Excavations Archives - Page 82 of 98

Hinnom Valley Bridge Discovered

The Israel Antiquities Authority has uncovered an arched bridge in the Hinnom Valley that was built in the 14th century as a replacement of the Lower Aqueduct bridge from the 1st century. From Arutz-7:

Two of the bridge’s original nine arches have now been excavated to their full height of about three meters.
In actuality, the newly-discovered bridge was built in 1320 C.E. by the sultan Nasser al-Din Muhammed Ibn Qalawun, as evidenced by its dedicatory inscription. However, it was apparently constructed to replace an earlier bridge dating to the time of the Second Temple period that was part of the original aqueduct.
Yechiel Zelinger, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said, “The bridge, which could still be seen at the end of the 19th century and appears in old photographs, was covered over during the 20th century. We were thrilled when it suddenly reappeared in all its grandeur during the course of the archaeological excavations.”
“The route of the Low Level aqueduct from the time of the Second Temple, beginning at Solomon’s Pools near Bethlehem and ending at the Temple Mount, is well known to scholars,” Zelinger said. “Substantial parts of it have been documented along the edge of Yemin Moshe neighborhood and on the slope adjacent to the Old City’s western wall. In order to maintain the elevation of the path along which the water flowed, a bridge was erected above the ravine.”

The story continues here.

Yesterday Tom Powers posted his observations of the excavation along with a couple of great photos.

He wonders aloud if the earlier foundations of the bridge underlie the present one. Perhaps the archaeologists will pursue this question.

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Jerusalem

Recent Discoveries in Egypt

The Global Arab Network has posted a number of articles on discoveries in Egypt, as noted by Joe Lauer.

1. A new tomb was discovered by an SCA mission at Tell el-Maskhuta [biblical Succoth] in the Ismailia governate (Egypt). The tomb dates to the 19th Dynasty (1315-1201 BC), is constructed of mud brick and consists of a rectangular room with a domed ceiling made of stone, and a deep square-shaped shaft.

2. The Head of Antiquities of Lower Egypt Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud said that archaeological missions working in North Sinai have unearthed Tharu, an ancient fortified city, a move which stressed the importance of this area as the eastern gate of Egypt.

3. A collection of 14 Graeco-Roman tombs dating to the third century BC have been found in a cemetery in the Ain El-Zawya area of the town of Bawiti, in Bahariya Oasis.

The first and third articles have photographs of the finds.

Tagged Discoveries, Egypt, Excavations

Jordanian Students Learn Archaeology

Students from the International Academy Amman recently were given hands-on experience in excavating the ancient city of Gadara (cf. Matt 8:28). From the Jordan Times:

Digging in trenches in northern Jordan was far from 18-year-old Aoun Jumaa’s definition of “fun”.
But after the International Academy Amman (IAA) student spent the past week excavating at Um Qais as part of his school’s community action and service programme, he said he has gained appreciation of the Kingdom’s “exciting” archaeology.
“I have been to Um Qais, but I have never seen it like this before,” he said.
The programme offers students the unique opportunity to explore their past and open up avenues for their futures.
The 20-odd students quickly learned that an archaeologist’s day is by no means an easy one. Starting at dawn, the students were in the trenches digging, cleaning and shovelling all morning, and after a short lunch break, they sorted and washed pottery shards and attended evening sessions on pottery identification and cultural interpretation.
Meanwhile, they devoted their evening hours to research projects, interpreting their finds and writing down their analysis, according to IAA teacher and programme coordinator Andy Daily.

The full article is here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Gadara nymphaeum with Sea of Galilee in distance

Tagged Excavations, Jordan

Beth Yerah: It's an Arabic Palace, not Synagogue

Earlier this week, there was a story about the discovery of an Umayyad palace that was previously identified as a synagogue. Early reports contained very few details, but a new story yesterday makes things a bit clearer (HT: Gordon Govier).

The site is still not named, but a little checking around has revealed that it is Khirbet Beth Yerah (Khirbet el-Kerak) on the southwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee (see map below). A synagogue was discovered here in the 1950s by P. L. O. Guy and Pesach Bar-Adon. Current excavations led by Rafi Greenberg of Tel Aviv University now identify the building as an Arabic palace dating to the 7th-8th centuries A.D. How did they get it so wrong?

