Israel Archaeological News - General

[Resource Manager]

In Jerusalem, the Politics of Digging up the Past

As a nexus of religions, and archaeology, Jerusalem inspires intense fights over moving even a single 'grain of dirt.'

By Christa Case Bryant, Staff writer / October 13, 2013

JERUSALEM

"As the heart of Judaism, the setting of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, and the third holiest site in Islam, Jerusalem is home to many colliding interests – including anything involving dirt.

While the debate over the extent of King David's realm has focused heavily on Khirbet Qeiyafa to the southwest, archaeological work in Jerusalem also offers evidence about David and the biblical record – but in an even more fraught environment. Gabriel Barkay, who has worked as an archaeologist in the city for decades, says that even moving a single "grain of dirt from one place to another is political."

"It is a boiling caldron, the stew of which is stirred up by so many spoons," says Dr. Barkay. He cites the Chief Rabbinate of Israel (the supreme spiritual authority for Jewish people in the country), the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, UNESCO, the city of Jerusalem, the Israeli Antiquities Authority, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and the Vatican.

"The Temple Mount is the soul, heart, and spirit of Jewish history ... [and of events] in Islamic periods, also in medieval periods, and up to our day," says Barkay. "It is a focal point in the understanding of what goes on here. And the Temple Mount is a black hole in the archaeology of Jerusalem. It was never, ever excavated."

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[Resource Manager]

The Story of the Ritmeyer Image Library

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Leen Ritmeyer

"Having recently updated our Image Library with about 40 new illustrations, we have received enquiries as to how this online resource came into being. As its creation was a process that took many years, you may be interested to read its story. We were privileged to live in Israel for a long time, so most of the images come from the Land. However, in recent years, we have managed somewhat to break the exclusive hold that Israel has on us and branch out into the surrounding Bible Lands.

What is unique about these images is the fact that most of them are reconstruction drawings. Most picture libraries are just that – pictures of sites. But when you are faced with the challenge of giving a talk on a Bible subject, you don’t just want to show a picture of ruins. You want to give your listeners an insight into the past by building up the stones into a structure where you can imagine Biblical events taking place. The same goes for picture editors looking for illustrations to help readers visualise how sites looked in antiquity."

 

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[Resource Manager]

Preliminary Report on the Results of the 2013 Excavation Season at Tel Kabri

Assaf Yasur-Landau, Eric H. Cline Andrew Koh, Nurith Goshen, Alexandra Ratzlaff, and Inbal Samet

"The 2013 excavations at Tel Kabri, the capital of a Middle Bronze Age Canaanite kingdom located in the western Galilee region of modern Israel, lasted from 23 June to 1 August 2013. Highlights of the season included the discovery of a complex composed of several rooms, located adjacent to the palace and the Orthostat Building in Area D-West, one of which was fully excavated and which turned out to be filled with nearly forty storage jars; additional fragments of painted wall plaster in Area D-South1; and an additional large hall and rooms with plaster floors belonging to the palace in Area D-West East, creating a 75-meter-long continuum of uninterrupted monumental architecture."

 

pdf Link

[Resource Manager]

Ancient Magician's Curse Tablet Discovered in Jerusalem

By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor | October 23, 2013 09:31am ET

"A lead curse tablet, dating back around 1,700 years and likely written by a magician, has been discovered in a collapsed Roman mansion in Jerusalem, archaeologists report.

The mansion, which is being excavated by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Givati Parking Lot, is located in what is known as the "City of David," an area that holds at least 6,000 years of human occupation. The mansion itself covers at least 2,000 square meters (about half an acre) and contains two large open courtyards adjacent to each other. It was in use between the late third century and A.D. 363, when it was destroyed in a series of earthquakes on May 18 or 19.

The text is written in Greek and, in it a woman named Kyrilla invokes the names of six gods to cast a curse on a man named Iennys, apparently over a legal case."

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[Resource Manager]

Newsletter Tuesday October 29, 2013

Carmel Caves named newest UNESCO World Heritage Site

Caves, in northern Israel, become the 10th Israeli site on the list

• UNESCO: Site provides "a definitive chronological framework at a key period of human development"

• Israeli official: A source of pride that another Israeli site has joined the list.

"The Carmel Caves site, in northern Israel, has been named the newest World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for "providing a definitive chronological framework at a key period of human development."

