Discoveries Archives - Page 92 of 153

Glass Bracelet with Menorah Discovered near Jokneam

A fragment of a glass bracelet inscribed with a seven-branched menorah from the Second Temple was discovered during Hanukka at an excavation in the Mount Carmel National Park, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Tuesday.
According to a statement from the IAA, excavations were carried out there in recent weeks prior to the construction of a water reservoir for the city of Yokne’am, at the initiative of the Mekorot Company.
During the excavation, an industrial region and refuse pits were exposed which were part of a large settlement that existed in the late Roman and early Byzantine periods, during the end of the fourth Century and beginning of the fifth Century CE, the IAA said.
The excavation’s co-directors Limor Talmi and Dan Kirzne said in the statement that last Thursday they made the findings at the end of the dig.
“While examining the contents of one of the boxes, which contained hundreds of glass fragments that had been discarded in the refuse pit, we found to our surprise a small fragment of a bracelet,” they said in a joint statement.
“Naturally it was extremely dirty, but still, you could see it was decorated. After cleaning, we were excited to discover that the bracelet, which is made of turquoise colored glass, is decorated with symbols of the seven-branched menorah – the same menorah which according to tradition was kept alight in the Temple for eight days by means of a single cruse of oil.”

The full article considers various theories of the item’s significance and includes four photos.

UPDATE: Joseph Lauer has sent along a link to seven high-res photos.

Bracelet inscribed with menorah
Photo courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

Tagged Discoveries, Jezreel Valley

Weekend Roundup

Michael Eisenberg tells the story of trying to discover the synagogue of Sussita (Hippos).

An Egyptian cemetery may contain more than a million mummies, say BYU archaeologists. No, it doesn’t, and you’re not working here again, says Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities.

The colossi of Amenhotep III have been re-erected at the site of his funerary temple in Luxor.

The Harvard Semitic Museum is honoring its founder with a special exhibition.

A new discovery in Galilee suggests that olive use was already in use in the Early Chalcolithic period.

The Book and the Spade features Mike Molnar explaining the star of Bethlehem mystery.

Leen Ritmeyer: Where on the Temple Mount was Jesus during Hanukkah?

How close is the new movie Exodus to the Bible? Ellen White answers: “Their story was so different
that if they didn’t use the Biblical names and released the same movie with a different title, I might not have even recognized it.”

Don McNeeley reports on the 2014 NEAS Conference in San Diego.

Our Rabbi Jesus notes a couple of free books on Greek and Hebraic thought.

Heritage Daily lists its Top 10 Archaeological Discoveries of 2014.

This will be the final roundup of 2014. We’ll try to note major stories as they break. Thanks for joining us this year!

HT: Charles Savelle, Ted Weis

Tagged Discoveries, Egypt, Exodus-Conquest, Galilee, Golan, Holidays, Lectures, Museums, Resources, Weekend Roundup

Monumental Entrance Discovered at Herodium

The more you learn, the more you discover how little you know. That seems to be the story at Herodium, as the uncovering of a monumental entrance suggests a more complicated building history than previously understood. From a press release of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem:

Archaeologists from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology have discovered a monumental entryway to the Herodian Hilltop Palace at the Herodium National Park. The unique complex was uncovered during excavations by The Herodium Expedition in Memory of Ehud Netzer over the past year, as part of a project to develop the site for tourism.
The main feature of the entryway is an impressive corridor with a complex system of arches spanning its width on three separate levels. These arches buttressed the corridor’s massive side-walls, allowing the King and his entourage direct passage into the Palace Courtyard. Thanks to the supporting arches, the 20-meter long and 6-meter wide corridor has been preserved to a height of 20 meters.
The Hebrew University archaeologists — Roi Porat, Yakov Kalman and Rachel Chachy — suggest that the corridor was built as part of Herod’s plan to turn Herodium into a massive artificial volcano-shaped hill, a vast and impressive monument designed to commemorate the architect-King.
Surprisingly, during the course of the excavations, it became evident that the arched corridor was never actually in use, as prior to its completion it became redundant. This appears to have happened when Herod, aware of his impending death, decided to convert the whole hilltop complex into a massive memorial mound, a royal burial monument on an epic scale.
Whatever the case, the corridor was back-filled during the construction of the massive artificial hill at the end of Herod’s reign. The upper section of a new monumental stairway stretching from the hill’s base to its peak, constructed during the course of this building phase, appears to have been built over it.
The excavators point out that not only was the arched corridor covered over in the course of the construction of the hill-monument, but also all the structures earlier built by Herod on the hill’s slopes, including the Royal Theater uncovered by the expedition in 2008, while still led by Prof. Ehud Netzer, since deceased.

The press release continues with more discussion of the site history as well as plans to allow visitors access to all of the new discoveries. Photos are available here.

Monumental entrance to Herodium
Photo credit: The Herodium Expedition at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Tagged Discoveries, Herod's Tomb, Judah

Proof for David’s Kingdom from Khirbet Summeily?

