October 2009 - Page 6 of 7 - BiblePlaces.com

Kikar Tzahal (IDF Square), Jerusalem

The photo below shows another very familiar place in Jerusalem, at the northwestern corner of the Old City walls. This site, I believe, may be distinguished as the location most often renovated in the modern city’s history. I’ve long suspected that the municipality, which has its offices on the north side of this square, uses the area as training grounds for its construction crews.

This American Colony photo shows how the area looked sometime between 1932 and 1946. The round building on the right served as Barclay’s Bank on the lower floor and basement, while the rest of the building held offices of the City Hall. Because it was located next to “No Man’s Land” from 1948 to 1967, the building’s facade today bears pockmarks from the hostilities. Mayor Teddy Kollek’s office was in the second floor of this building for many years.

This picture could have been taken many times since, as the area has been torn up time and again to install various traffic features, water fountains, and pedestrian walkways. This photo was taken in December 2006 after the construction of a traffic tunnel. The round building is in the distant center.

This photo was taken in July 2009 by Peter Wong and looks west (the municipal building is off to the right). It shows excavations of the area, including what appears to be a cistern in the top center.

Shortly after Peter took this photo, the area was cemented over.

Tagged American Colony Photos, Excavations, Jerusalem

Ancient Lighthouse at Patara

A Turkish newspaper reports that the government will fund the restoration of a 1st century A.D. lighthouse from Patara. I wouldn’t believe everything you read in the article, but if it was built very early in the reign of Nero, it is possible that the apostle Paul saw it on his visit mentioned in Acts 21:1-2. (Nero reigned from 54 to 68, and Paul’s visit was in approximately 57.)

The Turkish government has allocated a budget to restore an ancient lighthouse, believed to be the world’s oldest.
Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay said Wednesday that his ministry would grant 800,000 Turkish Liras for the restoration of Nero’s Lighthouse, discovered four years ago in the ancient city of Patara, located near today’s Mediterranean town of Gelemiş in Antalya province.
[…]
The lighthouse has been dated to around A.D. 60 because the name of Nero, the Roman emperor at the time, was found on significant remnants of the circular inscription that surrounded the structure.
[…]
The team came across the ruins of the historical lighthouse, which stands 60 meters from the sea today, during excavation work done in Patara in 2005. “It was covered under an 11-meter high sand dune,” Işık told daily Milliyet at the time. “We had to remove approximately 3,000 truck loads of sand to uncover it. But it should be restored, or we will lose it forever.”
[…]
“The world’s oldest lighthouse was known to be the one in Lacaruna, Spain,” Işık said. “The lighthouse we have found is 60 years older than the one in Spain. It has ancient Hellenistic features. The bronze inscriptions indicate that this was a monument of the roman period.”
Işık said they believed the lighthouse was destroyed by a tsunami because a human skeleton was found among the ruins. The skeleton could have belonged to a lighthouse keeper who was trying to escape a tsunami but was crushed under the lighthouse’s stone blocks, she said.

The full article is here.

HT: Explorator

Patara lighthouse. Sea is just visible on right.

Tagged Turkey

Monotheism Conference at American Jewish University

I disagree with the premise that biblical monotheism evolved as man became smarter and more sophisticated, but this conference with leading scholars will certainly have interesting insights nonetheless. The conference is being held on the AJU campus in Los Angeles. More details and registration details are available at their website.

What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Monotheism’?

Monotheism is a basic tenet of Jewish belief. In a fascinating day devoted to this topic, a group of eminent archaeologists and scholars will broaden our understanding of the origin of monotheism and how it has shaped our religious thinking.

Please join us as our esteemed AJU Distinguished Professor of Biblical Literature and Semitic Languages, Dr. Ziony Zevit, addresses this question and introduces the following speakers and their topics:

Dr. Mark Smith, Skirball Professor of Hebrew and Near Eastern Studies at New York University, The Old and the New in Israelite Monotheism.

Dr. Barry Gittlen, Professor of Biblical and Archaeological Studies at Towson University, An Archaeological Introduction to Biblical Cult Places and Images.

Dr. Jeffrey Tigay, A.M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, Monotheism in the Hebrew Bible.

Dr. Steven Fine, Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University in New York and Director of Yeshiva University’s Center for Israeli Studies, The Archaeological Evidence for Monotheism in Synagogues and Churches in the Roman World.

Dates: Sunday, January 10, 2010

Meeting Duration: 10am – 3pm

Tuition: $50 Includes lunch

If you’d rather hear Clinton and Bush lecture at AJU, there’s more information here.

