KING DAVIDS TOMB A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

THIS CAN NOT BE A FINAL TREATY THIS MONTH BECAUSE THE FINAL TREATY HAS TO BE A 7 YEAR TREATY MADE BY THE EU FOR ISRAEL AND THE ARABS AND MANY.

Mideast peace treaty possible this month, says expert
By Deena Douara

First Published 7/4/2007
CAIRO: A meeting between the Quartet, the Palestinian Authority, and Israeli leaders will take place in Egypt mid-July, announced EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
Toward the middle of the month, we will recuperate this initiative, he said. Political analyst from the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies Emad Gad told The Daily Star Egypt that he believed the countries were very close to negotiating a peace treaty delineating a two-state solution very close to what former PM Arafat was said to have been offered at the 2000 Camp David meeting. He believes that moderate Palestinians are ready to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
While the Quartet meeting was postponed from late June due to high tensions within the Palestinian territories, Gad explains that the situation is very different now.

It is looking positive in the West Bank, he says, where Israel has returned tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority and the EU has resumed relations with the territory. Abbas is also supported by the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.
Abbas is actually stronger than before, explains Gad, as he and his Fatah party no longer need to take approval or agreement from Hamas, as was the case under their unity government.

Hamas is now controlling Gaza only.

The meeting will also represent former British PM Tony Blair’s first test as Middle East envoy for the Quartet — composed of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States.Despite being generally considered pro-Israel, Abbas had welcomed Blair as the new representative, saying the Arabs were ready to deal with Blair as mideast negotiator.Blair can play a positive role in convincing the Palestinians and Israelis to negotiate, says Gad. He explains that Blair’s close ties to US President Bush put him in an advantageous position, as the US is in a position to pressure the Israelis to resume negotiations.

MEPs defy member states on EU symbols
11.07.2007 - 17:45 CET | By Mark Beunderman

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The European Parliament is considering flying the EU flag and playing the EU anthem more often in its own buildings as part of a political message to member states who have scrapped the union's symbols from the proposed new EU treaty. The parliament on Wednesday (11 July) adopted its opinion on the EU's reform treaty which was agreed by EU leaders last month and which will be subject to detailed negotiations in a so-called Inter Governmental Conference (IGC) in the coming months. In Wednesday's opinion, MEPs welcomed the fact that the reform treaty blueprint safeguards much of the substance of the original EU constitution, which was rejected in popular referenda in France and the Netherlands in 2005.But the EU assembly also regrets drafting changes in the new style treaty. It has been stripped of all constitutional elements while explicitly suggesting EU's powers can be limited and handed back to member states. It also gives the UK a special opt-out from the EU's charter of fundamental rights.

MEPs are particularly irked about the disappearance from the treaty text of the EU's 12 star flag and Beethoven's Ode to Joy – which were given official status as EU symbols in the failed EU constitution.In a bid to defy member states on the symbolic issue, the parliament says in its opinion that it intends to give official character to the EU's flag and anthem in its own internal rulebooks. Some senior MEPs eye a more frequent use of the unions symbols in official ceremonies in the parliament itself.German social democrat MEP Jo Leinen, who drafted the report, told EUobserver so far the anthem is not being officially used in the parliament - at least I rarely heard it in the seven years I've been here. If we have it in the rules of procedure, we could play it when we have visits of foreign delegation or during celebrations, he added. Why not give the parliament, which has been directly elected by European citizens, an avant-garde role in doing this? That way, those who somehow hope that the flag and anthem would disappear would see themselves confronted with the opposite.

The idea has also caught the interest of parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering who told EU leaders at their June summit that he was moved to hear Beethoven's Ode to Joy being played for him when he was recently received in the Israeli parliament.
If the Israeli Knesset is willing to play the EU anthem, the European parliament should perhaps consider doing the same when welcoming foreign visitors, Mr Poettering suggested when speaking at a young journalists event in Brussels last month.Mr Poettering's spokeswoman said he had already informally raised the idea with political group leaders in the EU parliament adding that the parliament chief might formally table a proposal at a later stage.

