Dr. Gabriel Barkay | Archaeologist, Professor

Dr. Gabriel Barkay was born in Hungary in 1944, and immigrated to Israel in 1950. After graduating from Hebrew University summa cum laude where he studied archaeology, comparative religion and geography, he graduated summa cum laude from Tel Aviv University with a Ph.D in archaeology in 1985.

He has participated on various levels in numerous digs, and discovered the Silver Scrolls, two silver amulets that contain the Priestly Benediction (Numbers 6:24-26), which are the earliest recorded biblical verses ( dated to the late-7th century B.C. First Temple period) that mention the name “YHWH.” This makes the amulets the oldest Biblical inscriptions ever found, predating the Dead Sea Scrolls by at least 400 years, and the first mentioning the name of the LORD .

He has been the director of the Israel Excavation Society Sifting Project since 2004, sifting soil from the Temple Mount area. Tens of thousands of finds have revealed human activity on the site of the Temple Mount covering fifteen thousand years. He is considered one of the foremost experts on the history of the Temple Mount.

Dr. Barkay is the recipient of the 1996 Jerusalem Prize for Archaeological Research, and is a professor at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. He has spent more than 30 years teaching at the American Institute of Holy Land Studies, and guest lectures at University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem.