What Happened to the Jerusalem Temple’s Menorah?
Every year the Vatican receives hundreds of requests to return the menorah of the destroyed Jerusalem Temple. The only problem? They don’t have it.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
In 70 CE, at the end of a lengthy siege, Roman soldiers stormed the city of Jerusalem, looting and burning as they went. Despite possible efforts of then-general, later-emperor, Titus, to spare the Temple itself, his troops set fire to the most holy site in Judaism and it was utterly destroyed.
But many of the treasures contained in the Temple did not perish in the conflagration. A golden candelabrum, of a sort that, according to later tradition, had miraculously burned for seven nights during the Maccabean revolt, was not destroyed. It and the other gold and silver temple vessels were seized by the Romans and transported to Rome. But they have subsequently vanished. It’s one of history’s greatest mysteries: whatever happened to the priceless artifacts from the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem?
Following the destruction of the temple, the precious gold Temple treasures—the trumpets, the fire pans used for burning incense, the table of the shewbread, and the candelabrum—were taken back to the capital of the empire.