Books: Gold Diggers	Volume 60 Number 4, July/August 2007
by Sara Goudarzi

The wealth of the past is not contained in the objects that remain but in the information they convey, according to archaeologist Sean Kingsley in his new book God's Gold: One Man's Quest for the Lost Temple Treasures of Jerusalem (Harper Collins, $26.95). In his journey to find the hiding place of 50 tons of holy relics lost when Roman soldiers ransacked the Temple of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, Kingsley follows a trail of historical and archaeological clues that lead from Jerusalem to Rome, Carthage, and Constantinople. Along the way he repeatedly finds gold by "uncovering a web of facts more startling than fiction." The true worth of this book lies not in the disclosure of the final resting place of the temple's golden candelabrum and other riches, but in the stories surrounding the artifacts.

© 2007 by the Archaeological Institute of America www.archaeology.org/0707/trenches/godsgold.html

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