Discoveries Archives - Page 110 of 154

Weekend Roundup

Archaeologists excavating at Magdala have discovered a sword from the Roman period.

Two ancient synagogues in Israel were vandalized in the last week: Hammat Tiberias and Naaran (near Jericho).

The judge in the James Ossuary forgery case gave the prosecution a month to justify their desire to confiscate dozens of objects from the collection of Oded Golan.

Joe Yudin describes the aliyah (“going up”) to Jerusalem from Israel’s international airport.

Though housed in a single building, the traditional tomb of David and the Upper Room don’t seem to have much in common. Wayne Stiles disagrees.

Mark Wilson has crossed a Pauline site off of his “bucket list” with his recent visit to Antipatris. We might note that the new Pictorial Library of Bible Lands has photos of every site that Paul is recorded as having visited, with one exception.

HT: Paleojudaica

Vandalism of Hammat Tiberias synagogue.
Photo by Moti Dolev/National Parks Authority.

Tagged Discoveries, Galilee, Weekend Roundup

The Recovered Gezer Boundary Inscription

Eric Mitchell and Jason Zan have written an article for the Baptist Press about their success this season in discovering a new Gezer boundary inscription and recovering one lost for more than 100 years. The article includes a photo of the recovered inscription (#4), and promises a full report in a journal in due course.

This lost boundary inscription was discovered in 1881 by Charles Clermont-Ganneau and his description of the episode helps to explain why scholars failed to locate it in the last century. From Archaeological Researches in Palestine 2:232:

In 1881, seven years after this incident, I had occasion to return to Palestine, and resumed, on my own account, the exploration of the neighbourhood of Gezer, which had been so unduly broken off. I had been persuaded all along that some more inscriptions must be in existence, similar to those I had discovered, marking out the boundary of the town towards the north-west. I started searching in this quarter, with the help of the fellahin, as on the previous occasion; it was not long before my labours were crowned with success, for about two or three hundred yards to the northwest of the first inscription I discovered some large characters, absolutely similar to the former, and cut into the face of a rounded rocky platform with almost perpendicular sides.
I have no record of these characters, but a rough sketch hurriedly made in my note book. I meant to go back and take a squeeze of them, fix the exact position of the inscription, and pursue my investigations on the spot; but, unfortunately, I was suddenly recalled to France, and was unable to carry out this intention. I regret this, for I am convinced that there still remains quite a series of these texts to be collected round about Gezer, I am certain that a search of this kind would not be unfruitful, and recommend it to future Palestine explorers.

As of this month, 13 boundary inscriptions have been found near Gezer, but I have to ask, did no other cities have similar markers?

Clermont-Ganneau’s sketch of “Inscription D”

Tagged Discoveries, Shephelah

New Gezer Boundary Inscription

A thirteenth boundary inscription near Tell Gezer was discovered last week in an archaeological survey led by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. They also re-discovered inscription #4, one initially located by Charles Clermont-Ganneau but not seen since. Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister doesn’t come out looking very good in this story either. From SWBTS:

The new boundary stone inscription located by the Gezer survey team this season is the first to be found in over a decade, increasing the total number of known Gezer boundary inscriptions to 13. The new inscription is very weathered and is a bilingual inscription like many of the others, with some minor differences. It is a three line inscription, rather than the typical two, with the Greek name Alkiou on the first line (literally “belonging to Alkios”), remnants of the Hebrew word for “region of” on the second line and small remnants of the letters spelling “Gezer” on the third line. The Greek letters are larger than in other inscriptions and both the Greek and Hebrew lines are oriented in the same perspective. The survey directors will seek to publish the inscription as soon as possible in an academic publication.
The second inscription discovered this season has not been seen by scholars in over 100 years. Originally discovered by a 19th century French explorer, a later excavator RAS Macalister admitted to having spent considerable time during his 1902 through 1909 expeditions searching for this particular boundary stone. Unable to find the inscription, he concluded that it must have been defaced to unintelligibility in the years subsequent to its discovery. Based on a published field sketch of the stone, this boundary inscription and the 19th century discovery are one and the same.

The full story is here. Sam Wolff, who mentioned this report on the ANE-2 list, writes that the two inscriptions are 50 meters apart. When Ronny Reich discovered inscription #12 about a decade ago, he and Zvi Greenhut published a survey of all the inscriptions, with GPS coordinates, in Israel Exploration Journal 52/1 (2002): 58-63. The SWBTS article states that survey directors Eric Mitchell and Jason Zan have written an article on the first five survey seasons to be published soon by Hadashot Arkheologiyot.

See this month’s issue of the BiblePlaces Newsletter for a photo of inscription #8.

Gezer boundary inscription #12 (source). Bottom line reads “of Alkios” (in Greek); top line reads (from the other side, in Aramaic) “the boundary of Gezer” (taham gezer).