The announcement ceremony, to be held on Tuesday, will be attended by Israel's National Commission for UNESCO Secretary-General Dr. Dalit Atrakchi, and Israel Nature and Parks Authority Chairman Shaul Goldstein.

"The four Mount Carmel caves (Tabun, Jamal, el-Wad and Skhul) and their terraces are clustered adjacent to each other along the south side of the Nahal Me’arot/Wadi el-Mughara valley. The steep-sided valley opening to the coastal plain on the west side of the Carmel range provides the visual setting of a prehistoric habitat," a UNESCO statement said."

 

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[Resource Manager]

Jerome (Jerry) Murphy-O’Connor

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Leen Ritmeyer

"This week the well-known Biblical scholar, Jerome (Jerry) Murphy-O’Connor, professor of the New Testament at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem passed away. He was especially interested in the life of the Apostle Paul.

He was one of those rare scholars who, while appreciating both the study of the NT text and that of archaeology, kept a balanced view of the value of each field. In a recent interview by Jill Duchess of Hamilton and published in the Catholic Herald, he said:

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Reconstructing Jerusalem for Jerusalem the Movie

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Leen Ritmeyer

"In a previous post, we mentioned the making of Jerusalem the Movie in iMax 3D. Every week there is an update from this beautiful movie on Facebook. This weeks update shows an atmospheric reconstruction of Jerusalem in the First Century:
 

Check out this computer-generated recreation of Jerusalem in the 1st century CE / AD, featuring the latest archaeological consensus on what the 2nd Temple might have looked like. See it on the giant screen for the first time in our film."

 

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[Resource Manager]

Lachish: Open Access to BAR Articles on Lachish Archaeology

Read seven seminal BAR articles on the Lachish excavations - now available for free

Noah Wiener • 11/14/2013

 

"In the November/December 2013 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Yosef Garfinkel, Michael Hasel and Martin Klingbeil discuss the start of a new excavation at Lachish, the second most important city in ancient Judah after Jerusalem. Tel Lachish has a rich excavation history. In “An Ending and a Beginning: Why We’re Leaving Qeiyafa and Going to Lachish,” Garfinkel, Hasel and Klingbeil describe the history of the excavation: “Three previous expeditions excavated at Lachish. The first was British in 1932–1938, directed by James Leslie Starkey and his assistant Olga Tufnell. The second was an Israeli expedition directed by Yohanan Aharoni of Tel Aviv University for two seasons in 1966 and 1968. The third expedition, under the superb direction of David Ussishkin of Tel Aviv University, took place between 1974 and 1987. The Starkey-Tufnell and Ussishkin expeditions set new standards in excavation and publication. They revolutionized our understanding of various aspects of Lachish, such as the later history of Judah and the pre-Israelite Late Bronze Age Canaanite city."

Link

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Ancient City Discovered Beneath Biblical-Era Ruins in Israel

By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer | November 16, 2013 10:43am ET

"Archaeologists have unearthed traces of a previously unknown, 14th-century Canaanite city buried underneath the ruins of another city in Israel.

The traces include an Egyptian amulet of Amenhotep III and several pottery vessels from the Late Bronze Age unearthed at the site of Gezer, an ancient Canaanite city.

Gezer was once a major center that sat at the crossroads of trade routes between Asia and Africa, said Steven Ortiz, a co-director of the site's excavations and a biblical scholar at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
 
The remains of the ancient city suggest the site was used for even longer than previously known. [The Holy Land: 7 Amazing Archaeological Finds]"

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Ancient Jewish Altar Found in Shilo

Ongoing dig in the Samaria town of Shilo turns up ancient stone altar from First Temple times or earlier.

By Maayana Miskin

First Publish: 11/19/2013, 6:43 PM

"An ongoing archaeological dig in the ancient Jewish village of Shilo in Samaria (Shomron) has turned up a stone altar dating back thousands of years.

The altar is believed to date back to the period from roughly 1,200 BCE to 600 CE known as the Iron Age.

More specifically, archaeologists dating it to what some Israeli researchers call the “Israelite era” – the period of time after the nation of Israel entered the land of Israel, and before the destruction of the First Temple.

The altar is 60 centimeters by 60 centimeters, with a height of 40 centimeters, and was found on the southern edge of the site of ancient Shilo."

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Oldest Royal Wine Cellar Uncorked in Israel

By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer | November 22, 2013 08:06am ET

"Archaeologists have uncovered the oldest known palatial wine cellar in the Middle East at a site in Israel.

