Every step from the Temple Mount to your hands.

The soil came from the southeastern part of the Mount, where construction work opened an underground hall known as Solomon's Stables.

The earth was removed without archaeological supervision, together with everything buried in it: pottery, coins, building fragments and small objects from three thousand years of the Mount's history. The Sifting Project puts the amount at over 9,000 tons.

Truckload after truckload was tipped onto a slope in the valley between the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives. Rain, sun and passers-by did the rest.

To most people it looked like construction rubble. A small group of archaeologists recognized that the heaps held thousands of years of history, and began working to rescue it.

The soil was trucked from the valley to a national park site on the ridge facing the Old City, at Emek Tzurim.

Since then, nearly 250,000 volunteers from around the world have joined the archaeologists at the sieves: families, school groups, church groups and visitors to Jerusalem. The project continues today at its current site on Mount Scopus.

Two people rock a large wooden screen over a chute, and a cloud of fine dust falls through.

What stays on the mesh is sorted by hand: stones and rubble go out, anything that looks worked or unusual is set aside. It is slow, dusty and physical work, and it is only the beginning.

The sifted earth is soaked in buckets, then washed over a wire mesh until every fragment is clean enough to see.

Volunteers pick out the finds by hand under the eye of experienced staff, and each one goes to the project's archaeological laboratory to be sorted, recorded and studied.

At HaMeshakem every bottle and capsule is filled by hand, closed, and given its own number. That number is printed on the piece's Certificate of Authenticity, so the certificate and the keepsake can always be matched.

The work provides meaningful employment for people with disabilities, which means every piece carries that story too.

Turn your keepsake over and find its number. It matches the number on your Certificate of Authenticity, signed by the Sifting Project's co-director.

That number ties the soil in your hands to every stage on this page, from the Temple Mount in 1999 to your door.