The photo archives of a British archeologist who carried out the only archeological excavation ever undertaken at the Temple Mount's Aksa Mosque show a Byzantine mosaic floor underneath the mosque that was likely the remains of a church or a monastery, an Israeli archeologist said on Sunday.
The excavation was carried out in the 1930s by
R.W. Hamilton, director of the British Mandate Antiquities Department,
in coordination with the Wakf Islamic Trust that administers the
compound, following earthquakes that badly damaged the mosque in 1927
and 1937.
In conjunction with the Wakf's construction and repair work
carried out between 1938 and 1942, Hamilton excavated under the
mosque's piers, and documented all his work related to the mosque in The Structural History of the Aqsa Mosque.
Hamilton also uncovered the Byzantine mosaic
floor and beneath it a mikva (ritual bath) from the Second Temple
period, which he pointedly did not include in the publication about the
mosque, but instead photographed and labeled in a file about the
mosque, archeologist Zachi Zweig said on Sunday.