UK opt-out dramatic

Apart from the EU symbols issue, MEPs in their report also voiced other criticism on the simplified treaty blueprint prepared by the former German EU presidency.An opt-out from the EU's right charter by would be a dramatic set-back which would cause serious damage to the EU's inner most sense of identity, the report says – without explicitly mentioning the UK, which secured the opt-out during the June summit, or Ireland and Poland which might make the same move in the IGC talks.MEPs also regret various drafting changes in the new treaty text, which give an impression of distrust vis-a-vis the union and its institutions a reference to the raft of protocols and declarations designed to safeguard member states competencies against Brussels interference.Meanwhile, the parliament is also keen to ensure that it will not lose out in the IGC negotiations itself, with the opinion paper expressing concern that member states could undermine MEPs' powers to control the European Commission in its daily work.The conference of political group leaders in the parliament is set on Thursday to appoint three representatives to take part in the IGC and defend the assembly's interests. The nominated candidates are German conservative MEP Elmar Brok, Spanish socialist Enrique Baron Crespo and UK liberal Andrew Duff.The trio will attend the IGC's ministerial meetings, while parliament chief Poettering is set to take part in meetings at heads of state and government level.

Stocks touch new highs on resource frenzy
Email Print Normal font Large font July 13, 2007 - 4:34PM

Australian stocks ended higher, propelled consolidation hopes in the resources sector sparked by one of the country's biggest resources takeovers yet.While Rio Tinto's hefty $US38.1 billion price tag for Canadian aluminium producer Alcan Inc sparked a downturn in its share price, hopes that merger and acquisition fever might spread through the sector helped boost other mining plays.At the 4.15pm close, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 was 26 points higher at 6389.4, while the All Ordinaries gained 25.3 points to 6425.4.But both indices touched new intraday highs, the S&P/ASX200 reaching 6436.7 and the All Ordinaries touching 6469.2.On the Sydney Futures Exchange, the September share price index contract was up 30 points at 6398 on a volume of 19,889 contracts.

CMC Markets senior dealer Josh Whiting said the market brushed off mid-week jitters to put in a strong performance.The news (of Rio's buy for Alcan) reignited talk of further consolidation in the global resources sector,Mr Whiting said.Other possible resource stock marriages suggested by analysts include a BHP Billiton takeover of US aluminum producer Alcoa, or locally an approach by Oxiana Resources for zinc miner Zinifex.The world's biggest miner BHP Billiton added 44 cents to $39.16, market predator Rio Tinto lost $2.54, or 2.45 per cent, to $101.30, and possible takeover target Alumina climbed 15 cents to $8.55.Mid-tier miner Oxiana firmed one cent to $3.91 and zinc and lead miner Zinifex was steady at $20.60.These speculations are exciting investors further in an environment where many are already bullish due to a rosy outlook for base metals,Mr Whiting said.Traders are scared of missing out on the next big takeover announcement in the materials sector.AAP

FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU
Terror chief: Arafat died of AIDS
Confidante says Abbas told him contents of French medical report July 12, 2007
3:00 p.m. Eastern By Aaron Klein - WorldNetDaily.com

Yasser Arafat

JERUSALEM – A confidential medical report released to the Palestinian Authority from the French hospital in which Yasser Arafat died revealed the Palestinian leader succumbed to AIDS, said the founder and leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command terrorist group. Ahmed Jibril – the infamous, Damascus-based PFLP chief who at times was a close Arafat confidante – said in an interview with Hezbollah's Al-Manar television that PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his team told him the French medical report listed AIDS as Arafat's cause of death. When Abu Mazen (Abbas) came to Damascus with his team, I asked them: What happened to the investigation into the death of Abu Ammar (Arafat)? The Israelis killed him. He was my colleague ever since 1965 and used to sleep at my home. He and I followed the same path. Is it conceivable that when (former Lebanese Prime Minister) Rafiq Al-Hariri was killed, all hell broke loose, even though he was just a merchant in Saudi Arabia, who later entered politics, whereas the death of Yasser Arafat, who for 40 years had been carrying his gun from one place to another, is not investigated? Is this conceivable? Continued Jibril: They (Abbas' team) were silent, and then one of them said to me: To be honest, the French gave us the medical report that stated that the cause of Abu Ammar's death was AIDS.

