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The Arch of Titus and the Menorah in Stone

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The Arch of Titus and the Menorah in Stone

The Flavians turned the destruction of Jerusalem into the foundation of their dynasty. In 71 Vespasian and Titus celebrated a joint triumph through Rome, parading the Temple spoils before the crowd; the loot was housed in a new Temple of Peace, and the victory was stamped on the Judaea Capta coinage that circulated for years. Two triumphal arches were raised to Titus. One is lost; the other, the Arch of Titus at the entrance to the Roman Forum, was completed under his brother Domitian about 81-82 CE, after Titus's death and deification.

Inside its passageway, one relief panel shows the triumphal procession itself: Roman soldiers, crowned with laurel, carrying the plundered treasures of the Temple, the golden table of the showbread, the silver trumpets, and, unmistakably, the great seven-branched menorah hoisted on a frame. It is the most important surviving contemporary image of the Temple menorah, and nearly every later reconstruction depends on it. The object it depicts vanished from history after Rome, but the image did not: in 1949 the menorah of the Arch of Titus was adopted as the emblem of the State of Israel. Long tradition held that Jews would not walk beneath the arch that celebrated their defeat, a boycott said to have been broken, pointedly, only in 1948. This is the artifact link the atlas records under Titus: the Second Temple Menorah, whose one certain likeness he put on his arch.

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