Antiquities Trade Archives - Page 18 of 31

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

The Atlantic sews together the story of the “first-century Mark,” Hobby Lobby, and Dirk Obbink.

Stephen Oryszczuk takes a tour of the only accelerator mass spectrometry lab in the Middle East, and its contribution to ongoing archaeological excavations.

Scholars are studying erasures and corrections in the Leningrad Codex.

Ruth Schuster considers what caused the collapse of Byzantine farming in the Negev highlands.

Ianir Milevski and Liora Kolska Horwitz investigate the domestication of donkeys in the ancient Near East.

The summer issue of Biblical Archaeology Review includes articles on forced resettlement at Tel Hadid, old Christian manuscripts, and the scarab. (BAR appears to have quietly cut its number of issues each year from 6 to 4.)

The British Museum has created historical city travel guides to Nineveh in the 7th century BC and to Rome in the 1st century AD.

Pompeii Live, “the British Museum’s most popular exhibition of the last decade is set to return, in the form of an online broadcast” that will premiere on May 20.

Lachish is the subject of a 7-minute video, the latest in the Life Lessons from Israel series.

The Ancient World Online (AWOL) has now surpassed ten million page views.

Satire: Stanford will be offering a new course entitled “How to be a Gladiator,” and signed waivers will be required to enroll.

A NPR piece looks at what has happened with tourism at Petra, going from 8,000 people a day to zero. Now the place is being taken over by cats, sparrows, and wolves.

Assassin’s Creed Discovery Tours of Ptolemaic Egypt and Classical Greece are free through May 20. Explore those worlds in a “living museum.”

Accordance has photo resources related to biblical archaeology on sale.

There is no shortage of material for an archaeological biography of King Ahab.

Israel’s Good Name describes his university field trip to Tel Arad and Tel Beersheba.

To celebrate his birthday, Shmuel Browns drove up to Sussita and took some beautiful photos.

All locked up: The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, May 12, 2020

HT: Agade, Ted Weis, Keith Keyser, Joseph Lauer, Explorator, Brian Johnson

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Galilee, Italy, Jordan, Mesopotamia, Museums, Negev, Photo Resources, Shephelah, Technology, Tourism

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

Greece is planning to reopen its tourist sites on June 15.

The Arch of Septimius Severus in Rome will be restored beginning in September. The story includes a video (in beautiful Italian).

The Acropolis in Athens is undergoing a number of renovations to improve safety and enhance the experience for visitors.

As you would expect, National Geographic’s story on the Pamukkale region in Turkey has some stunning photos.

Curators at the British Museum helped border officials confiscate a collection of fake antiquities.

Recent episodes in the Lonesome Curator series focus on “Food in Nazareth” and “The Nebuchadnezzar Brick.”

Sophia Germanidou gives an overview on the use of bees’ honey in the ancient world.

Jennifer Drummond explains how to make Roman “French” Toast.

Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has produced a video showing how to cook Tiger nuts, based on vignettes in the tomb of Rekhmire.

The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press is making some of its books available for free pdf download.

The Travelogues website provides graphic materials from Greece and the eastern Mediterranean from the 15th century onward.

HT: Ted Weis, Agade, Joseph Lauer, Charles Savelle, Explorator

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Museums, Resources, Tourism, Turkey

Weekend Roundup, Part 1

The Western Wall plaza reopened this week, with worshippers limited in number, required to wear masks and to have their temperature checked.

A new excavation has determined that Solomon’s Pools were built by the Romans in the 2nd century AD. The academic report was published in Palestine Exploration Quarterly last year.

“The Dead Sea Scrolls in Recent Scholarship” is a 4-day virtual conference hosted by NYU that begins on May 17. Registration is free and required for each day.

Thieves have plundered and destroyed remains at Khirbet Astunah as well as a number of other sites in the West Bank.

Bill Barrick has written an interesting and well-illustrated post on the ancient city of Jezreel.

King Saul appears to be the theme of the week, as Ferrell Jenkins shares photos of Gibeah, Beth Shean and flowers on Mount Gilboa.

Shmuel Browns shares photos from a recent visit he made to Samaria-Sebaste.

Scott Stripling is interviewed in the second installment of “Discussions with the Diggers.”

Walking the Text has created a number of study guides for recent series, including Psalm 23, The Lord’s Prayer, and The Sabbath.

Patrick D. Miller died last week.

HT: Ted Weis, Agade, Joseph Lauer, Charles Savelle, Explorator

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Dead Sea Scrolls, Jerusalem, Jezreel Valley, Judah, Sad News, Samaria

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

“Scientists at the University of Chicago are developing a machine learning system that can automatically transcribe text found on ancient clay tablets.”