Jibril stressed the AIDS information doesn't originate with him but was told to him by Abbas and his team: I am not saying this, they did. Now they pretend that they miss Yasser Arafat and complain that [Hamas] entered his house in [Gaza] and so on.
Jibril's PFLP has carried out numerous anti-American and anti-Israeli terror operations. The group is suspected by some of targeting Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988. Jibril is believed to have been behind a massive shipment of weapons to Arafat in 2001 that was seized by Israel and used as part of a campaign to isolate the late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader. Arafat died Nov. 11, 2004, at a military hospital in Paris. The official cause of death was not released because French law prohibits distribution of medical records to anyone other than immediate family. Arafat's widow, Suha, has refused to divulge any details of his illness. A copy of Arafat's medical report was obtained in 2005 by the PA as part of an internal investigation into Arafat's death. A book published in Israel in 2005 quoted Arafat's doctor stating the Palestinian leader died of AIDS.

In The Seventh War by Haaretz journalists Amos Harel and Avi Isacharoff, Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi, Arafat's personal physician, was quoted saying he knew Arafat's French doctors found the AIDS virus in the blood. Al-Kurdi played no role in Arafat's medical care during the final weeks of the Palestinian leader's life and refused to divulge the source of the AIDS information. He claimed the virus was put into Arafat's blood in an effort to blur the traces of poisoning, which he says was the real cause of death. Many senior Palestinian officials claimed in media interviews they are convinced Arafat was poisoned by Israel. While Arafat was ill, some publicly speculated he was dying of AIDS. The homosexual site 365Gay.com, which deals regularly with issues related to HIV/AIDS, ran a piece reminding readers that for several years it had been suggested Arafat was bisexual and could have contracted the disease.

If suggestions that Arafat has AIDS are true, it is doubtful it would be made public, wrote 365Gay.com European bureau chief Malcolm Thornberry. National Review diarist David Frum suggested in a column Arafat contracted AIDS from homosexual sex with his bodyguards. Ion Pacepa, who was deputy chief of Romanian foreign intelligence under the Ceausescu regime and who defected to the West in 1978, stated in his memoirs the Romanian government bugged Arafat and had recordings of the Arab leader in orgies with his security detail. Arafat's wife, Suha, mostly lived abroad and rarely saw her husband.

Teenage boys?

In a WND interview, the National Security Agency's former analyst of Arafat's communications said the U.S. had information indicating the Palestinian leader may have been a homosexual who preyed on teenage boys. James J. Welsh, who in the early 1970s monitored communications for the NSA related to Arafat's Fatah movement, said, One of the things we looked for when we were intercepting Fatah communications were messages about Ashbal [Lion cub] members who would be called to Beirut from bases outside of Beirut. The Ashbal were often orphaned or abandoned boys who were brought into the organization, ostensibly to train for later entry into Fedayeen fighter units. Arafat always had several of these 13-15 year old boys in his entourage. We figured out that he would often recall several of these boys to Beirut just before he would leave for a trip outside Lebanon. It proved to be a good indicator of Arafat's travel plans. While Arafat did have a regular security detail, many of those thought to be security personnel – the teenage boys – were actually there for other purposes, Welsh said. Arafat's Fatah and PLO organizations based themselves in Beirut after they were expelled from Jordan in 1970. The terror groups remained in Lebanon until Israel's military operations in the area in 1982. In response to Welsh's allegations, senior Arafat aide and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told WND the reports are utter nonsense and don't merit any reaction.

King David’s Tomb: A Different Perspective
By Leibel Reznick JULY 13,07

Those who trust in the Lord shall be like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abides forever (Psalms 125:1).

Dr. Ari Zivotofsky’s well-presented article What’s the Truth about … King David’s Tomb? addresses the question of the true location of King David’s Tomb from a Biblical as well as an archaeological perspective. In the article, Dr. Zivotofsky emphatically states that the area known today as Mount Zion was not part of inhabited Jerusalem in King David’s time, and it is highly improbable that he was buried there. The Bible tells us that the City of David is Zion (1 Kings 8:1) and that David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the City of David (1 Kings 2:10). If, as Dr. Zivotofsky claims, the present-day Mount Zion was uninhabited during the time of King David, then it is not only highly improbable, but quite clearly impossible that King David was buried there.

