Two recently discovered Byzantine-era coin weights are evidence there was a Christian presence on the Temple Mount before the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, and perhaps even point to an early church there, archaeologists said in a recent paper.

The weights were uncovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project, which since 2004 has been discovering artifacts by methodically sifting through tons of dirt and debris extracted from the Temple Mount and dumped haphazardly outside the Old City walls by the Muslim Waqf authority during a 1999 construction project. …

“We have all this Byzantine material which shows that something was going on, but up until a decade ago, the consensus was that during the Byzantine period, the Temple Mount was desolate. But in actuality, a lot was going on during the Byzantine era, and from what we have found, it can be comfortably associated with a church.”

[Well, that should make everyone happy … said no one ever. It does suggest that the Temple Mount area was not overlooked between the destruction of the Herodian temple and the rise of Islam. That makes the dispute over ownership and control of the Temple Mount no less complicated. Whatever Christian structure that existed is long gone. It may boost Israeli claims to control, however, by making clear that this *was* the site of the Herodian and Solomonic temples, a claim that Muslims refuse to accept. — Ed]