Several years ago I visited the Forbidden City in Beijing and noticed that there were marks on some of the ornaments in the temples and buildings where gold had been scraped off. It got me to thinking about the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem during Titus’ siege. I thought that if during the dismantling of the temple that if the gold had similarly been scraped off then the soil around the temple must have a high content of gold in it. I submitted my theory to a couple of biblical archeologists and got two responses: the first said that it was an interesting idea and should be investigated and the second said that the gold would have melted into clumps during the fires that raged during the destruction of the city and therefore would not be found in the soil. Personally, I believe that the looters would have still had to scrape the gold away from the stones to which it probably adhered during the melting and cooling process. So, perhaps some of the gold is still in microscopic form in the landfills where the temple refuse had been deposited and is still in some of the dirt surrounding the temple mount area today. Would be an interesting graduate project for some aspiring archeological student to assay some soil samples. Also, it might give an indication of the true location of the temple since that is questionable to this day.
Secondly, what happened to the gold that was carted away by Titus and his soldiers? Well here is an interesting link that implies some of it was used to build the Coliseum in Rome. ritmeyer.com/…015/06/02/jerusalem-in-rome
Finally, I imagine that much of it was taken by the Roman soldiers too and distributed throughout the Roman Empire and the rest of the world from there. Perhaps even some of it resides in our own gold rings and therefore we are wearing gold that ornamented the temple where Jesus once stood.
