SPEAKING OF HISTORICAL REVISIONISM, David Bernstein over at the Volokh Conspiracy draws attention to the Egyptian State Information Service's web page on "Jerusalem in history", which has many wild, tendentious, historical errors. I doubt that I've caught all of them, but here are some.

Historical facts prove that Jerusalem has witnessed Arab urban and human stability since the year 3000 BC. In 2500 BC, Arab Jebusites, descendants of the Jebusite Ben Canaan, made the City their capital and called it Orsalem, from which the Europeans derived Jerusalem, which means the City of Light.

The "Jebusites" are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as one of the pre-Israelite peoples in the land. The word may be an Amorite name. The Amorites, for whatever it's worth, spoke Northwest Semitic dialects related to Hebrew, not Southern Semitic Arabic. The Bible associates the Jebusites with Jerusalem and give pre-Israelite names of kings of Jerusalem as Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18) and Adoni-zedek (Joshua 10:1-4), again, West Semitic names, not Arabic ones. In any case, we are deep in the realm of legend here and we cannot say with any confidence what the ethnic background of the Jebusites was. There is no positive evidence of their being Arabs and such evidence as we have indicates that they were not.

The etymology of the name "Jerusalem" is not very clear, but it doesn't mean "City of Light." It looks like a West Semitic name (again, related to Hebrew but not Arabic), perhaps meaning "foundation of (the god) Shalim" or some such.

The Chaldean King Nebuchadnezzar expelled the Jews from the two kingdoms. In 580 BC, he destroyed the City, burned the Temple and expatriated the Jews to Babylon in Iraq.

Since then, namely 600 years BC, the political history of the Jews had ended in Palestine.

Actually Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem was in 586/87 BCE, but let's not quibble. The last sentence is misleading. It is true that from this point on Judea was almost always under foreign rule, but there remained a large Jewish population in Palestine with a considerable political presence. Note that this section entirely ignores the second temple, which stood in Jerusalem between about 520 BCE and 70 CE.

In 232 BC., Alexander the Great invaded Palestine and annexed it to the Greek Empire. Afterwards, Mark Antonio reinvaded it in 189 BC. Then came the Nabataean Arabs to invade it in 90 BC as was annexed to their capital till the Roman invasion in the 1st. Century AD.

Alexander the Great's dates are 356-323 BCE. Mark Antony's are c. 83-30 BCE. The Nabatean King Obodas I defeated Alexander Jannaeus in 90 BCE and took territory from him (Moab and Gilead) but he did not annex Palestine.

Under the Roman reign, the Jews informed the Roman ruler about Jesus Christ in 27 AD and accused him of atheism. Consequently, the Roman ruler crushed them all and destroyed the City and established a new one where the Jews were inhibited to enter.

The causes of the Jewish revolt against Rome in 66-70 CE are complex, but the issues did not have to do with Jesus.

1- Excavations under the western wall (the base of the so-called Wailing Wall) proved nothing related to the Israelis. All What they found were only two sentences on some rocks about Isaiah engraved in type of writing that makes attributing them to Kings David or Solomon impossible.

This is so garbled that I'm not at all sure what it is supposed to mean. I am not aware of any inscriptions found under the Western Wall or which mention Isaiah. A Hebrew inscription from Silwan village from roughly the time of Isaiah comes from a tomb that may be mentioned in Isaiah 22:15-16. That and the Siloam tunnel inscription (cf. here) do demonstrate that the people living in Jerusalem and its vicinity c. 700 BCE spoke Hebrew and engaged in substantial public works in the city.

2- Excavations proved that the Jewish temple had been totally ruined thousands of years ago. This was clearly cited in the relevant Jewish references. Dr. Cathleen Cabinpus, Director of Excavations in the Jerusalem-based School for Monuments, affirmed that there was no trace of the Temple of Solomon.

Yes, the Jewish (second) temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, pretty close to 2000 years ago. I am not sure what that is supposed to prove. It was there for centuries. And yes, no archaeological remains of the first temple have been found, but given Herod's extensive rebuilding and expansion of the Temple Platform, the remains of the first temple may have been virtually entirely removed in his time. In any case, given the lack of access to the site by archaeologists and the deliberate destruction wreaked upon it by the Palestinian Authority, there hasn't been much opportunity to check. The recent salvage operation (follow the last link) has found material culture (including Hebrew inscriptions) from both the first and second temple periods.

4- There is no historical evidence that Al Bouraq Wall, the so-called Wailing Wall, was part of the Temple of Solomon. Besides, the real name of this wall is Al Bouraq Wall as mentioned by Prophet Mohammed, PBUH in his Hadith (speech) about his journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and his Ascension to seventh heavens.

Whatever one calls it, the "Wailing Wall" is part of the Temple Platform built by Herod the Great, not Solomon (no one claims it is Solomonic), and clearly dates to the Herodian period (around the turn of the era -- 2000 years ago). Herod's work, particularly on the temple, is mentioned frequently in contemporary literature. There was no such massive construction project on the Temple Mount in the Islamic period.

Now let us be clear: this is a website published by the Egyptian Government. It is riddled with both tendentious and simply careless errors about the history of Jerusalem. If this is what they come up with on matters about which I know something, I'm not inclined to assume that anything else they say is reliable.

UPDATE (28 May): Reader Gary Greenberg e-mails:

In your comment on the Egyptian Government's lies about Jerusalem, you might have noted in response that the Maccabees ruled an independent Jewish empire about as large as David's for about a century prior to the Roman conquest.

Yes, that's another one. You can read more about the Hasmonean dynasty (142-63 BCE) here and here. Also, an independent Jewish goverment was declared during the Bar Kokhba revolt (132-135 CE), but although the revolutionaries controlled much of the countryside, they appear not to have gained control of Jerusalem, and the Romans put the revolt down after a few years.

UPDATE (2 June): An article in the Forward gives some Egyptian political context for this sort of thing: "Report Slams Egypt Over Antisemitism."

UPDATE (1 July): Greetings, History Carnival XI readers. You may also be interested in reading my recent article, "Assimilated to the Blogosphere: Blogging Ancient Judaism."