Magdala stone

The Magdala stone is a carved stone block unearthed by archaeologists in the Migdal Synagogue in Israel, dating to before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70. It is notable for detailed carvings depicting the Second Temple, carvings made while that Temple still stood and therefore assumed to have been made by an artist who had seen the Temple before it was destroyed by the Roman military. Some archaeologists describe the carvings as enabling a new, scholarly understanding of the synagogue conceptualized as a sacred space even during the period while the Temple was still standing. This new understanding would overturn a long-held scholarly consensus that during the period when the Temple still stood, synagogues were merely assembly and study halls, places where the Torah and other sacred books were read aloud and studied, but not sacred spaces in their own right. The stone is also notable for having the earliest known images of the Temple Menorah to be found in a synagogue.