The Trumpeting Place inscription is an inscribed stone from the 1st century CE discovered in 1968 by Benjamin Mazar in his early excavations of the southern wall of the

Temple Mount The Temple Mount (), also known as the Noble Sanctuary (Arabic: الحرم الشريف, 'Haram al-Sharif'), and sometimes as Jerusalem's holy esplanade, is a hill in the Old City of Jerusalem, Old City of Jerusalem that has been venerated as a ...

. The stone, showing just two complete words written in the Square Hebrew alphabet, was carved above a wide depression cut into the inner face of the stone.Site 12: The 'Trumpeting Place' Inscription
/ref> The first word is translated as "to the place" and the second word "of trumpeting" or "of blasting" or "of blowing", giving the phrase "To the Trumpeting Place". The subsequent words of the inscription are cut off. The third word (...לה), which is incomplete, has been interpreted as either "declare" or "distinguish", giving either: "to d clare (the Sabbath) or "to d stinguish (between the sacred and the profane), where the words in square brackets represent scholarly conjecture.Israel Museum artifact IAA 78-1439
/ref> The inscription is believed to be a directional sign for the priests who blew a trumpet announcing the beginning and end of the

Shabbat Shabbat (, , or ; , , ) or the Sabbath (), also called Shabbos (, ) by Ashkenazi Hebrew, Ashkenazim, is Judaism's day of rest on the seventh day of the seven-day week, week—i.e., Friday prayer, Friday–Saturday. On this day, religious Jews ...

in the

Second Temple period The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years (516 BCE – 70 CE) during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstructio ...

. It is thought to have fallen from the southwest corner of the Temple Mount to the street below prior to its discovery. It has been connected to a passage in

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

's ''

The Jewish War ''The Jewish War'' is a work of Jewish history written by Josephus, a first-century Roman-Jewish historian. It has been described by the biblical historian Steve Mason as "perhaps the most influential non-biblical text of Western history". ...

'' (IV, ix, 12) in which he describes a part of the Temple: "the point where it was custom for one of the priests to stand and to give notice, by sound of trumpet, in the afternoon of the approach, and on the following evening of the close, of every seventh day". The inscribed stone was probably thrown over after the destruction of the Temple and city in 70 CE, where it remained for almost 1900 years until Mazar found it.

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File:Lehchriz.jpg, Two possible extensions of the inscription File:Ancient Jerusalem, A remnant of the temple walls.jpg, Reconstruction in the Jerusalem Archaeological Park

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