The Unionville Times offers a guide to virtual tours of museums in Europe and the US.

Colette J. Loll led the investigation into the forged Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible and she offers her assessment of the story.

Erin L. Thompson, a professor of art crime, discusses the cost of forgeries donated to museums.

Appian Media has begun a new podcast entitled “Digging Deeper” and hosted by Barry Britnell and Dan Kingsley. You can check out the trailer here.

“Organising an Empire: The Assyrian Way” is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) taught by Karen Radner in six teaching units that take about 19 hours to complete. Began yesterday.

The current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review has been opened up for all to read.

Ferrell Jenkins shares “then and now” photos of the “Tomb of the Kings” in Jerusalem. See also Tom Powers’s extended comment about the date of the Pool of Hezekiah.

Israel’s Good Name went for a hike to Khirbet Luza, near Moza, and saw a striped hyena in the wild.

This year’s Infusion Bible Conference has been postponed. “Paul in His Roman World” will be the subject of the conference in June 2021.

Forthcoming: Has Archaeology Buried the Bible?, by William G. Dever

HT: Agade, Ted Weis

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Jerusalem, Lectures, Mesopotamia, Museums, Resources, Technology, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

Bryan Windle identifies the Top Three Reports in Biblical Archaeology in March 2020.

Christopher Rollston is a guest on the LandMinds video podcast discussing forgeries of antiquities.

Jeffrey Kloha is on The Book and the Spade discussing the “Fake Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible.”

Writing for Haaretz, Ariel David asks whether the assessment that the 16 Dead Sea Scroll fragments are forgeries calls into question the authenticity of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments previously discovered.

Lawrence H. Schiffman will be giving an online lecture entitled “Old Leather, New Ink: Forgery and the Dead Sea Scrolls” on April 1 at 9 pm (Eastern).

Steve Green will return 5,000 ancient papyrus fragments and 6,500 ancient clay objects to Iraq and Egypt.

A new study suggests that radiocarbon dates for the ANE need to be adjusted, with implications for the dates of the death of Tutankhamen and the eruption on Santorini.

Max Price writes about the history of pigs in the ancient Near East.

“The British Museum’s Circulating Artefacts (CircArt) project is a ground-breaking collaborative initiative against the widespread global trade in illicit antiquities, with a current focus on ancient objects from Egypt and Sudan.”

Shiloh is the subject of the latest in John DeLancey’s “Life Lessons” series.

Carl Rasmussen shares some Easter-related photos, including Jesus’s crown of thorns and an unusual photo of a Jerusalem cross.

Mark Hoffman found a Google map of ancient theaters, amphitheaters, stadiums, and odeons in Turkey. (There are more than you might expect.)

Ferrell Jenkins posts a couple of photos of Capernaum from the air.

HT: Agade, Ted Weis, Paleojudaica, Joseph Lauer

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Dead Sea Scrolls, Galilee, Holidays, Jerusalem, Turkey

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

Tourist authorities in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel are filming guides giving tours of the city and its museum so that those who can’t come to Israel, or otherwise leave their homes, can enjoy the virtual experience.

More than 100 scholars contributed tributes to “He Inscribed Upon a Stone”: Celebrating the Work of Jim Eisenbraun. The volume (free download here) records some of the history of Jim and Merna’s publishing house that has served so many of us so well for so long.

Christopher Rollston: The Forger Among Us: The Museum of the Bible Dead Sea Scrolls and the Recent History of Epigraphic Forgeries

The 2020 issue of ‘Atiqot is now online, including articles on a tomb in Jerusalem and the settlement history of Nazareth.

“A portrait sculpture that has been at a museum in the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya since 1972 was recently found to belong to Greek poet Sappho.”

The Polychrome Hieroglyph Research Project has a new website that displays the results of research “into the use and meaning of colour in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions.”

The Associates for Biblical Research has a new Instagram account.

Israel’s Good Name shares about his day volunteering in renewed excavations of the Montfort Castle in Galilee.

Ferrell shares then and now photos of the house of Peter at Capernaum.

Barry Beitzel is on The Land and the Book with Charlie Dyer, talking about the excellent Geographic Commentary series he is editing.

This 15-minute video is fascinating: “Bread Culture in Jordan.”

HT: Agade, Ted Weis, Joseph Lauer

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Galilee, Jerusalem, Jordan, Museums, Resources, Tourism, Turkey