On Jacob’s Path

Text, Layout, and Orality in a Late Antique Jewish Pilgrim’s Temple Mount Graffito

Abstract

Renovations in 1927–28 on an Islamic school uncovered a little-studied Hebrew graffito carved into the northern wall of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Engraved by a late antique or early medieval pilgrim named Ya’akov ben Yosef, the inscription offers rare evidence of post-Second Temple Jewish devotional graffiti on this contested sacred site. This study analyzes the graffito using multimodal methods, going beyond its text to study its visual and spatial dimensions in conversation with contemporary graffiti studies. I read features such as its variations in letter size, line breaks, and the visual emphasis of its closing words—amen, amen, selah— alongside contemporary scribal conventions and prayer traditions to suggest that the inscription both reflects and invites oral response. Drawing comparisons with synagogue inscriptions, manuscript layouts, and ritual amulets, I argue that Ya’akov’s graffito participates in broader late antique practices of inscribing devotion and shaping sacred space through writing. Finally, I read Ya’akov as a Jewish pilgrim to Jerusalem. Graffiti like his reasserted Jewish presence at the Temple Mount, reinscribed Hebrew into Jerusalem’s linguistic landscape, and forged a material link between Jewish worshippers across time.