible that at the time, they were hidden away under the old temple by the high priests for their safety. And that they have remained there ever since, waiting to be discovered. He's already talked to the relic dealers in the city's markets. But now it's time to head underground into the remains of ancient Jerusalem.

Local archaeologist Shimon Gibson had arranged for Jamie to visit one of the few tunnel sites under the Old City that is still accessible and leads towards the Second Temple of Solomon. It's known as Zedekiah's Cave. So, Shimon, are there people still digging in the caves today?

Well, the cave of Zadokiah was explored back in the 19th century and early 20th centuries. And then it was sort of a bit quiet until very recently a group relating to Ron Wyatt has been doing excavations there.

Was he the guy who tried to find the Ark? Exactly, yes. Back in the early 1970s, he was crawling through a tunnel which was very close to the Cave of Zedekiah and he claimed that he found the Ark of the Covenant and there's other temple treasures. He took photographs. Unfortunately, the photographs he took were blurred. And the other unfortunate side of it all is that we really don't know the exact location where he was.

and Kerev Tzedekar is one of these ideal locations because it's an enormous subterranean space. It extends onto a substantial part of the ancient city and it's so large that you can even get lost inside. I've got lost inside on a number of occasions. Luckily, I've got a map and one can sort of find your way out of it at different points.

It's reported that Herod the Great used stone from Zedekiah's cave to build the Second Temple of Solomon, including its outer walls. And there are rumors that over the years, tomb raiders and relic smugglers have used secret passages leading off from this cave to gain access to the remains of the temple itself. Let's go and explore.

As Jamie and Shimon ventured further into the silent labyrinth of caves and chambers, it was easy to forget that the bustling city of Jerusalem was literally just above their heads.

You get these deep pits here, which are full of rubble. But if we were to extract this rubble, this would lead down to lower chambers. So you have at least two or perhaps three layers of rooms and caverns at different levels, extending down deep into the ground. Jamie, I want to show you something really quite nice. Look at all the graffiti here.

1869, 1874. And here you can see the symbol of the Freemason. He was a Freemason, clearly. This Richardson who had made this graffiti. But you have names here of many different people who visited the cave, including key figures in the history of Jerusalem. You know, American consuls and all sorts of people came in.

and left their marks on the wall. Zadokiah's cave used to be known as Solomon's Quarries.

It's an enormous cave which extends under the old city of Jerusalem and it goes on for hundreds of meters beneath the city. And it's at that location that there's a possibility that treasure might one day be found should one start excavating all the fills inside. It is a bit of a mission impossible because there's so much stone debris inside

that it would probably take you about a thousand years to dig it all out. And so, as an archaeologist, I don't have enough time to do so. But that is a potential place for hiding away treasure. Are there people still digging for treasure under Temple Mount?

Archaeologists are always digging in Jerusalem. They're really interested in sort of unraveling the history of the city. But you get these external groups. These are people from different parts of the world who have this yearning, this passion for finding relics of the past, including the Ark of the Covenant. And frequently I get these telephone calls from people sort of saying, "I know where the Ark of the Covenant is. Can we meet and I'll show you?"

I'm always willing to hear about these other possibilities. And because Jerusalem has this warren of underground taverns and chambers and tunnels, there is a possibility that somewhere, someplace, some sort of treasure will be found. Jamie and Shimon carried on deeper into the subterranean world until they finally reached the end of the tunnel that had been deliberately blocked up, possibly by Tomb Raiders who were covering their tracks.

This was as far as they could go. Archaeologically, Jerusalem is like a layer cake of history. The deeper you go, the older it gets. And the Roman streets are still there, buried 100 feet or so under the medieval city we see today. Dr. Kate Raphael is an archaeologist who has spent years working around the Temple Mount area and knows the underground labyrinth as well as anyone.

She believes that King Solomon built a vault beneath the temple to store his treasures in, in the event of an attack. What was Solomon's vault? If my palm is the Holy of Holies, the actual bedrock where Isaac and the sacrifice took place, that was the Holy of Holies. And within the temple itself,

Now, according to the source that comes much, much later, when King Solomon built the temple, he built a chamber beneath the Holy of Holies. So this is the rock, the bedrock, and he carved a room underneath.

So that if the temple was threatened or there was an emergency and you had to take the treasures and the Ark to stash them in a safe place, you could take them directly down below the Holy of Holies. There was this room where you could put them there and hopefully nobody would ever find them until

Everything had calmed down. The source, the way it had come to us says that King Solomon had already seen into the future and he knew that his temple was not going to last forever. And he built this vault underneath with the idea that the house of God, the temple would be threatened.

The outer Wailing Wall is all that remains of the Second Temple from the time of Jesus. But what most people don't know is that the wall continues underground.

