The Arch of Titus, from antiquity to the dawn of modernity. That's a long period. But, the Arch of Titus is made of very good stone, and was well constructed. And existed throughout that period, and was understood in very different ways. After all, Rome was destroyed, sacked in the fifth century and it's population constricted. Eventually, it's urban environment was restricted to the area of the ancient city center, and the arch became the entry way to a local dignitary's area, to his compound. But the Arch of Titus was preserved over that very long period and found its way into a number of rather interesting places. Now what happened to the arch over the next thousand years or so, well, we don't have a huge amount of evidence. But we do know that the artifacts from the temple were placed just down the road from the Arch of Titus in a place called the Temple of Peace. A place that describes in great detail, describing the erection of the temple in process, the temple of peace in 75. Josephus describes how decided to erect a temple of peace to the Roman peace. This was very accomplished, and then he goes on and says that, for besides having prestigious resources of wealth on which to draw, he embellished it with ancient masterpieces of painting and sculpture that were brought from throughout the empire to state the centeredness of Rome. And within this temple he placed the menorah and the table for the show bread so the book of the jewish law, the Torah scroll, possibly an image on the bara leaves, but we are not sure because it was destroyed, it is an assumption, and purple hangings from the sanctuary were placed in his own palace not too far away, up the hill on the capital building. People would come from all over the world to see the objects in this place. They used to go all over the world to see them individually. Now they're all in one place. Rome has brought them together. Now we've discovered this temple, parts of it have been excavated. And inside this temple there was even found some bases for artifacts that are well known to have been there. One can well imagine a stand, and on this stand an inscription that said something like, lamb stand from the temple of the Jews. And in fact, rabbis describe how certain members of their community went to Rome and saw the artifact somewhere around 150 of the common era. The famous Rabbi [FOREIGN] later considered to be a great mystic, says that when I went to Rome I saw the menorah and this is what it looked like. And he goes on and describes it. These objects were kept in this temple of peace, we don't know how long. There was a fire in the third century. They're not mentioned. But Rome was sacked in the fifth century. And beginning the 5th century, the path of these objects diverges, which we'll come to next time. But for now, what happened to the arch? It became part of the cityscape of a depleted city, a smaller city. It was maintained because, after all, it had connectiveness, it had Biblical resonance. Not one stone of the Jerusalem temple will be left standing upon the other say the gospels in Jesus' prophecy. Not one stone is left, and the great artifacts of Jerusalem have been brought to Rome. Now, the astonishing thing about that is that those artifacts, which came to Rome, are illustrated, but no one knows where they went. By the 11th and 12th century, it was believed that they were hidden in the holy of holies of St. John of the Lateran. The Pope's church. The cathedral the seat of papal power in a place called the holy of holies, the sanctum sanctorum which today has an transcription above it that says, this is the holiest place in the world.