The palace was also dismantled down to its foundations after the fall of the dynasty, leaving nothing behind but a foundation and few clues to help date the structure.
Archaeologists at the time also believed, erroneously, that the early Arab caliphates did not carry out many large-scale building projects.
Researchers first began to raise doubts about the origins of the structure in the 1990s, but it wasn’t until 2002 that archaeologist Donald Whitcomb from the University of Chicago first suggested that the site might in fact be the missing Umayyad palace. That identification was confirmed by archaeologists this week.
The identification of the structure as a synagogue was based on the image of a menorah that the early excavators found carved into the top of a pillar base. But the scholars behind the new review of the site realized that the carving was a red herring — that surface would have been covered by a pillar in the original structure, so the carving must have been added later.

The article on Beth Yerah in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (1993) provides more information on the “synagogue”:

Within the area of the Roman fort, Guy and Bar-Adon uncovered the remains of the foundations of a synagogue (22 by 37 m). The building was divided by two rows of columns into a nave and two aisles. There was an apse in the middle of the southern wall, oriented to Jerusalem. The nave was paved with a colored mosaic, partially preserved, depicting plants, birds, lions, and other motifs. Carved on the base of a column were a menorah, lulab, ethrog, and incense shovel (1: 258).

A couple of brief comments. The apse oriented toward Jerusalem also faces Mecca. The mosaic’s depictions might surprise some unfamiliar with Arabic tastes in this period, but it closely resembles the Umayyad palace in Jericho (Kh. el-Mafjar). Apparently the decorated column base threw the original excavators off. (And you thought archaeologists used pottery for dating.)

You can read more about the Tel Bet Yerah Research and Excavation Project at the official site.

From Sheet 6 of the Survey of Western Palestine Maps. Kh. el-Kerak = Beth Yerah.

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Galilee

The Dating of Mazar’s Wall

Last week Eilat Mazar announced the discovery of a massive wall in Jerusalem dating from the time of Solomon. Unfortunately, the information was communicated on location in a press conference, and it has been difficult to figure out what exactly she said. It seems that ambiguity served her well, for it apparently disguised some important details, such as the fact that most of what she announced she had previously excavated, announced, and published in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Whatever she discovered in the brief excavation of 2010 either was not announced, not reported, or identical to what she has previously reported.

There are other problems. One concerns the definition of terms. What you think of as a “wall” is what Mazar calls the exterior of two buildings, one of which she (but few others) believes is a gate.

Perhaps these buildings served as the defensive line of the city. Perhaps she found a new section in 2010 that is a city wall. But if you’re thinking she found a wall line like at Megiddo, Lachish, Hazor, Dan, or other places in Jerusalem, then you’re mistaken.

Another problem is that her previous publications give the sense that she is changing her interpretation to fit a more biblical narrative and date without new data to support this conclusion.

My friend Danny Frese has compared her publications of the site and we think they suggest that her analysis of the data owes more to what she would like to find than what she has found.

Concerning Building C, “The Gatehouse,” she wrote in 1980s about a fill under the floor of the south chamber. The fill held about 50% EB and MB sherds; the latest pottery found in the fill was “from the Iron II” (1987: 62). More specifically:

There was also a small quantity of wheel-burnished sherds [in the fill] which indicate a date sometime in the ninth-seventh centuries B.C.E. (ibid.).

She notes two particular sherds from the fill that are from distinctive bowls which appear in the 10th and 9th centuries (1989: 20).

The ceramic data as presented above do not enable precise determination of the time of construction [of the gatehouse], which must be cautiously defined as between the 9th and 7th centuries B.C.E. (1989: 20).
Unfortunately the finds in the locus [in the south chamber] are extremely scanty and do not permit a more accurate dating than between the 9th and 7th centuries (1989: 59).

But in 2006, she wrote concerning the two sherds from distinctive bowls mentioned above:

Bowls of this type have been studied extensively and date mainly to the 10th century, continuing into the 9th century BCE. The ceramic data were insufficient to provide a more precise determination within the terminus post quem [earliest] time frame for the construction of Building C (2006: 783-84).

In other words, the evidence for dating the gate to the 10th century are two sherds that were also in use in the 9th century.

