8 Jewish Archaeological Discoveries

Over at NBC News:

It’s been decades since the first pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the caves of the Judean desert, but yet another piece of parchment bearing 2,000-year-old scriptures – verses from the Book of Leviticus – was found just recently. Such finds demonstrate that the Holy Land can still produce ancient treasures, thousands of years after the events described in the Bible…

Check them out here.

HT:  PaleoJudaica

Ancient Mosaic Floor Found Near Kibbutz Bet Qamain, Israel

It’s Byzantine and it’s spectacular:

A magnificent 1,500-year-old mosaic floor has been uncovered by archeologists  near Kibbutz Beit Kama in the south, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced  Sunday.

The mosaic was the most outstanding find in a Byzantine-era village unearthed  in the Negev during a survey conducted prior to construction of a highway.

The village, which thrived from the 4th through 6th centuries C.E.,  encompassed about six dunams – or an acre and a half – and was discovered under  the fields of the kibbutz. Among the finds was a public building measuring 12  meters by 8.5 meters (about 40 feet by 26 feet) containing the mosaic floor.  Archaeologists assume the building was a public one due to its size and relative  opulence.

The colorful mosaic includes geometric motifs and features amphorae – wine  containers— in the corners, as well as a pair of peacocks and a pair of doves  pecking at grapes on grapevines. The combination of so many motifs in one mosaic  is unusual, say Israel Antiquities Authority officials.

The building also features a system of water channels, pipes and water pools.

The site, situated on an ancient road that led north from Be’er Sheva, apparently included a large estate with a church, residential buildings, storerooms, a large water cistern, a public building and agricultural fields equipped with irrigation pools. One building appears to have served as a hostel for travelers passing through the area, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority…

The official IAA press release with more photos is here.

 

City of David

 

Ancient Quarry, Key Unearthed in Jerusalem

The Times of Israel reports:

Archaeologists working in Jerusalem have discovered a 2,000-year-old stone quarry, along with an iron key and masonry tools dating to the same period, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday.

The large quarry adjacent to the modern-day neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo dates to the first century CE and would have been active around the time of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, archaeologists say.

Some of the stones cut from the rock were more than two yards long. They were likely transported downhill, on an ancient road discovered nearby, to the walled city to the south, where they would have been used in the construction of monumental buildings.

The quarry, seen here from above, is located adjacent to the north Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo (photo credit: Skyview/Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority)

Also unearthed at the site was an iron key.

“The key that was found, and which was probably used to open a door some 2,000 years ago, is curved and has teeth. What was it doing there? We can only surmise that it might have fallen from the pocket of one of the quarrymen,” archaeologist Irina Zilberbod, the excavation director, said in the statement from the Antiquities Authority.

The excavators also found pickaxes and metal wedges used to sever the cut stones from the surrounding rock.

The excavation is a salvage dig meant to allow the construction of a new road.

Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, was built in a part of the West Bank annexed to the Jerusalem municipality after the 1967 war.

The IAA press release is here.

 

You Can Trust the Bible

A message from ABR:

 

Archaeology at the BBC

This is really great. The BBC is releasing videos from the archive:

A collection of programmes charting the BBC’s first ventures into archaeology programming, dating back to the 1950s, available online to watch in full.

There are hours of free video available if - like me - you are into things archaeological. Moreover, there is plenty on the Biblical discipline, with Sir Mortimer Wheeler featuring prominently.

Watch online here.

I’m off to make a cup of coffee…

 

The Gabriel Stone Goes on Display in Jerusalem

Also called Gabriel’s Revelation. The Huffington Post reports in typical sensational fashion:

An ancient stone with mysterious Hebrew writing and featuring the archangel Gabriel is going on display in Jerusalem as scholars debate the inscription’s meaning.

The so-called Gabriel Stone, said to have been found 13 years ago in Jordan, features an unknown prophetic text from the time of the Second Jewish Temple.

The tablet made a splash in 2008 when an Israeli scholar theorized the inscription would revolutionize the understanding of early Christianity, claiming it referenced a messianic resurrection pre-dating Jesus.

Curators at the Israel Museum said on Tuesday that it’s the most important inscription found in the area since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Israel Museum exhibit, opening Wednesday, also features ancient New Testament and Quran texts referencing the archangel Gabriel.

Wikipedia has more on the unprovenanced tablet here.

 

Archaeology after the Arab Spring

The transformative political events in the Middle East over the past two years have had, among many other unexpected outcomes, profound effects on the direction of research in Near Eastern archaeology.  War and civil unrest act as both a carrot and a stick, forcing the cessation of fieldwork in some areas, while promoting new investigations in places that might otherwise have gone unexplored. The geopolitics of the post-Arab Spring world are changing where we are able work, and by consequence they will shape the research questions we investigate, as well as the regions where future generations of scholars will likely specialize.  But the present moment of realignment is far from unique—our discipline has been shaped from the beginning by the tumultuous political history of the Middle East…

Worth a read over at The ASOR Blog.

 

Using Inscriptions from the Antiquities Market: Polarized Positions and Pragmatic Proposals

Dr Christopher Rollston writes:

Archaeological sites in the Middle East have been ransacked, pillaged, and plundered for many decades. The motivations of the actual pillaging are normally economic: the pursuit of marketable artifacts. That is, the pillagers wish to find objects that can be sold to collectors. Of course, the motivations of the collectors who purchase these pillaged antiquities range from the desire to possess a piece of ancient history to having putative proof for a cherished belief. Among the artifacts most prized by collectors are ancient inscriptions.

Think briefly about scientific archaeological excavations. Complete pots and potsherds are carefully collected, catalogued, documented, and analyzed, while broken pots are often restored. Organic materials are meticulously bagged and tagged and sent to be carbon dated. Animal bones and seeds are studied to learn about animal husbandry, agriculture, and ancient diets. Grinding stones, needles, and pins are photographed and studied carefully to shed light on aspects of daily life. Metal objects are sent to laboratories for scientific analyses. Stone tools such as arrowheads are sent to specialists for analysis. And inscriptions are sent to epigraphers to be read and analyzed. The result is that knowledge is gained about ancient languages and dialects, and about ancient social structures, and religious practices and ideas. The final result is that scientific excavations yield an enormous amount of information about the ebb and flow of ancient lives.

In contrast, those pillaging sites for marketable objects do not have the resources, time, desire, or the training to do any of these things. This is despite the fact many looters have experience working on excavations, sometimes as skilled laborers. Rather, looters rifle through sites and collect nothing except the most marketable of objects. The rest are disturbed, broken, and ignored. After all, the primary goal of the pillager is finding something that will sell, something that will satisfy the appetite of the black market in pillaged antiquities. What then about inscriptions found by looters?

Read on at the ASOR Blog.

 

What Happens to the Archaeological Finds After They are Excavated

HT