God's Gold Read Online Free Page A

inscription running across its front surface referring to a restoration of the Colosseum sponsored by Rufius Caecina Felix Lampadius in AD 443–444, interesting and useful in its own right for working out the complex surgery that this monument has been subjected to over the decades.
    Far more compelling, though, are a series of sixty-seven small holes studded across the lintel’s surface, half an inch deep, that originally pegged in position bronze letters from a far earlier inscription. Once Lampadius decided to reuse this piece of architecture, the original bronze letters were melted down. So today all that remain are the empty holes from this earlier “phantom” inscription.
    On that stifling summer’s day in August 2001, in an office down Old Bond Street, I was intrigued to read how Professor Géza Alf öldy from the University of Heidelberg, an expert in so-called ghost epigraphy, had reconstructed three lost lines of Latin beneath the fifth-century inscription:

    IMP(ERATOR) T(ITUS) CAES(AR) VESPASIANVS VG(VSTVS) AMPHITHEATRVM NOVVM
EX MANVBIS FIERI IVSSIT

    The importance of this inscription, dating to AD 79, far exceeds the massive weight of the lintel, and can be translated as:
    The Emperor Titus Caesar Vespasian Augustus
    ordered the new amphitheater to be made
    from the (proceeds from the sale of the) spoils.
    Titus never served as a general before going to war in Judea where he earned his spurs, so the manubiae (spoils) can only have been those plundered from the Temple of Jerusalem in AD 70.
    The looting of Jerusalem must have had a huge impact on Rome’s economy. The holy Temple was a massive gold mine. This lintel, a living piece of history that has endured the centuries, was clear confirmation that Josephus had been reporting fact all along. Jerusalem’s treasures did make it to Rome, impacting powerfully on the everyday landscape not only of the pagan city of antiquity but also the contemporary skyline.
    The success of Vespasian and Titus over the First Jewish Revolt of Israel had brought the empire spoils beyond its wildest dreams, exceeding the exploits of all of Rome’s celebrated rulers. Just how much of Flavian Rome was built from Jewish blood money? Josephus leaves us in no doubt of the enormity of the windfall:
    So glutted with plunder were the troops, one and all, that throughout Syria the standard of gold was depreciated to half its former value. ( JW 6.317)
    The cities and towns of the Near East were simply saturated with Temple gold and, as the Colosseum’s phantom inscription verifies, Vespasian’s slice of the bounty was easily sufficient to sponsor the grandest entertainment facility the ancient world had ever boasted. Recent estimates put the cost of the Colosseum’s foundations alone at $55.6 million of today’s money (excluding labor, drainage, and any superstructure). The end product must have been closer to $195 million. The enormity of the Temple treasure was also sufficient to bankroll the foundations of the entire Flavian dynasty (AD 69–96) from Vespasian to Domitian. The economic windfall of the looting of the Temple in Jerusalem is estimated to have brought the treasury of Rome an immense fifty tons of gold and silver.
    As I grappled with this exciting revelation, I recalled the shores of Dor and the ferocious storm of May 1991. Now intrigue had been replaced by scientific curiosity. When I contacted Professor Alföldy to congratulate him on his discovery and confirm a few details, his replywas modest but telling: “Now we know what happened with this immense booty.”
    By the end of the same week I had completed and submitted a short article in Minerva titled “The Roman Siege of Jerusalem and Fate of the Spoils of War.” Once again I was consumed by curiosity, not so much amazement and awe at the scale of the treasures as a resolute determination to know precisely what happened to the mighty gold candelabrum,