Western wall may throw stones, but will be held for thousands of years, archaeologists reassure – Israel News

Archaeologists say that they were not particularly shocked when a 100-kilogram rock fragment detached from the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem on Monday, narrowly missing a faithful down below.

The question is whether other pieces of rock are likely to fall from the Kotel, at least in the foreseeable future.

Yes, the bricks 1 meter thick in the lower layers of the wall old 2,000 years are erosion. This is what happens to all structures exposed to the sun and weather, says Professor Simon Emmanuel of the Institute of Earth Sciences of the Hebrew University.

Some of these stones will break down and pieces of them will fall over time – and no one can tell when. So while the faithful might be in danger, at least the wall itself is not. He is here to stay, he rebadures.

"I have never seen anything like this before.It was very surprising," says Professor Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University, a third generation expert in archeology in Jerusalem. The Wailing Wall is very stable, "she adds.

The Kotel can be stable like, well, a rock. But all structures on the surface of the planet – artificial or natural – undergo alteration, says Emmanuel. That's the nature of the material. The rocks have fallen from the front wall, and are still going.

"This will happen, it's a big wall," says Emmanuel. "What happened was a catastrophic failure of the rock, which does not necessarily happen in all the monuments of this size, in time, which is not necessarily avoidable, the fate of every artificial structure – and of those that are natural too – must erode.
As for the last piece of rock to fall, its fate must be kept in the offices of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, said Chief Rabbi Israel Lau Tuesday after visiting the Kotel with Minister of Culture Miri Regev and Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich .

The Minister, for her part, takes the opportunity to suggest to the Authority of Antiquities of Israel to conduct another investigation on the condition of the stones.

Meanwhile, the speed at which the brick stones are deteriorating is so slow that we can rest badured that the Wall will be there for thousands of years to come, Emmanuel says, "The brick can fall, but the wall is not going anywhere anytime soon.We will have more pressing concerns. "

2,000 years later

In fact, the Herodian lower part of the western wall lasted about 2,000 years . Tradition maintains that the wall was part of the monumental complex of the Second Temple built by Herod the Great, the vbadal king of Rome who ruled Palestine from 37 BC. at 4 B.C.E.

Modern archeology argues that Herod may have started the complex but did not finished. The construction would have taken decades and the wall was completed at least 20 years after the death of Herod, which would have been quite horrible in 4 BC. AD

Herod, and whoever after him, built the Wailing Wall using two types of limestone, more and more hard. Quarries providing stone for this mbadive undertaking – like Ramat Shlomo's career – have produced both types, says Emmanuel.

Herodian layers in the wall have both, which explains why, 2000 years later, the wall seems a little stained. Resistant stones erode at a rate of 1 to 2 millimeters every 1,000 years. The softer type deteriorates at 10 times this rate, losing 1 centimeter every 1000 years.

But the catastrophic failure of the broken stone was not a matter of mild erosion: the thing was suddenly split in two and broken.

It should be added that the builders of the oldest parts of the wall did not use mortar. The stones were meticulously carved to nest tightly, which does not mean that there were no flaws in their juxtaposition.

Memories of the Second Temple

The Western Wall is the last identifiable structure of the former Second Temple complex, which Roman troops leveled out in the year 70 after besieging the city of Jerusalem and defeating the Jewish rebels who had declared the war in Rome five years ago. (They then built Aelia Capitolina on the destroyed Jerusalem site.)

It is not believed that the wall was part of the Temple itself. It was part of the structure surrounding the vast Temple courtyard on the Temple Mount. (In 2016, colorful mosaic fragments from the Second Temple courtyard were found in debris removed from the Temple Mount by the Waqf – the Muslim authority in charge of the Temple Mount.)

The instability of some stones in the western wall and other structures on the Temple Mount is not a sudden revelation. In 2003, the Antiquities Authority studied the Wailing Wall, mapping the stones and their physical problems. Another study in 2009 found that building materials were coming off and stones in the upper layers could break off and fall.

Repair work was carried out on this Ottoman layer by the Israeli authorities, including the replacement of the mortar, explains Zachi Dvira, an archaeologist working in the excavation project of the city of David. The work took about three months and was done mainly at night.

But intentions to repair other parts of the wall, let alone search the area, came up against political sensitivities.

Dvira states that the Waqf's unauthorized works, which have not been the subject of professional technical supervision, have resulted in changes in the natural flow of water. rainwater – which led the walls of the Mount to inflate. Conservation work, for example, in Egypt and Jordan has not turned out well, Dvira explains. One reason is that they have not tried to recreate the original look of the wall but have used modern stones, he adds.

Jewish religious leaders – including Rabinovitch, who has been running Kotel since 1995 – also tend to resist conservation work, notes Dvira. In their case, he suspects that their opposition is more related to the struggle for control of the wall and the nature of worship there.

The fragment of brick has collapsed into the area of ​​equal prayer, where men and women can do devotions together. Some, like Dvira, suspect the religious authorities responsible for the wall hoping that the near-miss will persuade the Jerusalem municipality to withdraw from non-religious worship.

Some religious figures even suggested that the giant stone cracked and fell – the 10th day of Av, the day after the fast commemorating the destruction of the Temples – as a sign of God's divine shading and women who pray so close near.

Call it gravity

So, why did the brick split and lose a hunk some two thousand years after being lovingly positioned? A catastrophic rock break can be caused by previous damage, even hundreds of years ago; a weakness inherent in the stone matrix; water seepage, plant roots, subsequent changes to the wall that cause new stresses, and so on.

Mazar points out that the failed brick lay in a layer of Herod that was proud of the layers underneath. In other words, the bit that was detached was not supported, relying only on the integrity of the stone.

But Dvira worries about the exam summary of the fallen piece. He urges the authorities to remove the faithful a few meters from the rocks likely to rain and, overcoming the immaterial opposition, to repair the wall.

"I had already seen cracks in the stones, but they seemed external," says Dvira. But then he saw the stone that broke and split in two. Clearly, the crack in the rock started in the far reaches of history: there was a lot of ground inside, and the small part that finally held the rock together ultimately failed, and gravity has prevailed.

Worse: "I went on all the other stones in this area and I saw a lot that look exactly in the same state, with very deep cracks," says Dvira. "There is no danger that the wall, its Herodian parts, will fail.It is completely stable.But parts of the stone collapse and could fall."

It happened in 2004, for example: fragments – although much smaller – fell on people in the yard, he says.

Mazar recognizes that if the Wailing Wall had been properly supervised or supervised, it would not have happened.

"There is no orderly supervision," she says. "Someone must stay on top of the state of the stones." That did not happen suddenly. "There had been supervision, somebody might have noticed the earlier crack It's not everyone's job right now, but it should be – inspect the stones one by one, and see where the vegetation needs to be removed. "