Concerning Building D, “The Royal Building,” she wrote in 1989 about the dating of the lower floor, beneath which was:

an intact black juglet of the type characteristic of the 10th and 9th centuries B.C.E. The juglet was found hidden between stones of one of the foundation walls of the room, as if it had been placed there intentionally by the builders as a sort of private foundation deposit. On the basis of the pottery finds, including the juglet, the time of the laying of the lower floor, and hence also of the entire building, can be determined as the 9th-early 8th centuries B.C.E. (1989: 60).

But in 2006, with no additional excavations having occurred since 1989, she wrote about the black juglet:

It was found hidden, as though placed there intentionally by the builders as a construction offering of sorts. The juglet appears to be characteristic of the 10th century BCE; there are clear differences between this early type of juglet and its later 8th-century form, examples of which were also found in the excavations on the eastern slope of the Western Hill. Unless further research conducted on the typology of black juglets indicates otherwise, it seems clear that the early type with the straight neck, ovoid body, and button base, like the example found in the Ophel, is characteristic first and foremost of the 10th century BCE (2006: 784).

The question we ask: what changed? Distinguishing between pottery of the 10th and 9th centuries has not been clarified in the intervening years. If anything, the debate has only intensified. Yet Mazar concludes in her 2006 article:

A new understanding of the finds from the excavations of the monumental fortification line in the Ophel has enabled its dating to as early as the 10th century BCE (2006: 75).

The “new understanding” was a reinterpretation of a juglet to an earlier date without any supporting evidence. That allows the entire “gate complex” to be dated to the 10th century. And suddenly you can publish an article entitled “The Solomonic Wall in Jerusalem.”

Given her press conference announcement, we presume that she found new material in her 2010 excavations that confirm her earlier conclusions. Her case would be more compelling, however, if it didn’t appear that she had a pre-determined outcome.

Sources Cited:
Mazar, Eilat. “Ophel Excavations, Jerusalem, 1986.” Israel Exploration Journal 37.1 (1987) 60-63.
Mazar, Eilat and Benjamin Mazar, Excavations in the South of the Temple Mount: The Ophel of Biblical Jerusalem. Qedem 29. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1989.
Mazar, Eilat. “The Solomonic Wall in Jerusalem.” Pp. 775-86 in “I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times”: Archaeological and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday. Edited by A. Maeir and P. de Miroschedji. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006.

Tagged Analysis, Excavations, Jerusalem

Previous Publication of Mazar’s “Solomonic Wall”

A.D. Riddle has pointed me to a chapter that Eilat Mazar published a few years ago entitled “The Solomonic Wall in Jerusalem” (full bibliographic data below).

It includes a diagram similar to the one published on Hebrew U’s Facebook page yesterday. I’ve added labels in English.

Mazar’s diagram with English labels added (original here)

My impression in reading Mazar’s chapter is that yesterday’s press conference was mostly a re-statement of the conclusions of her 2006 article, which was based on her excavations in the 1980s. In short, she argues that Building C is a four-chambered inner gatehouse which may have been an entrance into a royal palace. She notes that its dimensions are “virtually identical” to those of palace Gate 1567 at Megiddo VA-IVB. With regard to date, she states that “the ceramic data were insufficient to provide a more precise determination within the terminus post quem time frame for the construction of Building C.”

She found two floors in Building D, the later of which was laid “no earlier than the 8th century.” She believes an intact black juglet was placed under a foundation stone as a “construction offering” and dates the building to the 10th century.

She concludes in part:

Based on the finds sealed below the floors of Buildings C and D, the construction of the fortification complex in the Ophel should be dated to the 10th century BCE. This date corresponds to the biblical passage announcing that King Solomon built a defensive wall around Jerusalem. There is no reason to assume that someone other than Solomon constructed or reconstructed the Ophel fortification line at some time during the 10th-9th centuries BCE.

It sounds as if Mazar has found more evidence in her recent excavation that confirms her previous conclusion that this fortification system dates to the time of Solomon. I don’t believe that her previous conclusions met with much enthusiasm from the scholarly community; we’ll see how the archaeologists evaluate her new material.

The bibliographic data for this publication is as follows:

Mazar, Eilat. 2006 “The Solomonic Wall in Jerusalem.” Pp. 775-786 in “I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times”: Archaeological and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday. Ed. A. Maeir and P. de Miroschedji. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.

This two-volume work is available from Eisenbrauns.

Tagged Analysis, Discoveries, Excavations, Jerusalem