Yale Alumni Magazine has a fascinating and well-written article on the discovery of Umm Mawagir. 

The NY Times article is less interesting but has better illustrations.

For much of the twentieth century, Egyptologists shied away from explorations in the vast sand sea known as the Western Desert. An expanse of desolation the size of Texas, the desert seemed too harsh, too implacable, too unforgiving a place for an ancient civilization nurtured on the abundance of the Nile. In spring, a hot, stifling wind known as the Khamsin roars across the Western Desert, sweeping up walls of suffocating sand and dust; in summer, daytime heat sometimes pushes the mercury into the 130 degree–Fahrenheit range. The animals, what few there are, tend to be unfriendly. Scorpions lurk under the rocks, cobras bask in the early morning sun. Vipers lie buried under the sand.
When Egyptologists finally began investigating the Western Desert, they gravitated first to the oases. But in 1992, a young American graduate student, John Coleman Darnell, and his wife and fellow graduate student, Deborah, decided to take a very different tack. The couple began trekking ancient desert roads and caravan tracks along what they called “the final frontier of Egyptology.” Today, John Darnell, an Egyptologist in Yale’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilization department, and his team have succeeded in doing what most Egyptologists merely dream of: discovering a lost pharaonic city of administrative buildings, military housing, small industries, and artisan workshops. Says Darnell, of a find that promises to rewrite a major chapter in ancient Egyptian history, “We were really shocked.”

The article continues here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Many times I have told a classroom full of undergraduates, “I thank God every day for the Merneptah Stele.”  They no doubt thought I was a strange duck, but this crazy claim didn’t help my reputation. 

It’s not that I don’t like the other famous inscriptions that relate to biblical history.  I remember one of my professors saying that there was no extrabiblical evidence for the “house of David” and then a few months later (in the summer of 1993), the Tel Dan Inscription was discovered.  I appreciate the Black Obelisk which has a depiction of King Jehu bowing down and paying tribute to the Assyrian monarch.  And I love to point out the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets in the Israel Museum as the earliest portions of Scripture ever found.  But I don’t thank God every day for any of these.

The Merneptah Stele is a 10 feet- (3 m-) tall monumental inscription that records the victory hymn of Pharaoh Merneptah (1213-1203 BC).  Most of the lengthy poem is about his campaign against Libyan tribes, but at the end he describes some victories in Canaan.  One of the enemies he claims to have thoroughly obliterated is the people of Israel.

Merneptah’s boast has had the opposite effect: instead of destroying Israel, he has actually preserved the fact of their existence at that time.  Everyone agrees that Israel existed sometime later, but without the Merneptah Stele, very few scholars would acknowledge that they existed at this time.  In fact, it’s my opinion that even today, 114 years after the discovery of the Merneptah Stele, most scholars don’t properly account for this inscription in their reconstruction of the origin of the people of Israel. 

That’s the point of my brief essay posted today at The Bible and Interpretation.  I’d be gratified if you’d give it a read.  Maybe I’m not as crazy to give thanks as my students thought.

This Old Kingdom tomb with “amazing colors” may be the first in a large cemetery that served ancient Memphis.  From the Jerusalem Post:

Egyptian archaeologists on Thursday unveiled a newly-unearthed double tomb with vivid wall paintings in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara near Cairo, saying it could be the start for uncovering a vast cemetery in the area.
The tomb includes two false doors with colorful paintings depicting the two people buried there, a father and a son who served as heads of the royal scribes, said Abdel-Hakim Karar, a top archaeologist at Saqqara.
“The colors of the false door are fresh as if it was painted yesterday,” Karar told reporters.
Humidity had destroyed the sarcophagus of the father, Shendwas, while the tomb of the son, Khonsu, was robbed in antiquity, he said.
Also inscribed on the father’s false door was the name of Pepi II, whose 90-year reign is believed to be the longest of the pharaohs. The inscription dates the double tomb to the 6th dynasty, which marked the beginning of the decline of the Old Kingdom, also known as the age of pyramids.
Egypt’s antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, said the new finds were “the most distinguished tombs ever found from the Old Kingdom,” because of their “amazing colors.” He said the area, if excavated, could unveil the largest cemetery of ancient Egypt.

