An Israeli official claims that Turkey has agreed to return the Siloam Inscription to Israel. This inscription was discovered and removed from Hezekiah’s Tunnel in the 1880s. Those who know the history here will believe it when they see it.
“Three 1,500-year-old ‘magic’ incantation bowls and hundreds of other rare artifacts — some dating to the biblical period — were seized from an apartment in an ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood under suspicion of illegal antiquities trade.”
Lawrence Schiffman suggests that Manetho’s records give evidence that the Israelite exodus was preserved in Egypt’s historical memory.
A new book in German gives the history of the Gihon/Siloam water system. The publisher’s website has a nice summary in English.
The Huqoq excavations were recently featured in National Geographic’s “100 Wonders of the World.”
I’m not quite sure why the Jerusalem Post published this short piece on Magdala.
A new documentary entitled “The Samaritans: A Biblical People,” by Moshe Alafi and Steven Fine, will be presented on March 27 at the Yeshiva University Museum. It will presumably be made more broadly available sometime after.
Save the date – May 18: “The First International Academic Conference on New Studies in Temple Mount Research Hosted by The Menachem Begin Heritage Center, Jerusalem. Lectures will be in Hebrew or English, and the conference will be broadcast live. I don’t see details online yet (but see this), but speakers include Aharon Tavger, Tehilla Lieberman, David Gurevich, Avraham Solomon, Rina Avner, Peretz Reuven, Yuval Baruch, Dror Czitron, Joseph Patrich, David Jacobson, Nikos Kokkinos, Zachi Dvira, Gabriel Barkay, and others.
Logos has announced a number of solid Carta reference works available at pre-publication discount, including:
- The New Encyclopedia Of Archaeological Excavations In The Holy Land (4 volumes, I presume, but not the 5th)
- Bound for Exile: Israelites and Judeans Under Imperial Yoke; Documents from Assyria and Babylonia, by Mordechai Cogan
- Under the Yoke of Ashur: The Assyrian Century in the Land of Israel, by Mordechai Cogan
- Landscape, Nature and Man in the Bible: Sites and Events in the Old Testament, by Menashe Har-El
- Parables of the Sages: Jewish Wisdom from Jesus to Rav Ashi, by Steven Notley
HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Arne Halbakken, Alexander Schick, Explorator