But what evidence is there that present-day Mount Zion was not inhabited during the reign of King David? The answer is that since no evidence of occupation during the era of King David has been discovered there, that proves it was not occupied at that time. In other words, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence! This is a very dangerous stance to take with regard to the archaeology of Jerusalem. Many archaeologists and historians claim that in the general Jerusalem area there is a dearth of artifacts and remains of buildings from the eras of Kings David and Solomon, which gives them reason to doubt there ever was such a capital city. Some take an extreme position, carrying this line of reasoning one step further: I am not the only scholar who suspects that the figure of King David is about as historical as King Arthur, asserts Philip R. Davies, professor of Biblical studies at the University of Sheffield, England.1 Those of us who follow the unfolding story of Jerusalem archaeology realize that Davies is hardly a lone voice. In the world of academia, his opinion is close to, if not representative of, the majority view. And on what basis are the views that there was no Davidic capital of Jerusalem and that Kings David and Solomon did not exist predicated? The absence of evidence is evidence of absence. As I already stated, this is a dangerous position to take.

A tel is a mound that consists of a layer of ruins built upon other layers of ruins. Jerusalem is not a tel in the traditional sense of the word; it’s a city of hills with bedrock a few feet below the surface. In some places bedrock even protrudes above the land surface. This is because when an inhabited area was destroyed, the conquerors would remove the debris all the way down to the bedrock and build anew. (Recently the esteemed British scholar and archaeologist Kenneth A. Kitchen quipped about Jerusalem, We are lucky to have anything really old at all!)2

Archaeology is the art of interpreting physical finds based on ever-evolving scientific principles. The interpretation of the archaeologist is subject to his or her prejudices, therefore scholars who doubt the veracity of the Bible will interpret the finds in a certain way. Those who believe in the accuracy of Biblical history will interpret them quite differently. Leaving the inaccuracy of archaeological evidence aside, I would like to address the issue of the location of King David’s Tomb from a Biblical and a historical perspective.

Ancient Jerusalem consisted primarily of two large hills, the Eastern Hill and the Western Hill. The northern part of the Eastern Hill is occupied by the Temple Mount and the long, southern slope stretching downward is an area referred to as the archaeological City of David.

The Western Hill consists of the Armenian and Jewish quarters of the Old City as well as the area adjacent to the south of the Armenian Quarter, commonly called Mount Zion. Historically, the City of David, Mount Zion and King David’s Tomb were all located on the Western Hill. During the course of the twentieth century, archaeologists moved the City of David and Mount Zion over to the southern slope of the Eastern Hill. (Despite the move, people still commonly refer to the Western Hill as Mount Zion.) The question is: Is King David’s Tomb located on the Western Hill, where tradition has always placed it, or is it located on the Eastern Hill as the archaeologists claim?

The Bible tells us that King Chezekiah repaired gaps in the city wall adjacent to the City of David. The newly constructed wall was moved a bit closer to the center of town, slicing through several homes. The stones removed from the demolished homes were used to build the new wall. The prophet Isaiah stated as much, You [Chezekiah] have seen also the breaches of the city of David, that they are many … and the houses that you have broken down to fortify the wall (Isaiah 22:9-11). A section of Chezekiah’s wall was found by Professor Nahman Avigad shortly after the Six Day War of 1967. The dating of the wall can be determined by an analysis of the method with which the wall was constructed and by the pottery shards that were found inside the wall. And, indeed, the wall passes right through some ancient homes. Avigad’s discovery has been dubbed the Broad Wall, named after a wall mentioned in the book of Nechemiah. The wall is located in the Jewish Quarter on the Western Hill. According to Isaiah, Chezekiah’s wall was part of the wall of the City of David. Therefore, it follows that the City of David must have been on the Western Hill and not the Eastern Hill as archaeologists claim.

