Gunnar Heinsohn: Jerusalem in the First Millennium AD
Esteemed ladies and gentlemen!
“Any child can show that in Rome, Ravenna or Constantinople there are stratigraphically only 300 years for the 1000 AD-years of the first millennium”. This is what a humorous reader mailed to point out that Jerusalem was the biggest problem for understanding the 1 to 1000 AD period.
Jerusalem is even more eternal than Rome. At the same time, it lies at the intersection of so many conflicts and cultures that only the demonstration that the Holy City, too, has a mere 300 years of hard evidence for the first millennium AD would make the rare species of open-minded individuals truly curious.
I had to agree with such an assessment. My attempt to meet this challenge can now be read online:
I would like to thank for the help and the emotions I received. I apologize to all who felt that my mailings were too much.
Shalom, good luck, and goodbye.
Gunnar Heinsohn
Jewish Hasmonean coin (30-37 BCE)
Go to the full article in pdf (124 pages)
Update: August 2021 - Arab Coinage Hiatus
Arabs (Nabataeans) are supposed to have forgotten the issuing of coins and the art of writing (Aramaic) after the 1st century AD and only learned it again in the 7th/8th century AD (Umayyad Muslims). This chronological assumption is contradicted by stratigraphy and art history. The first Islamic sacral buildings (Dome of the Rock; Al Aqsa) and administrative structures (Umayyad Palaces) are built in Jerusalem, which also becomes Islam's first Qibla (prayer direction). They stand hiatus-free directly upon ruins of AD 70, when Nabataeans, under the command of Rome's Titus, conquer the city. The first Islamic coins are also issued in Jerusalem. They continue 1st c. AD Nabataean designs. Symbolically, however, they become Jewish (Menorah) combined with Arabic lettering. All this happens in the Holy City because Islam emerges as a rescue operation for Judaism, which was eradicated in Jerusalem. Therefore, the Quran (5: 20/21) confirms what
“Musa [Moses] said to his people: ‘O my people! Remember the favor of Allah to you, when He made prophets among you, made you kings, and gave you what He had not given to any other. […] Enter the holy land which Allah has assigned to you, and do not turn back and thus become losers’.”
Stratigraphically, this occurs in the 8th century, because our global textbook chronology of the first millennium AD contains some 700 fictitious years.