So the Wailing Wall extends into the tunnel system? Right, the Wailing Wall is only about an eighth of the entire stretch of that Western Wall that was built by King Herod. So the actual site of prayer that is open to the public today is a tiny fragment. And once we enter the tunnel, we can see

Kate agreed to take Jamie down into the tunnels beneath the whaling wall.

to a spot which is about as close as you're able to get today to the Holy of Holies of the original Temple of Solomon, which housed the Ark of the Covenant and other sacred treasures. Okay, so we're really not the first to try and solve the mystery of what happened to the treasures of the temple. And maybe this is the best place to actually tell the tale.

One of the first Western explorers to actually try and solve the enigma was Warren from the Palestinian Exploration Fund. He was here in the last part of the 19th century and he did not have the funds or the ability to dig the entire tunnels. I'm sure he would have liked to, but he couldn't and what he did decided to do is to

make two shafts and pray that those shafts are going to hit what he was searching for or at least help him solve part of the story and put some of the pieces of the puzzle in their place. And if the information about the subterranean vault that was built by King Solomon, if there is any grain

of truth in it, so he may be as close as possible and up until then possibly the only Westerner who has come that close to where the treasures of the Temple Mount were hidden. Many Jews believe that the Ark of the Covenant and the other sacred treasures are still buried in a secure chamber somewhere beneath Temple Mount.

This was evidenced in 1982 when a group of ultra-Orthodox rabbis, led by Rabbi Yehuda Goetz, actually tried to break through Warren's Gate to reach the Holy of Holies and what they hoped would be the last resting place of the treasures of Solomon. But, alerted by their drilling, the Muslim authorities in the Al-Aqsa Mosque above reacted quickly and the rabbis were stopped before they were able to reach any treasure and start a major conflict.

How close did Rabbi Getz get to the vault? I think he was, if the chamber was actually there, he was within a few meters of it. He came

Four meters from where he thought the chamber was and four meters below what was the Holy of Holy in King Solomon's temple. So he came that close? He came... Four meters away? That close. Jerusalem is a fascinating place for archaeologists because new discoveries are made nearly every week

Shimon Gibson called Jamie to show him an ancient water pool and sluice tunnel in the gardens of a medieval church in the Old City. Shimon believes that it was hidden passages like these that the priests could have used to move and hide treasures before the Romans attacked. Like many of the ancient sites in the city not open to tourists, access can be a little difficult.

In this case, it was a climb down a steep metal ladder into the remains of the first century Podesta water pool. Okay, so this is the Podesta pool. The original steps, which date back 2000 years, you have flights of steps and landings in between. That's very typical.

So as those who came into the pool could bathe here. And one of the Gospels talks about Jesus healing an invalid in a… Exactly, yes. This is the Gospel of John, chapter 5, where there's the story of Jesus who comes into the pool and helps this invalid and cures this invalid.

And there's also a reference to the murmuring on the waters. And, you know, this is unclear. Some thought maybe it was something which is added a little later into the ritual text. But Eusebius also talks about something very similar. He talks about the bubbling of the water.

And there's a tunnel down here, is this? There was a kind of sort of sluice system, which meant that when they wanted water from the northern pool, they would lift up the sluice gate and then the water would come rushing into this pool. And then those who wanted to bathe here, this was purification purposes, so they could enter into the temple, would do so. But I can see it's all sort of now sort of underwater. And at the bottom here, you see there's a kind of stone there underwater.

That's the top of a tunnel which extends under our feet all the way in that direction to the temple. And that's for the surplus water. So if they had too much water, they could easily drain it away. But it's underwater. Although Shimon had high hopes that the water channel might have provided a concealed route to the underground remains of the temple, recent rain in the city had totally flooded the entrance. And there was just no safe way for them to go in at that time.

But a few days later, after most of the water subsided, Shimon was able to get down the narrow passage. But unfortunately, like so many tunnels under Jerusalem, it had collapsed well short of Temple Mount and was a dead end. When you look at the Old City and the Dome of the Rock today, digging under it seems such a straightforward and enticing prospect. The reality though is far from that. Do you think that there is still treasure there today?

I think there is still treasure in the world that belonged to the first temple. I think that it survived. I doubt it would have been melted down.

I think some of it still may be in Jerusalem. It's very hard to excavate Jerusalem. It's very hard to get permission to do any kind of historical archaeology there. Archaeological excavations in Jerusalem by Israelis are frowned upon simply because it is an occupied city for much of the world. As a result of all of that, international organizations, institutions that deal with archaeology are not digging here, which is a great pity.

Do you think there's still treasure buried under Jerusalem today? I most certainly do. I think that when somebody with the wisdom of Solomon in the tradition placed a store of wealth and of objects of great power and importance in those underground caves way down below the Dome of the Rock,

then you hide your treasure in more than one place. And I think there could well be two, three, four more stashes of treasure down there in those caves under the Dome of the Rock. The idea that there are treasures, relics, and even important documents still buried deep under Jerusalem waiting to be discovered has captivated those who have visited this ancient citadel for over two millennia.

In the current political climate, it's hard to see any major excavations taking place, so we can only hope that one day in the future, this holy city will finally release its long-held secrets.