The 6th Dynasty dates to 2362-2176 BC (NEAEH 5:2127).  Saqqara is 15 miles (20 km) south of the Giza pyramids (which is on the outskirts of Cairo).

The full article with photos is here.

Acacia tree near Eilat, tb022704005

A few months ago, Ferrell Jenkins posted a photo of an acacia tree.  His photo, like the one above, shows a typical tree in southern Israel.  The question I’ve always had is: how can you make the ark of the covenant, measuring about 4 by 2.25 by 2.25 feet, out of a tree with so little wood?

Here’s the answer:

Acacia tree in Wilderness of Sin, tb032506825

I didn’t have my tape measure handy for recording the size, but the people in the photo give perspective.  This tree is located in the Sinai peninsula, only a few dozen miles from Jebel Musa, the traditional location of Mount Sinai.

The observation is made in Picturesque Palestine (1882) that the acacia seyal tree is the “only timber tree of any size in the Arabian Desert” (4: 53).

Wady Feiran, pp4070 Acacia tree in Wadi Feiran.  Source: Picturesque Palestine, vol. 4.

The Hyksos controlled Egypt from roughly 1650 to 1550 BC and it was likely one of their rulers who was the pharaoh “who knew not Joseph” and put the Israelites in slavery (Exod 1:8).  From Discovery News:

Radar imaging in Egypt’s Nile Delta has unveiled the outlines of a buried city that was the stronghold of foreign occupiers some 3,500 years ago, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities announced Monday.
Discovered by a team of Austrian archaeologists in Tell el-Daba in the northeastern Nile Delta, the ruins belong to the southern suburban quarters of Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos kings who formed Egypt’s 15th dynasty.
Known as the “rulers of foreign countries” (probably of Asiatic roots),  the Hyksos infiltrated Egypt and came to dominate the Nile valley for over a century during the Second Intermediate Period (1664-1569 B.C.).
From their strategic capital, Avaris, these foreign rulers are credited with introducing horse-drawn chariots into Egypt and controlling the lucrative trade routes with the Near East and the Mediterranean world.

The full article is here.

HT: Ferrell Jenkins

From Science magazine:

Just when did Egyptian pharaohs such as King Tut and Rameses II rule? Historians have heatedly debated the exact dates. Now a radiocarbon study concludes that much of the assumed chronology was right, though it corrects some controversial dates and may overturn a few pet theories.
“This is an extremely important piece of research that shows clearly that historical dating methods and radiocarbon dates are compatible for ancient Egypt,” says Kate Spence, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Egyptian records, such as the writings of the 3rd century B.C.E. historian Manetho and inscriptions found at key sites such as Saqqara and Karnak, provide what are called “floating chronologies” because they are internally consistent but not anchored to absolute dates. On the other hand, they sometimes refer to astronomical events whose dates can be calculated today. Thus, scholars are confident that they are not wildly off the mark. But it’s difficult to be precise. For example, the first known pyramid, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, was built as a tomb for King Djoser, and historians usually put the beginning of his reign between 2667 and 2592 B.C.E. But one recent paper by Spence, based on astronomical calculations, put it as much as 75 years later. Radiocarbon dating has been too imprecise to resolve these contradictions because in this period it usually has error ranges of between 100 and 200 years.
[…]
One major controversy remains unresolved: the timing of the massive eruption of the volcanic island of Thera in the Aegean Sea, which transformed the history of the eastern Mediterranean and has important implications for understanding the relationship between Egypt and the Minoans, another powerful culture of the time. Previous radiocarbon dating suggests that the eruption took place at least 100 years before the New Kingdom began, which the new dating puts at no earlier than 1570 B.C.E. But radiocarbon and historical dating by University of Vienna archaeologist Manfred Bietak’s team at Tell el-Dab’a in Egypt has concluded that the Thera eruption took place during the New Kingdom era.

The full article is here.

HT: Joe Lauer, who provides a list of related articles