Eisenbrauns has a terrific sale this weekend on Shimon Gibson, Jerusalem in Original Photographs, 1850-1920. Gibson not only had access to some rare photographs, but his knowledge of the subject is extraordinary. Only $15 at Eisenbrauns. ($48 at Amazon)
A Second Temple period hall near the Western Wall has been excavated and restored. The “Hall of Ages” is scheduled to be opened to the public in a few weeks. HT: Joe Lauer
The Baptist Press has a story on the “Joseph coins,” in which they quote Steven Ortiz and Robert Griffin as skeptical.
G. M. Grena has some comments about the upcoming ASOR meetings at his LMLK blogspot, including this note of interest to Qeiyafa watchers:
By the way, Prof. Garfinkel will have some interesting photos of jar handles with special impressions that in many ways parallel the LMLK phenomenon.
BAS reports that from January to August 2010 the Oriental Institute will launch a new exhibit
“Pioneers to the Past: American Archaeologists in the Middle East, 1919-20.”
James Henry Breasted had received a large donation from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to establish the Oriental Institute in 1919 and quickly organized an expedition to travel across the Middle East to acquire objects for the Institute and identify sites for excavation. World War I had just ended, the political map of the Middle East had not yet been redrawn, and it was a dangerous time to be travelling through the region. The exhibit will present the incredible adventure story of the Breasted expedition through photographs, excerpts from letters, original documents from the archives, and objects purchased on the trip.
BAS is now offering a free e-book entitled “Israel: An Archaeological Journey” (requires quick registration if you haven’t already). The contents include:
- The Fury of Babylon: Ashkelon and the Archaeology of Destruction, by Lawrence E. Stager
- Vegas on the Med: A Tour of Caesarea’s Entertainment District, by Yosef Porath
- How Jewish Was Sepphoris in Jesus’ Time?, by Mark Chancey and Eric M. Meyers
- Where Masada’s Defenders Fell, by Nachman Ben-Yehuda
- A New Reconstruction of Paul’s Prison, by Ehud Netzer
- Tagged Egypt, Jerusalem, Shephelah, Temple Mount
The photo below shows another very familiar place in Jerusalem, at the northwestern corner of the Old City walls. This site, I believe, may be distinguished as the location most often renovated in the modern city’s history. I’ve long suspected that the municipality, which has its offices on the north side of this square, uses the area as training grounds for its construction crews.
This American Colony photo shows how the area looked sometime between 1932 and 1946. The round building on the right served as Barclay’s Bank on the lower floor and basement, while the rest of the building held offices of the City Hall. Because it was located next to “No Man’s Land” from 1948 to 1967, the building’s facade today bears pockmarks from the hostilities. Mayor Teddy Kollek’s office was in the second floor of this building for many years.
This picture could have been taken many times since, as the area has been torn up time and again to install various traffic features, water fountains, and pedestrian walkways. This photo was taken in December 2006 after the construction of a traffic tunnel. The round building is in the distant center.
This photo was taken in July 2009 by Peter Wong and looks west (the municipal building is off to the right). It shows excavations of the area, including what appears to be a cistern in the top center.
Shortly after Peter took this photo, the area was cemented over.
- Tagged American Colony Photos, Excavations, Jerusalem
Jewish Quarter from the Temple Mount
It wasn’t all that long ago that this area looked very different. This photograph, taken from the Temple Mount, looks towards the Jewish Quarter. I don’t have a “today” comparison because sensitivities now do not allow one to access this area.
Dominating the skyline are two domed synagogues, once major landmarks in the Old City: the taller Tiferet Israel (“Glory of Israel”) on the left and the Hurvah (“Ruin”) on the right. Sadly, both structures fell victim to the hostilities of 1948. During the final fighting for the Jewish Quarter in May 1948, both synagogues, which had served as strategic positions for the quarter’s Jewish defenders, were intentionally blown up by Arab forces. Then, with Israeli control of the Old City after 1967, the remains of both buildings were consolidated and preserved as memorials. Until 2006, the Hurvah site sported a memorial arch which became a visual symbol of the new Jewish Quarter and an Old City landmark. Today the Hurvah is being rebuilt, exactly to its original mid-19th century appearance.