HT: G. M. Grena

Tagged Lectures

Biblical Archaeology Conference in Omaha

The University of Nebraska at Omaha is hosting a Biblical Archaeology Conference from October 29-31. From the press release:

Scholars from around the world will present the latest research on excavations at Bethsaida, an ancient city located near the north coast of the Sea of Galilee in Israel, at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO).
The 11th annual Batchelder Biblical Archaeology Conference is Oct. 29-31 at the Thompson Alumni Center on the UNO campus.
Biblical scholars from the U.S. and around the world will host presentations about their research. This year’s conference will welcome Dr. Oded Borowski as one of two keynote speakers. Dr. Borowski found and chaired the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Languages and Literatures, now the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies. He is professor of Biblical Archaeology and Hebrew Language, and director of Mediterranean Archaeology at Emory University.
[…]
The other keynote presenter is Dr. Dan Bahat…. Dr. Bahat served the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) as the Chief Archaeologist of Jerusalem for 35 years, then as a scholar at Bar-Ilan University, and is currently affiliated with the University of Toronto.
In 1991, the Consortium of the Bethsaida Excavations Project (CBEP) was formed and has been housed at UNO since its inception. Its mission is to excavate the ancient city of Bethsaida, research the data discernible from the remains and disseminate the conclusions to both academic and popular audiences.

Significant objections have been raised by others of the identification of et-Tell as biblical Bethsaida.

Lecture titles are not given, but apparently they will be related to Bethsaida. Last year Eisenbrauns published Cities through the Looking Glass, a collection of articles from this conference in 2003 (see contents at Google Books).

For the full press release, including more details about the two speakers and registration details, see here.

Tagged Galilee, Lectures

“Writings Out of Time” Fall Lecture Series

The University of Arizona Library is hosting a lecture series this semester on writing in the ancient world. The first lecture was yesterday, but four more lectures are slated. From the website:

Lecture I – October 1, Thursday, 3:00 p.m.

Ancient Near Eastern Literacy and Libraries: Their Significance for the Scholarly Tradition of the ‘West’
Anne Kilmer, in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America, Tucson Chapter

Lecture II – October 19, Monday, 3:00 p.m.

Speaker Panel:

From Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Arizona: The First Writing, Indiana Jones and the Arizona State Museum Basement’s Mystery
Ewa Wasilewska, Associate Professor/Lecturer, Department of Anthropology and the Middle East Center, University of Utah

The Origins of the Alphabet: From Proto-Sinaitic to Greek
Ronald S. Hendel, The Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Egyptian Hieroglyphs: Writing with Pictures and Painting with Words
Richard H. Wilkinson, Regents’ Professor of Egyptian Archaeology, School of Anthropology, Department of Classics and Department of Near Eastern Studies, The University of Arizona

Lecture III – October 29, Thursday, 4:00 p.m.

Archaeological Preservation Efforts and Agonies in Northern Iraq, 2006
Jesse Ballenger, Ph.D. Candidate and Haury Fellow, Department of Anthropology, The University of Arizona, in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America, Tucson Chapter.

Lecture IV – November 5, Thursday, 4:00 p.m.

Life and Death on the Estate of a Princess in 21st Century BCE Mesopotamia
David Owen, The Bernard and Jane Schapiro Professor of Ancient Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Curator of Tablet Collections, The Jonathan and Jeannette Rosen Ancient Near Eastern Studies Seminar, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America, Tucson Chapter.

Lecture V – November 9, Monday, 7:00 p.m.

Lecture location: Tucson Jewish Community Center, 3800 E River Rd.

The Art of Writing in Ancient Israel
William Schniedewind, Professor of Biblical Studies and Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Lecture presented as part of the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies Shaol Pozez Memorial Lectureship Series.

Tagged Lectures

The Jewish Quarter before 1948

Jewish Quarter from the Temple Mount

It wasn’t all that long ago that this area looked very different. This photograph, taken from the Temple Mount, looks towards the Jewish Quarter. I don’t have a “today” comparison because sensitivities now do not allow one to access this area.

Dominating the skyline are two domed synagogues, once major landmarks in the Old City: the taller Tiferet Israel (“Glory of Israel”) on the left and the Hurvah (“Ruin”) on the right. Sadly, both structures fell victim to the hostilities of 1948. During the final fighting for the Jewish Quarter in May 1948, both synagogues, which had served as strategic positions for the quarter’s Jewish defenders, were intentionally blown up by Arab forces. Then, with Israeli control of the Old City after 1967, the remains of both buildings were consolidated and preserved as memorials. Until 2006, the Hurvah site sported a memorial arch which became a visual symbol of the new Jewish Quarter and an Old City landmark. Today the Hurvah is being rebuilt, exactly to its original mid-19th century appearance.

In the foreground are the houses and other structures of the Mughrabi Quarter, an Arab neighborhood which covered what is now the expansive Western Wall plaza and the adjacent excavated areas around the Temple Mount. After Israel captured the Old City in the 1967 Six Day War, within a matter of days the Mughrabi Quarter’s residents were forced out and relocated, and most of the buildings seen here were razed. However, the lower floors of some of the houses became the base of an earthen ramp that provided access to the Temple Mount’s Mughrabi Gate from 1967 until 2004, when part of the ramp collapsed. Now, these same houses—and more ancient structures beneath them—are being exposed archaeologically in advance of construction of a new Mughrabi Gate foot-bridge.

This photograph and description are taken from the Jerusalem volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection. The photograph is originally from the Library of Congress, LC-matpc-04722, and the description was written by Tom Powers. The $25 CD includes 685 high-resolution photographs and the equivalent of a 200-page book of annotations such as the one above.

Tagged American Colony Photos, Jerusalem