Tagged Discoveries, Shephelah

Weekend Roundup

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg reviews significant discoveries in his Archaeology in Israel Update—April 2012.

The Washington Post has a good slideshow of the gold hoard from Megiddo.

Wayne Stiles considers the difference between the “reunification” of Jerusalem and the “restoration” that the Bible predicts.

The Good Book Blog has an infographic depicting the Rulers of Israel and Judah.
Sensation Before Scholarship: Gordon Govier writes in Christianity Today about the problem of
media hype in archaeological and textual discoveries.

The ASOR Blog has a new Archaeology Weekly Roundup.

Eisenbrauns has announced their 2012 Mug.

HT: Joseph Lauer

Tagged Discoveries, Jerusalem, Jezreel Valley, Weekend Roundup

Seal Impression from Bethlehem Discovered in Jerusalem

The Israel Antiquities Authority announced today the discovery of a seal impression with the name of Bethlehem.

The first ancient artifact constituting tangible evidence of the existence of the city of Bethlehem, which is mentioned in the Bible, was recently discovered in Jerusalem.
A bulla measuring c. 1.5 cm was found during the sifting of soil removed from archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out in the City of David. The sifting is underwritten by the ‘Ir David Foundation’ in a project being conducted in the Emek Tzurim National Park.
A bulla is a piece of clay that was used for sealing a document or object. The bulla was impressed with the seal of the person who sent the document or object, and its integrity was evidence the document or object was not opened by anyone unauthorized to do so.
Three lines of ancient Hebrew script appear on the bulla:
בשבעת Bishv’at [in the seventh]
בת לחם Bat Lechem [Bethlehem]
[למל]ך [Lemel]ekh [for the king]
According to Eli Shukron, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “it seems that in the seventh year of the reign of a king (it is unclear if the king referred to here is Hezekiah, Manasseh or Josiah), a shipment was dispatched from Bethlehem to the king in Jerusalem. The bulla we found belongs to the group of “fiscal” bullae – administrative bullae used to seal tax shipments remitted to the taxation system of the Kingdom of Judah in the late eighth and seventh centuries BCE. The tax could have been paid in the form of silver or agricultural produce such as wine or wheat”.
Shukron emphasizes, “this is the first time the name Bethlehem appears outside the Bible, in an inscription from the First Temple period, which proves that Bethlehem was indeed a city in the Kingdom of Judah, and possibly also in earlier periods”.

Too much can be made from this discovery, especially with the emphasis of the last sentence above.

The existence of Bethlehem in the period of the Old Testament is not disputed, and an inscription this late is not as helpful as one would be from the time of Ruth or David. Nonetheless, it is a nice discovery which adds another piece of data to our understanding of the Judean kingdom.

The closest biblical connection that one can make to this time period (late 8th or 7th century) is the prophet Micah, who derided the failed leadership of his day (chapter 3), predicted a restored Davidic kingdom (chapter 4), and expected that Bethlehem would produce the awaited king, one whose origins are from ancient times and who would “be their peace” (chapter 5).

The full press release is here and a high-resolution photo is here (also below). The story is reported by the Jerusalem Post, Reuters, the Associated Press, and many others.

Bethlehem bulla.
Photograph by Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Tagged Discoveries, Jerusalem, Judah

Gold Jewelry Discovered at Megiddo

We first noted this discovery in March, but more details are available now that the media has picked up the story. From the Jerusalem Post.

The Megiddo cache is notable for its abundance of gold jewels, including nine large earrings and a ring-seal. It also includes than a thousand small beads of gold, silver and carnelian – a semi-precious stone of orange-to-amber hue. All of the artifacts are in good condition.
One of the collection’s most remarkable items is a gold basket-shaped earring bearing the figure of a bird, possibly an ostrich. Experts believe one of the items may be the first of its kind ever discovered in Israel, and that its use of gold points to possible Egyptian influence. Megiddo, the Armageddon of Christian Scripture, was for centuries a major trading post on the Egypt-Assyria trade route.
So far 25 Iron Age jewelry hoards have been uncovered in Israel, with most of them containing only silver artifacts.
“The hoard includes a lot of gold items, which have origins in Egypt,” said Eran Arie, a Tel Aviv University archeologist who was supervising the dig at the time of the jewels’ discovery.

The full story is here. More photos of the Iron I objects are posted at the Megiddo website.

Last night I was reading an interview with Cyrus Gordon, who made an interesting comment about the discovery of gold in the land of Israel.

I also went to see [W. M. Flinders] Petrie at Tell el-Ajjul, which he thought was ancient Gaza. He was wrong, but he found more gold in that one year than archaeologists have found in the past hundred years in every site combined (Scholars on the Record, p. 163).

Petrie worked at Tell el-Ajjul from 1930 to 1934; the interview with Gordon was first published in BAR Nov/Dec 2000.

Tagged Discoveries, Jezreel Valley