In the foreground are the houses and other structures of the Mughrabi Quarter, an Arab neighborhood which covered what is now the expansive Western Wall plaza and the adjacent excavated areas around the Temple Mount. After Israel captured the Old City in the 1967 Six Day War, within a matter of days the Mughrabi Quarter’s residents were forced out and relocated, and most of the buildings seen here were razed. However, the lower floors of some of the houses became the base of an earthen ramp that provided access to the Temple Mount’s Mughrabi Gate from 1967 until 2004, when part of the ramp collapsed. Now, these same houses—and more ancient structures beneath them—are being exposed archaeologically in advance of construction of a new Mughrabi Gate foot-bridge.
This photograph and description are taken from the Jerusalem volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection. The photograph is originally from the Library of Congress, LC-matpc-04722, and the description was written by Tom Powers. The $25 CD includes 685 high-resolution photographs and the equivalent of a 200-page book of annotations such as the one above.
- Tagged American Colony Photos, Jerusalem
Western visitors to Jerusalem are often impressed with the city’s large open-air market, Mahane Yehuda. Arutz-7 runs an illustrated article about it today.
You can learn much about a city by exploring its open air market and listening to its stories. By the end of the 19th [secular] century Jerusalem was growing, with Jews returning to their homeland. In addition, immigrants from numerous nationalities and religions from Europe, Ethiopia, Turkey, and Russia were also contributing to the urban fabric of the city. New neighborhoods were built outside the walls to alleviate the overcrowding in the Old City.
The Jerusalem neighborhood of Mahane Yehuda was established in 1887 with 162 houses, founded by three business partners: Johannes Frutiger, Joseph Navon, and Shalom Konstrum, and named after Navon’s brother Yehudah. Frutiger was a German Protestant who owned the largest private bank in Palestine; it was he who acquired the license for the Jaffa-Jerusalem Railway with Navon from the Ottoman government.
The full article and photos are here.
Mahane Yehuda, Jerusalem
This might be a good opportunity to mention an Israeli film related to 
the feast of Sukkot (which begins on Friday evening). Ushpizin is a delightful 90-minute movie about a husband and wife whose celebration of the holiday is interrupted by some unexpected visitors. The film is in Hebrew with English subtitles. The movie won awards in Israel for “best picture” and “best actor,” but it’s popular enough in the U.S. that I found it for rent in our local Blockbuster. Amazon has it used for $8.
- Tagged Jerusalem
Understanding the ancient Pool(s) of Siloam is a bit difficult. First, there is the pool where Hezekiah’s Tunnel emerges. This pool is small, shallow, and unimpressive. In 2004, a monumental reservoir was discovered to the south, dating to the 1st century A.D. (for more on that, see here and here).
Scholars today do not yet know how the two pools are related. The Lower Pool was quite likely the place of the miracle of the healing of the blind man (John 9). The area above was the site of a pool in the Late Roman period, and continued in use in the Byzantine period when a 5th century church was constructed over it. What existed here before the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 is not known.
Pool of Siloam, view to the north, present day
Today if you visit the pool at the end of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, there are a few column drums from the Byzantine pool, but little else to suggest the beautiful complex that pilgrims visited. That hasn’t always been the case, however, for the excavations of Bliss and Dickie in the 1890s revealed some of the ancient walls. In the photo below, behind the donkey is a wall of large, well-dressed stones with a classical molding. The excavators identified this as the northern side of the square Roman pool.
Pool of Siloam, view to the north, early 1900sAfter the excavations, Muslims erected a mosque over the northwestern corner of the area, covering all traces of the earlier pool and the Byzantine church built to commemorate it.
This photograph is one of 45 in the “City of David” set included in the Jerusalem volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection. Photo: Library of Congress, LC-matpc-08471.
- Tagged American Colony Photos, Jerusalem, Then and Now