Is this the the sort of press release you would expect out of Mississippi State University?

Six official clay seals found by a Mississippi State University archaeological team at a small site in Israel offer evidence that supports the existence of biblical kings David and Solomon.
Many modern scholars dismiss David and Solomon as mythological figures and believe no kingdom could have existed in the region at the time the Bible recounted their activities. The new finds provide evidence that some type of government activity was conducted there in that period.
Jimmy Hardin, associate professor in the MSU Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures, said these clay bullae were used to seal official correspondence in much the same way wax seals were used on official documents in later periods.
Hardin, co-director of the Hesi Regional Project, has been excavating each summer at Khirbet Summeily, a site east of Gaza in southern Israel, since 2011. Hardin’s findings were published in the December 2014 issue of Near Eastern Archaeology, a leading, peer-reviewed journal for this field.
“Our preliminary results indicated that this site is integrated into a political entity that is typified by elite activities, suggesting that a state was already being formed in the 10th century B.C.,” Hardin said. “We are very positive that these bullae are associated with the Iron Age IIA, which we date to the 10th century B.C., and which lends general support to the historical veracity of David and Solomon as recorded in the Hebrew biblical texts.

Read on for more details, including the fact that none of the bullae has writing. Dating these to the Iron IIA doesn’t necessarily make them contemporaneous with the United Kingdom (Iron IIA = 1000-840 BC), but the co-director asserts that “our dates for the bullae are based on multiple types of evidence we combined to determine a general 10th century B.C. date.” I’m also curious to know if they’ve identified the site as Israelite and not Philistine during this period, since that alone would be a significant discovery, located in the heart of Philistine territory as is it.
Khirbet Summeily is located 3 miles (4 km) west of Tell el-Hesi and about 5 miles (8 km) southwest of Qiryat Gat.

The official excavation website does not appear to be updated regularly. We mentioned some discoveries at the site back in 2011.

HT: David Coppedge

Photos by Megan Bean (top) and the University of Wisconsin/Nathaniel Greene (bottom)

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Philistines

8th Century BC Farmhouse Excavated Near Aphek

From the Israel Antiquities Authority:

An impressive farm house, 2,800 years old, which comprised twenty-three rooms, was exposed in recent weeks during archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out in Rosh Ha-‘Ayin before the city is enlarged in an initiative by the Ministry of Construction. According to Amit Shadman, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The farm, which is extraordinarily well-preserved, extends across an area of 30 × 40 m and was built in the eighth century BCE, the time of the Assyrian conquest. Farm houses during this period served as small settlements of sorts whose inhabitants participated in processing agricultural produce. The numerous wine presses discovered in the vicinity of the settlement indicate the wine industry was the most important branch of agriculture in the region. A large silo, which was used to store grain, shows that the ancient residents were also engaged in growing cereal.”
According to Shadman the building continued to be used during the Persian period (also known as the Time of the Return to Zion) in the sixth century BCE, and in the Hellenistic period as well which began in the country with the arrival of Alexander the Great, one of the greatest military leaders of antiquity. With Alexander’s victory over the Persian army in 333 BCE he embarked upon numerous successful military campaigns. His campaign in Israel did not encounter any special difficulties and the country opened its gates to the great warrior.
[…]
In light of this impressive building’s excellent state of preservation, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Ministry of Construction decided to conserve the structure in situ for the benefit of the city’s residents and the visiting public.

The full press release is here. The story is also reported by the Jerusalem Post. Rosh HaAyin is near the biblical city of Aphek mentioned in 1 Samuel 4:1.

An aerial photograph of the farm house. Photographic credit: Skyview Company, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

Tagged Discoveries, Israel's Coast

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

A Roman game board from the first or second century AD has been discovered in southern Turkey.

Some extremely well-preserved mosaics have been discovered near the Syria-Turkey border.

France is returning 300 artifacts stolen from Egypt.

Why did the Egyptians use scarabs? Michael Wall’s recent lecture on the role of insects in religion explains.

“What can we learn about the time of Abraham from simple stone beads?” Geoffrey Ludvik explains on this week’s interview on The Book and the Spade.

The Pompeii Bibliography and Mapping Resource (PBMR) is “working to map the landscape of publications about Pompeii onto the space of the ancient city itself, creating a unified, bi-directional interface to both resources.”

A “small underwater Pompeii” has been discovered off the shore of the Greek island of Delos.

Climate change apparently did not cause the end of the Bronze Age.

James Cuno, the President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, makes the case against repatriating museum artifacts in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.

The Biblical Archaeology Society is running a Thanksgiving sale through Thursday.

Sharon Zuckerman, co-director of the Tel Hazor Excavations and senior lecturer at the Institute of
Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, died on Friday. She was 49.

HT: Agade, Charles Savelle, Chris McKinny

Tagged Discoveries, Greece, Museums, Resources, Sad News, Turkey