The storage room stocked at least 3,000 bottles' worth of the intoxicating beverage in massive pottery jars, researchers report today (Nov. 22) at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Baltimore. The ancient wine bore little resemblance to the Bordeaux and Chianti of today — it was preserved and spiced with resin and herbs, including juniper, mint and myrtle.

The closest modern analogue is a Greek wine flavored with pine resin called retsina, study researcher Assaf Yasur-Landau of the University of Haifa, told reporters.

"If you take retsina and you pour a bit of cough syrup inside, I guess you get something quite similar," Yasur-Landau said.

The find is important less for the wine's palate and more for what it reveals about the culture of the ancient Canaanites, a group that dominated what is now Israel and Lebanon. [See Images of the Oldest Wine Cellar Discovery]

Yasur-Landau and his colleagues said. Texts and inscriptions from the era describe herbal wines, but this is the first true chemical evidence of their existence."

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[Resource Manager]

Israeli Archaeologists Unearth 10,000-Year-Old Building, Other Unique Finds

Nov 25, 2013 by Sergio Prostak

"Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) archaeologists announced today the discovery of remains of a Neolithic settlement, mainly occupied between 8,000 and 4,000 BC, at an archaeological site near the present-day town of Eshtaol, Judean Shephelah.

“We can see distinctly a settlement that gradually became planned, which included alleys and buildings that were extremely impressive from the standpoint of their size and the manner of their construction,” said excavation co-director Dr Amir Golani and archaeologists from the IAA.

“We can clearly trace the urban planning and see the guiding hand of the settlement’s leadership that chose to regulate the construction in the crowded regions in the center of the settlement and allowed less planning along its periphery.”

“It is fascinating to see how in such an ancient period a planned settlement was established in which there is orderly construction, and trace the development of the society which became increasingly hierarchical.”

Excavations at the site have yielded a surprising discovery – remains of a building dating back at least 10,000 years."

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also @
 
Jpost.com

Massive Archaeological Dig Along Highway 38 Reveals Findings from 10,000 years ago

By JPOST.COM STAFF

11/25/2013 13:12

Link

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Kh. el-Maqatir – ‘Joshua’s Ai’ Exhibition

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Leen Ritmeyer

"The Association for Biblical Research announced the opening of an exhibition called: “Khirbet el-Maqatir: The History of a Biblical Site” at the Dunham Bible Museum of Houston Baptist University, January 21st through December, 2014″

 

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[Resource Manager]

Israeli Archaeologists Discover Remains of First Prehistoric Funerary Banquets

 

2013-12-03 05:59:11

 

JERUSALEM, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- "An excavation by Israeli archaeologists unearthed remains of a lavish meal held near a tomb by prehistoric men to mourn their dead, making the find the oldest funerary meal discovered.

 

The ongoing excavation at the Carmel Mountains near Haifa in the north of Israel is examining the caves dotting the mountains that were used by a prehistoric tribe 13,000 years ago.

 

"We know that prehistoric men buried their dead and mourned them, but we didn't know they also held ritualistic meals near their graves," Guy Bar-Oz from Haifa University's Zinman Institute of Archaeology told Xinhua.

 

"We know they are leftovers of a big meal because the remains are not complete bones, many of them were broken and bone marrow had been extracted from some of them, which lead us to believe they were not remains of complete animals," Bar-Oz said."

 

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[Resource Manager]

First: Hasmonean Building Uncovered in the City of David 

 

It is only now that remains of a building from this period in the city’s history are being exposed. 

 

By: Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency 

 

Published: December 3rd, 2013

 

"In recent months, the remains of an impressive structure from the Hasmonean period (second century BCE) have been unearthed in excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Giv‘ati site, located in the City of David, near the walls surrounding the Old City. Josephus wrote about Hasmonean Jerusalem, but it is only now that remains of a building from this period in the city’s history are being exposed. 

 

The building stands 12 ft. high and covers an area of 690 sq.ft. The building’s broad walls, more than 3 ft. thick, are made of roughly hewn limestone blocks that were arranged as headers and stretchers, a construction method characteristic of the Hasmonean period."

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[Resource Manager]

The Temple Mount in the Washington Post

Posted on December 3, 2013 by Leen Ritmeyer

"Yesterday, The Washington Post published an article on the Temple Mount.
 

Muslims call it the Noble Sanctuary. Jews and Christians call it the Temple Mount. Built atop Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, this 36-acre site is the place where seminal events in Islam, Judaism and Christianity are said to have taken place, and it has been a flash point of conflict for millenniums. Many aspects of its meaning and history are still disputed by religious and political leaders, scholars, and even archaeologists.