Some people erroneously believe that ill-informed Christian pilgrims during the Middle Ages mistakenly named the Western Hill Mount Zion and the City of David. Not so. According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, the Western Hill was the site of the City of David (Wars of the Jews, Book V, chap. 4). Josephus, a resident of Jerusalem and a Kohen who served in the Second Temple, was intimately familiar with the geography of Jerusalem and its environs. His writings are the primary source for the history of the late Second Temple period and have served as an invaluable tool in the field of archaeology. Josephus’ knowledge of the City of David was also based on a tradition that can be traced all the way back to the Davidic Dynasty. If he claims that the Western Hill is the site of the City of David, I am inclined to agree with him rather than take the word of a few modern-day revisionist historians.

Could it have been that the location of King David’s Tomb was forgotten during the years of the Babylonian exile? No. Nechemiah mentions that during the Post-Exilic period, the walls of the city were repaired to a place opposite the sepulcher of David (Nechemiah 3:16). Josephus refers to the sepulcher of David several times. Similarly, in writing about the early years of the Bar Kochba rebellion, the Roman historian Dio Cassius (ca., 200 CE) mentions King David’s Tomb (Roman History 69:14). Throughout the generations, Jews and non-Jews have referred to Mount Zion and to King David’s Tomb. Despite the tradition dating from Josephus’s time until 1914 placing King David’s Tomb, the City of David and Mount Zion on the Western Hill, archeologists claimed that all of these sites were really on the Eastern Hill. Were one to subscribe to the predominate archaeological view, one would have to believe the highly unlikely scenario that one morning every Jerusalemite awoke and could no longer remember where Mount Zion was located. The residents of Jerusalem then took a wild guess and assumed that it must have been on the Western Hill. Fortunately, in 1913, French archaeologist Raymond Weill came along and informed everyone they had guessed wrong and it was really on the Eastern Hill. Archaeologists may subscribe to Weill’s theory, but I don’t buy it.

One way archaeologists determine the extent of an ancient inhabited area is by studying the contour of the surrounding burial grounds. Since burials were rarely conducted within the city limits, the assumption is that the city extended to the area of the cemeteries. Numerous First Temple period gravesites have been found in Jerusalem. The overall contour begins east of the Eastern Hill and follows a southern course along the Kidron Valley, around the southern edges of the Eastern and Western Hills and northwards, west of the Western Hill.3 Had only the Eastern Hill been inhabited, then we would expect to find the contour of the burial grounds to surround the Eastern Hill only. However, the contour indicates that both hills were occupied concurrently.

(Because of editorial constraints, I do not wish to address the issue of the Tosefta quoted in Dr. Zivotofsky’s article concerning Rabbi Akiva. But suffice it to say that the reading of the same Gemara text as printed in the Yerushalmi is quite different. In addition, not only is the Kidron Valley east of the Eastern Hill, it goes southward and turns west of the Western Hill.)

One reason archaeologists are reluctant to place the Biblical Mount Zion on the Western Hill is because there is no natural water source there. The city inhabitants would have required many large cisterns in order to survive. Even if the cisterns had cut into the bedrock, they would not have been adequate because most bedrock is porous. Without waterproof plaster, the water would seep through the rock to a lower level. Many scholars believed that waterproof plaster was not invented until well into the Iron Age, long after the era of the Jebusites and King David. Without plaster, there are no cisterns. And yet, in the late 1950s, Yigael Yadin was excavating a Late Bronze Age level (corresponding to the pre-Davidic time of the Jebusites) at Hazor. He writes:

The most exciting aspect of the excavations in this area was the many bottle shaped, rock-cut cisterns. …In one cistern, the upper, more porous parts of the rock were even plastered! This one [cistern] went out of use for water storage as early as the Late Bronze period. It is one of the earliest examples of its kind known in the country and disproves the allegation that plastered cisterns were first introduced by the Israelites in the 12th and 11th centuries BCE.4

Speaking of water sources, there are two sources of water that are associated with ancient Jerusalem. One is mentioned a few times in Tanach, the Gihon (Gichon), and the other, mentioned in the Talmud, is the Shiloah (Shiloach). Archaeologists have been puzzled by these two sources since there is only one known underground stream in Jerusalem. That 1,750-foot underground stream begins its course at the eastern slope of the Eastern Hill, runs under the hill and flows into a small pool at the southern base of the hill. Archaeologists solved the two water-source problem by calling the beginning of the stream Gihon and the terminus Shiloah. However, there are a number of problems with this universally accepted solution.

