Prof. Gabriel (Gabi) Barkay, the Israeli archaeologist whose work helped reshape what scholars know about ancient Jerusalem, died on Sunday at 81, according to the Temple Mount Sifting Project, which he co-founded and directed.
Barkay’s name became inseparable from Ketef Hinnom, a burial complex on the western edge of Jerusalem where his excavations uncovered the famous tiny silver amulets inscribed in ancient Hebrew, widely recognized as the earliest known biblical text ever found.
In a 1986 Jerusalem Post report on discoveries tied to the Ketef Hinnom digs, Barkay framed one implication in clear historical terms: “This discovery represents the first concrete evidence of a possible continuation of settlement in Jerusalem during the Babylonian period.” He added a commonsense yardstick that fit his style as a field archaeologist: “It is unlikely that there could be burials in Jerusalem if the city was uninhabited.”
For Barkay, Jerusalem’s story never sat still in a single layer. In a 1985 Jerusalem Post feature on the Mount of Olives, he described the visible remains as only the beginning: “It’s just the upper layer; much of earlier generations is probably hiding.” That instinct, to treat the present ground as a thin skin stretched over millennia, ran through his writing, teaching, and the way he spoke about sites that Israelis drive past every day without noticing what lies beneath.
A 1983 Post article about Ketef Hinnom’s burial caves captured the same sensibility, mixing technical archaeology with a kind of Jerusalem poetry. Barkay called one chamber “the longest-lived burial cave in Jerusalem,” and he described the site’s pull in a line that sounded like a personal credo: “a meeting of landscape and history in a rare combination.”
Curiostity in the world of archaeology
His curiosity also fed into broad documentation work. In another 1985 Post piece, Barkay and his team were described as recording and surveying ancient tombs and remains around Jerusalem, including on the Mount of Olives. The message was consistent: Jerusalem’s heritage was not only spectacular discoveries, it was also patient cataloging, mapping, and preservation before development erased what could still be learned.
Barkay also became a familiar voice in public debates about sensational artifacts and the standards required to authenticate them. In a 2003 Post article on the controversial “Jehoash inscription” tablet, Barkay pushed a basic historical expectation: “We would expect to find similar inscriptions by the kings who ruled Judea and Israel from 1000 BCE to 586 BCE.”
He also argued that authorities should pursue the chain of custody aggressively, saying: “I would go to the police and ask them to interrogate the Geologic Institute people and the lawyers.” The quotes reflected a defining Barkay trait that colleagues often noted: he loved big ideas, but he loved evidence more.
In later years, Barkay devoted enormous energy to the Temple Mount Sifting Project, which seeks to recover artifacts from soil removed from the Temple Mount area in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Born in Hungary and immigrating to Israel as a child, Barkay taught and lectured for decades while publishing and working across major Jerusalem sites. He received major recognition for his life’s work, including the Jerusalem Prize for Archaeological Research and the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism. Barkay leaves behind a rare kind of archaeological legacy: discoveries that reached global audiences, and a body of local Jerusalem work that reminded Israelis that the city’s past still waits, quietly, beneath the pavement.