Several cycles of building and destruction have shaped what is on this hilltop today.

 

These cycles of the Development of the Temple Mount are shown in the five sketches below the main site drawing:"

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[Resource Manager]

Ancient Estate and Garden Fountain Unearthed in Israel

By Jeanna Bryner, Managing Editor | December 08, 2013 11:38am ET

"The remains of a wealthy estate, with a mosaic fountain in its garden, dating to between the late 10th and early 11th centuries have been unearthed in Ramla in central Israel.

The estate was discovered during excavations at a site where a bridge is slated for construction as part of the new Highway 44.

"It seems that a private building belonging to a wealthy family was located there and that the fountain was used for ornamentation," Hagit Torgë, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said in a statement. "This is the first time that a fountain has been discovered outside the known, more affluent quarters of Old Ramla."

Fountains from the Fatimid period were mostly found around the center of the Old City of Ramla called White Mosque, Torgë added.

Researchers found two residential rooms within the estate along with a nearby fountain made of mosaic and covered with plaster and stone slabs; A network of pipes, some made of terra cotta and connected with stone jars, led to the fountain. Next to the estate, archaeologists also found a large cistern and a system of pipes and channels used to transport water."

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[Resource Manager]

Chasing 5th-Century Clues From a Woman’s Tombstone

By JAMES BARRON

Published: December 13, 2013

"They figured out her first name, but not her father’s. They know where and when she died, but not her age or the cause of death. They could not tell whether she was married.

This is a detective story, but not the ripped-from-the-headlines kind. The woman died more than 1,600 years ago, in what is now Jordan. The detectives are a few students at Yeshiva University in Upper Manhattan and a professor who is sometimes called the Jewish Robert Langdon, referring to the fictional Harvard professor of iconology in the Dan Brown books and the movie “The Da Vinci Code.”

All they had to go on was the woman’s tombstone. And at first, they did not even have that, just photographs of it.

Here are the facts of the case:

In March 2012, the professor, Steven Fine, who is also the director of Yeshiva’s Center for Israel Studies, wrote an article for the magazine Biblical Archaeology Review about Jewish tombstones in the ancient city of Zoar, which most scholars say was on the Dead Sea. It was such an oasis, according to one account, that a sixth-century mapmaker drew a grove of palm trees as a symbol for it."

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[Resource Manager]

Israel Museum Obtains World’s ‘First Jewish Coin’

American donor gives Jerusalem institution collection of 1,200 silver Persian coins, including 4th century BCE drachm with earliest mention of Judea

BY ILAN BEN ZION

December 19, 2013, 12:10 pm

"The Israel Museum has acquired over 1,200 ancient silver Persian coins, among the earliest known currency from the area, including what the museum has identified as the world’s oldest Jewish coin.

The coins, dated to the 5th and 4th centuries BCE when the region was controlled by the Persian Empire, constitute “the largest collection in the world of Persian-period coins.” The collection includes a number of previously unknown varieties, the museum said. Chief among the rare artifacts is a silver drachm, an ancient coin based upon the Greek drachma, which, in clearly legible Aramaic script, bears the word yehud, or Judea.

“It’s the earliest coin from the province of Judea,” the museum’s chief curator of archaeology, Haim Gitler, said in an interview with The Times of Israel, calling the 5th century silver drachm the “first Jewish coin.”

The coin collection dates to the period a century or more after the Achaemenid Persian Empire under Cyrus II (the Great) conquered and annexed the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE. The Persians ruled the Levant for the next two centuries, until Alexander of Macedon stormed through and toppled their empire. Roughly a century before Persia conquered the Middle East, the earliest known currency was minted from electrum — a silver-gold alloy — in Lydia, western Asia Minor. The idea of precious metal coinage spread across the empire. Judea, Samaria and Philistia, part of the satrapy of Syria and Jerusalem, began minting their own coins shortly thereafter."

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[Resource Manager]

Wall Painting by Ottoman Officer Found in Haifa

HAIFA - Anadolu Agency

A massive painting created by an Ottoman soldier has been discovered beneath the plaster of the wall of a nuts store in Haifa. Now, support is needed to reveal the entire painting and to protect it

December 24. 2013

"Locals in Haifa have discovered a large painting dating back from World War I in a nuts store in the coastal Israeli city.

