Gabriel Barkay

Gabriel Barkay was born Gabriel Breslauer in Nazi-occupied Budapest, Hungary, on 20 June 1944. He and his mother, Rosa (Legaty) Breslauer, barely escaped a death march to Vienna because of the liberation of Budapest by Soviet troops in January 1945. His father, Eliezer Breslauer, had been sent to a camp in Ukraine but survived and later rejoined the family. He and his family immigrated to Israel in 1950. At ten years of age, he joined the Israel Exploration Society and attended the organization's conference in Ramat Rachel in 1956, when four Jordanian soldiers shot across the border and killed four attendees. From 1964 to 1967 he was an undergraduate at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied archaeology, comparative religion and geography under Yigael Yadin, Benjamin Mazar, Michael Avi-Yonah, Yohanan Aharoni, Ruth Amiran, David Flusser Nahman Avigad and Moshe Stekelis, among others. There he received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude and began his master's degree. Later he studied at Tel Aviv University, and received his PhD summa cum laude in archaeology in 1985. His dissertation was about LMLK seal impressions on jar handles. He participated in the Lachish excavations with David Ussishkin. His academic areas of interest included the archaeology of Jerusalem, biblical archaeology, burials and burial customs, art, epigraphy, and glyptics in the Iron Age. ==Teaching and academic career==

Barkay was an external lecturer at Bar Ilan University and Jerusalem University College on Mount Zion. He was a public figure who delivered lectures to the wider public and trained tour guides in Jerusalem. ==Archaeology career==

First Temple Period tombs In 1968–71, Barkay and David Ussishkin surveyed the Silwan necropolis from the time of the Judean Monarchy during the Iron Age, containing 50 rock-cut tombs of Judahite high government officials. Barkay also excavated the Iron Age tombs on the grounds of the École Biblique in the early 1970s. Priestly Blessing scrolls Barkay's most famous discoveries were two small silver scroll amulets containing the priestly benediction from the Book of Numbers (), which he discovered in 1979 in a First Temple Period tomb at Ketef Hinnom. These amulets contain the oldest surviving biblically related inscription discovered to date, dating back to the seventh century BCE and are to date the only archaeological proof that passages from the Hebrew Bible as we know them were in circulation during the First Temple Period. Temple Mount excavations In 2000, Barkay, Eilat Mazar, and other prominent individuals in Israel founded the Committee for the Prevention of Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount in response to a protruding bulge discovered in 2000 in the Temple Mount's southwest corner. In 2005, together with archaeologist Zachi Zweig, Barkay established the Temple Mount Sifting Project, a project funded by the Ir David Foundation and dedicated to recovering archaeological artifacts from 400 truckloads of earth removed from the Temple Mount by the Waqf and Israeli Islamic movement during 1996–2001. The construction included the establishment of the underground El-Marwani Mosque at an ancient structure known since medieval times as Solomon's Stables, including the excavation of a huge pit as an entrance to the structure, and reducing the platform level at the area north to the entrance. One of the findings of this project is a 7th-century BCE bulla (round clay seal affixed to documents), which became known as the "Bethlehem Seal". Dr. Barkay offered the first translation of the Hebrew three-line inscription: "In the 7th year, Bethlehem, for the king". ==Media career==

Barkay frequently appeared on the History Channel show The Naked Archaeologist, hosted by Simcha Jacobovici. He also appeared in the documentary The Real Da Vinci Code in 2005, hosted by British actor Tony Robinson of Blackadder fame, offering his views on the speculation that the Templars found secret documents relating to the bloodline of Jesus Christ under the Temple Mount as advanced by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln in their controversial book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. In Barkay's opinion, there exists no evidence that the Templars conducted any excavations in the area at all, and that the tools available to them at the time were not sufficient to dig far enough to reach the ruins in question. Also in 2005, Barkay appeared in the documentary The Bible vs. the Book of Mormon, produced by Living Hope Ministries of Brigham City, Utah, in which he was asked to give his opinion on the extent to which archaeological findings support the historical narrative presented in the Bible. ==Death==

Barkay died on 11 January 2026, at the age of 81. According to his daughter, the cause as "complications of an autoimmune disease." ==Awards and recognition==

In 1996, Barkay received the Jerusalem Prize for his life's work as an archaeologist of Jerusalem. In 2014 he received the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism. In 2018, he received the Yakir Yerushalayim award. ==References==