1. It’s highly unusual for a small 1,750-foot-long stream to have two names, one for each end.

2. The Talmud (Sukkah 48a) relates that for the Temple Water Drawing ceremony on Sukkot, messengers were sent down to the Shiloah to draw water and bring it back up to the Temple Courtyard through one of the southern gateways, called the Water Gate. If Gihon and Shiloah are the same stream, why did the Temple messengers bypass Gihon and travel an additional 1,750 feet further south to the Shiloah?

3. The underground stream is on the eastern slope of the Eastern Hill. The Gihon was, in fact, on the western side of the City of David. As it states in Chronicles 2 (32:30), Chezekiah also blocked the upper watercourse of Gihon, and diverted it straight down to the west side of the City of David.

4. The verse above refers to the upper watercourse of the Gihon. That qualification certainly implies that there was a lower watercourse. The archaeological Gihon is a single source for the underground stream. How do the archaeologists explain the existence of an upper and lower watercourse? They can’t.

The solution to these problems is as follows. To the west of the Western Hill are two tremendously large cisterns. One is located at the western base of the Western Hill and its modern name is the Sultan’s Pool, referring to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who had the walls of the old city constructed. The other cistern is located in Independence Park, behind the Sheraton Plaza Hotel, and is called the Mamila Pool. Before archaeologist Raymond Weill came along, the Sultan’s Pool was known as the Lower Gichon and the Mamila Pool as the Upper Gichon. In ancient times, these two cisterns were supplied with water by means of an aqueduct system, traces of which can still be seen. Thus, the author of Chronicles knew what he was writing. The City of David and Mount Zion were clearly located on the Western Hill.5 Additionally, the Shiloah was the underground stream located on the Eastern Hill. Both ends of the stream had a single name—Shiloah.

Where is King David’s Tomb located? Tradition, dating all the way back to the time of King David, says that it is on present-day Mount Zion. I have presented here a number of arguments supporting this long-held tradition. Archaeologists have recently moved Mount Zion to the Eastern Hill and have called the area City of David. Our Sages said, Kol ha’meshaneh, yado al ha’tachtonah, The burden of proof is on the one who seeks to change. This is true with regard to tradition and also with regard to moving mountains.6

Rabbi Reznick is a maggid shiur in Yeshiva Shaarei Torah in Monsey, New York. He has written numerous books and magazine articles on the topic of Jewish history and archaeology. He is presently a scholar-in-residence for the David Dov Foundation of Lakewood, New Jersey, which is dedicated to the research of Biblical archaeology by Orthodox scholars.


Notes
1. Biblical Archaeology Review 20:4, (July/Aug. 1994).

2. Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI, 2003), 151.

3. Ephraim Stern, ed., The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, (New York, 1993), 713.

4. Yigael Yadin, Hazor: The Rediscovery of a Great Citadel of the Bible (New York, 1975), 123.

5. For an analysis of the derivation of the name Gihon, see my article: Moving Mount Zion Jewish Action (summer 2001): 38-43.

6. After completing this article, I found the following quote from Meir Ben Dov, a Jerusalem archaeologist of some note, concerning the location of King David’s Tomb.

A number of scholars engaged in research on Jerusalem have reverted to the mediaeval theory suggesting the upper city (Western Hill)—today’s [Mount] Zion—as the tomb’s location. These propositions can now be accepted since recent archaeological discoveries have shown that the city rose to the upper hills already during the reign of the kings of Judah. Hence, one should not reject out of hand the location of the graves (of the Davidic Monarchy) in the upper city (Western Hill) of which [Mount] Zion is an integral part (Jerusalem: Man and Stone [Tel Aviv, 1990], 237).

As an interesting aside, I read recently that Dame Kathleen Kenyon, the famed archaeologist who excavated for a number of years in Jerusalem in the 1960s, found a goodly number of early First Temple shards on present-day Mount Zion but threw them away. Since Kenyon was a minimalist, she firmly believed that Mount Zion was not inhabited during the First Temple period, and that it was only inhabited in the second century BCE. She therefore concluded that the shards did not belong on Mount Zion, and she tossed them out.