The 10-meter-wide and three-meter-high painting, which covers the entire wall, depicts an air attack by the British army against the Ottoman army during World War I.

The painting was revealed by a university student who had come to the store for shopping. Seeing a miniature soldier’s head beneath the peeled-off plaster on the wall, the student called a friend who is an expert on wall paintings. The expert went to the store the following day to examine the wall and said a bigger painting could be concealed beneath the plaster."

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Portuguese Plumbers Discover Ancient Mikvahs

By: JTA

Published: December 28th, 2013

"Plumbers fixing a water leak in central Portugal discovered what appears to be a cluster of 600-year-old Jewish ritual baths.

 

The discovery was made earlier this year in the city of Coimbra as the plumbers were replacing the piping of an old building in what used to be the Jewish part of the Old City, according to a report Thursday by the Publico daily.

 

Jorge Alarcao, an archeologist who was called upon to study the structures, told the paper: “This could be the only discovery of its kind made in Portugal.”

 

The structures appear to be mikvahs, or ritual baths, predating the 14th century which were designed for Jewish women, according to Alarcao."

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Pink Wool to Ponchos: What People in Ancient Israel Really Wore

The man in the dusty street wore a tunic and sandals. The rich could dress so splendidly that they risked being struck down by divine anger

By Miriam Feinberg Vamosh | Dec. 26, 2013 | 11:05 AM

"Joseph’s coat of many colors. Sara Netanyahu’s controversial black dress. All the way back to Adam and Eve's arboreal apparel, clothing has revealed family and social structure, religion, commercial and cultural ties.

The ancient texts, including the Bible, the Talmud and New Testament abound in fashion tidbits, often confirmed by archaeological findings.

Many scriptural references to clothing are symbolic. Clothing came to symbolize the human being in a literal way, in the custom of tearing a garment to indicate grief – Jacob tore his garment when he saw Joseph’s coat of many colors drenched in blood; David rent his clothes when he heard of the death of King Saul. Scholars say this act was meant to replace cutting one’s flesh in mourning, as other cultures apparently did (Deut. 14:1–2)."

 

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[Resource Manager]

Israel Researcher: Elusive Biblical Blue Found

13 hours ago

"An Israeli researcher says she has identified a nearly 2,000-year old textile that may contain a mysterious blue dye described in the Bible, one of the few remnants of the ancient color ever found.

Naama Sukenik of Israel's Antiquities Authority said Tuesday that recent examination of a small woolen textile discovered in the 1950s found that the textile was colored with a dye from the Murex trunculus, a snail researchers believe was the source of the Biblical blue."

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[Resource Manager]

Hebrew Engraving Refers to Lousy Wine

Researcher says ancient inscription describes low quality of jug’s contents, served to King Solomon’s laborers and soldiers

BY MARISSA NEWMAN December 31, 2013, 8:07 pm

"An ancient eight-letter inscription — dating back to King Solomon’s reign in Jerusalem some 3,000 years ago — was deciphered by a researcher from the University of Haifa, shedding light on the Solomonic kingdom’s impressively sophisticated administrative system.

The carving was discovered on a clay jug in the Ophel area, near the southern wall of the Temple Mount, by a Hebrew University archaeological team headed by Dr. Eilat Mazar. It is considered the most ancient Hebrew engraving to emerge from the archaeological digs in Jerusalem to date.

However, the meaning of the cryptic inscription eluded researchers until Professor Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa interpreted it as a classification of a type of wine stored in the jug. He published his findings in the journal “New Studies on Jerusalem.”

According to Galil, the first intact letter of the inscription was actually the last letter of a longer word that got cut off and represented the date. The middle portion refers to the type of wine in the jug, a cheap variety. The final letter was also cut off from a longer word, and according to Galil listed the location from which the wine was sent."

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[Resource Manager]

New Discoveries on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

 

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Leen Ritmeyer

 

I was alerted by Zachi Dvira of The Temple Mount Sifting Project to new excavation activities on the Temple Mount:
 

Recently, the ground level near the new generator room north of the raised platform was lowered by one foot. This work exposed an unknown course of stones from an earlier phase of this wall. This course could be dated to the Early Umayyad period or even the Herodian Period. L. Ritmeyer suggested that the foundation of this course was the original northern wall of the Temple Mount, and there is evidence for this thesis in various spots along this line.

 

Zachi sent me a photograph showing a line of large stones below the northern wall of the raised platform.

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