Discoveries Archives - Page 135 of 154

2,000-Year-Old Hebrew Scroll Fragment Found

A portion of an ancient papyrus scroll has been recovered from two Palestinian thieves in Jerusalem yesterday. Haaretz reports:

The rare historical document, handwritten in Hebrew on papyrus paper and estimated to be more than 2,000 years old, is a bill surrendering property rights. The document was written by a widow named Miryam Ben Yaakov, and hails from a period in which the people of Israel were exiled from the area and very few Jews remained.
The scroll also, unusually, clearly indicates a precise date on the first line: “Year 4 to the destruction of Israel”. The intention is, presumably, either to the year 74 C.E. (the year when the Second Temple was destroyed during the Great Revolt) or to 138 A.D. (the annihilation of the Jewish settlement following the Bar Kokhva revolt).
The Israel Antiquities Authority said on Wednesday that the scroll was an “exceptional archeological document, of the like but a few exist,” adding that similar scrolls had been sold worldwide for sums as high as $5-$10 million.

The story is also covered by the Associated Press, the Jerusalem Post, and Arutz-7. The Israel Antiquities Authority press release is here, and separately you may download a high-resolution image of the document.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Discoveries

Oldest Place on Earth is in Israel’s Desert

From FOXNews.com:

Weathering — wind and water, freezing and thawing — takes its toll, and longer-term changes caused by volcanic activity and sliding crustal plates, known as tectonic activity, fold today’s ground into tomorrow’s interior.
The constant makeover of the planet is typically fastest in the mountains, slower in the tectonically inactive deserts.
But a new study of ancient “desert pavement” in Israel’s Negev Desert finds a vast region that’s been sitting there exposed, pretty much as-is, for about 1.8 million years, according to Ari Matmon and colleagues at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
It is the oldest known vast expanse of surface area. In fact it is more than four times older than the confirmed next oldest desert pavement, in Nevada, according to an article at the web site of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The scientific report is in the current issue of GSA Bulletin. The FoxNews article does not give any indication of where in the desert this “pavement” is located, but it does include a couple of photographs.

Tagged Discoveries

Roman Tombs Found in Bethlehem

Construction work in Bethlehem this weekend revealed a Roman tomb. From Maan News:

Roman-era catacombs were unearthed in Bethlehem Saturday during construction in an empty lot beside Bethlehem University.
The small underground cave system opens facing north, and held four stone coffins with engravings on each, housed in two separate dug out burial areas.
Head of Antiquates [sic] department in Jericho Wael Hamamrah estimated the artifacts, complete with skeletal remains and some pottery are between 1,800 and 1,900 years old.
Construction workers preparing to lay pipe in the yard called Palestinian tourism and antiquates police when they went to investigate the sudden collapse of earth in an area they had been digging in that morning.

The full story and six enlargeable photos are here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Discoveries, Judah

Possible Finds of Hezekiah, Mistress of Lionesses, and more

An inscription with six paleo-Hebrew letters has been found in the City of David. The Israel Antiquities Authority strangely has a press release after the item has already been published in the Israel Exploration Journal (58:48-50) and Biblical Archaeology Review (March/April 2009). You can download a photo of the inscription here. The question of interest to Bible readers is whether the inscription preserves three letters of the name of Hezekiah. For analysis, I recommend Chris Heard’s blogpost and comments.

A press release from the American Friends of Tel Aviv University describes a Late Bronze Age plaque that may depict a female king, known in the Amarna Letters as the “mistress of the lionesses.” A copy of the article includes a high-res version of the plaque drawing.

The British Museum has plans to expand, but the Louvre had more visitors in 2008.

The Turkish Riviera Magazine covers the ancient city of Perge (Perga) in an article that includes some good photographs and diagrams. Paul visited the city on his first missionary journey (Acts 13:13-14; 14:25).

If you like to read the OT in Hebrew or the NT in Greek, but struggle with the vocabulary, you may have been attracted to one of the new “reader’s Bibles” that defines the less common vocabulary on the same page as the text. Now John Dyer has created a “make your own” version that looks like it could be quite useful. Even if you have a “reader’s Bible,” you could print off a chapter of the text instead of carrying multiple Bibles to church. (It’s a new site, and there may be bugs. Currently it’s not loading for me in Internet Explorer, but works in Firefox. To change the reading, select the chapter at the top and type over it.)

Hattips to Joe Lauer, Explorator, and Justin Taylor

Tagged Discoveries, Jerusalem, Shephelah

Foot-Shaped Stone Enclosures Discovered in Israel

This discovery announced by the University of Haifa today could be very interesting. There’s not enough information here for me to be bold enough to offer my thoughts, but I look forward to learning more about it.

The article is entitled “Exceptional Archaeological ‘Foot’ Discovery in Jordan Valley”, and a summary is given:

Researchers at the University of Haifa reveal an exceptional archaeological discovery in the Jordan valley: Enormous “foot-shaped” enclosures identified with the biblical “gilgal” stone structures. “The ‘foot’ structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the People of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot.”

You can click on over to read the entire article and view the two photographs (large size: 1, 2).

Among the things I would like to know more about are the locations of the five structures, including how many are in the Jordan Valley. The skeptic in me wonders how much imagination is required to see a “foot” in each one. Regardless of the shape, they could be quite helpful in our understanding of ancient Israel.

HT: Joe Lauer

UPDATE: A.D. Riddle sends along the coordinates for a couple of sites that may be among the five.

You can download them in Google Earth format here. Both are on the south side of the Wadi Farah (aka Faria), about 3 miles (5 km) north of Alexandrium/Sartaba.

UPDATE (4/9): Joe Lauer sends along notice of a couple of articles on the discovery: Haaretz and Science Daily.

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Samaria

Pier Discovered from Ancient Acco

The Israel Antiquities Authority has announced the discovery of a pier in the harbor of the city known as Acco/Akko, Ptolemais, and Acre.

Remains of a unique and impressive floor were discovered at a depth of one meter underwater in Akko harbor. The remains constitute the first evidence of a low sea level during the Hellenistic period in Akko. The floor remains were discovered during archaeological excavations and inspections that the Israel Antiquities Authority Marine Archaeology Unit is carrying out within the framework of rehabilitating Akko’s southern seawall. The project is being implemented by conservators on behalf of the Old Acre Development Company, Ltd., and is underwritten by the Israel Lands Administration. The scope of the funding that the latter is providing totals several million shekels. As part of the project, a temporary rampart that serves as both a road and dam was built in the sea. The pool of water that formed between the rampart and the seawall was pumped out so as to create dry conditions for rehabilitating the seawall.
The part of the floor that has been revealed so far extends for a distance of 15 meters and is 4 meters wide (the full dimensions of the floor have not yet been exposed). The floor was built of rectangular, smoothly dressed kurkar stones that were placed atop a foundation course of roughly hewn kurkar stones arranged next to each other as “headers”. In probes that were conducted beneath the floor, numerous fragments of ceramic jars of Aegean provenance (from Rhodes, Kos and elsewhere) were found that were used to transport wine, as well as tableware and cooking vessels. Among the other artifacts recovered were a Greek style bronze arrowhead and bronze coins that are covered with marine encrustations. A preliminary identification of the finds shows that the floor was constructed in the Hellenistic period (end of the third century until the middle of the second century BCE) as part of a national project.

This press release continues here. High-resolution photos of the discovery and its vicinity are available here (zip). For more photos and information about the ancient Acco, see this BiblePlaces page.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations