For the first time in history, archaeologists have restored part of an architectural detail from the Second Temple complex, built by King Herod in the first century B.C. at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and destroyed in A.D. 70. Researchers from the Temple Mount Sifting Project, founded in 2004, have unearthed more than 600 colored stone floor tiles and pieced them together into what the team believes is their original pattern, which would have decorated the porticoes and courtyards of the temple. “The tile segments were perfectly inlaid such that one could not even insert a sharp blade between them,” Frankie Snyder, a member of the project and an expert in Herodian-style flooring, said in a statement. The archaeologists studied the intricate mosaic-style flooring, called opus sectile, created by Herod at other sites and based the Temple Mount restorations on those samples. “It enables us to get an idea of the Temple’s incredible splendor,” Gabriel Barkay, cofounder and director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, said in the same statement.

A restored tile. Photo: Courtesy of the Temple Mount Sifting Project