10.5 Million Visits to the Western Wall in 2012 – The increase in tourism requires a doubling in restroom capacity.

Archaeology in Israel Update—February 2013 – Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg selects the top five stories of the month.

48 hours in the Negev – Onnie Schiffmiller provides a two-day itinerary beginning at Beersheba and moving south.

How to Prepare for a Holy Land Tour – Wayne Stiles recommends ways to prepare mentally, practically, physically, and spiritually.

8 Tips to Maximize Your Holy Land Tour – Stiles follows up his preparation post with suggestions on what to do once you’re in Israel, including what photos to take and not take, how to keep up, and why you should ask lots of questions.

Men praying at Western Wall during Sukkot, tb100906912
A “full house” at the Western Wall prayer plaza during the feast of Tabernacles. Photo from the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands, volume 3.
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A cave above En Gedi is revealing well-preserved artifacts from the first century AD.

Luke Chandler has word that Yosef Garfinkel plans to follow his Khirbet Qeiyafa dig with excavations at Lachish.

The Daily Mail has photos of the newly opened exhibit of King Herod at the Israel Museum. Shmuel Browns has more.

Some are claiming that the Waqf is destroying more antiquities on the Temple Mount.

Gordon Franz evaluates Robert Cornuke’s use of a computer model to predict the location of Paul’s shipwreck on Malta.

A website for the excavations of Tel Abel Beth Maacah is now online.

En Gedi and Nahal David aerial from northwest, tb010703272
Aerial view of Nahal David and En Gedi
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Shmuel Browns has a roundup of interesting items he has discovered as a guide this week, and he’s soliciting suggestions for a name for the series.

Seth Rodriquez illustrates each region of the land of Israel.

The presentations from “Managing Archaeological Data in the Digital Age: Best Practices and Realities” are now online.

Nearly $2 million has been spent to restore the archaeological remains of the Nabatean city of Avdat after vandals attacked it.

The Cyrus Cylinder will make its first appearance in the U.S. on March 9 at the Smithsonian.

GigaPan has some extremely high-resolution panoramic images of Jerusalem.

HT: Jack Sasson, Michael Oliver

Avdat Byzantine Church of St Theodore, tb030607886
The Nabatean city of Avdat
Photo from the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands
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After reading Seth’s post yesterday on the interior passageway of Barclay’s Gate, Daniel Wright went looking and found some video taken in the same room.

This first video is a short clip of just that room, today the Mosque of Buraq (Muhammad’s horse).

This second video is a little longer and goes through other rooms underneath Al Aqsa Mosque. Here again the ancient spaces are put to use. In some places you can see Herodian stones. The video ends, I believe, with a walk through the “Double Gate” passageway.

These videos are valuable because very few non-Muslims are allowed to see these places.


Note: Those receiving this by email will need to click through to view the videos.

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Binyanē Ha-Umma (South): Finds included cooking pots from the first century, brick and roof tile debris from the Tenth Legion pottery workshop, and four coins.

Shu‛fat: A survey a couple of miles north of Damascus Gate identified 64 sites including an Iron II farmhouse, two Second Temple period tombs (one with a Latin inscription), nine tumuli, a Roman road, a large quarry, and more.

Mount Zion: An excavation was conducted in the courtyard south of the building that houses David’s Tomb and the Upper Room. The five strata excavated date from the Byzantine to the modern period.The excavation was prematurely halted at a depth of 5 feet when the archaeologists reached bones. “Further excavations will clarify if a massive wall from the fourth century CE was indeed exposed at the bottom of the trial square.”

The Old City, IDF House: Located along the Street of the Chain to the west of the Western Wall prayer plaza, this excavation identified primarily remains from the Ottoman period.

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Quarry in Shu’fat. Photo by IAA.
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Old City: A small excavation inside a dwelling south of Damascus Gate and west of the Austrian Hospice revealed pavement and pottery from the Mamluk period.

Rasm al-‘Amud: This site on the lower southeastern slopes of the Mount of Olives is located nearly 1 mile east of the City of David. Excavation of fifty squares revealed six strata dating from the Intermediate Bronze (VI-V), Middle Bronze IIA (IV), Middle Bronze IIC-Late Bronze (III), Iron II (II), and Late Roman-Early Byzantine (I). The best preserved remains are the earliest and come from a semi-nomadic group that settled down near the water source. In the 9th-7th centuries, the site was a cultivated garden and a jar handle was found with an inscription that reads “ …ל (?)מ/נחם ” (“Le[?]m/nhm”). The report includes a photo of the inscription.

Beit Hanina: Remains were excavated of seven phases of the Roman road that branched off from the Jerusalem-Shechem road heading towards the Beth Horon ridge. The report doesn’t mention it, but this is the route Paul would have taken on his way to Antipatris and Caesarea (Acts 23:31). Other road segments were excavated, but no map has been published.

Nahal Rephaim: A survey of this valley southwest of the Old City (see 2 Sam 5:18-25) identified 42 sites including watchman’s huts, a limekiln, a burial cave, a cistern, five roads, and farming terraces.

“Based on the rural nature of the surveyed area, it seems that it constituted part of Jerusalem’s agricultural hinterland, at least during some of the ancient periods.” Compare Isaiah 17:5: “It will be…as when a man gleans heads of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.”

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Ancient road between Jerusalem and Beth Horon.
Photo by IAA.
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