Mesopotamia Archives - Page 3 of 30

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

If you want the non-Indiana-Jones explanation of the Antikythera Mechanism, check out NASA’s recent Astronomy Picture of the Day.

“For the first time, scientists have recently obtained genetic material and analyzed genome sequences from the ancient Minoans and Mycenaeans.”

Bleda Düring explains why the Assyrian empire was more resilient than those of the Hittites and Egyptians.

The size of the illegal antiquities market is much smaller than usually claimed.

Ruth Schuster considers how archaeological technology has changed how we see ourselves.

“The East Garage Necropolis Area, which was once a public market in the southern province of Antalya [in Turkey] and where archaeological excavations started after the discovery of rock tombs, has been opened as a museum.”

Leon Mauldin has just returned from a trip to Malta and shares a few photos of St. Paul’s Bay.

Andy Cook has just released “Discovering the Bible inside your Bible.” This is a 10-week Bible study of the Gospel of John that is filled with full-color photos. The study includes videos to go with each week’s study. This resource could be used individually or with a small-group Bible study. Only $20.

There will be no roundup next weekend.

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Alexander Schick, Explorator

A visit to el-Araj, possible site of Bethsaida, is most impressive with regard to seeing just how close this ancient fishing village was to the Sea of Galilee. The water almost touches the site itself (immediately behind the tree in the center of the photo).

Tagged Mediterranean Islands, Mesopotamia, Museums, Technology, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

Archaeologists are making progress in their second season of renewed excavations at Nimrud (ancient Calah), including the discovery of a depiction of Ishtar in a temple dedicated to her.

Royal tombs full of artifacts dating to 1500-1300 BC have been discovered near Hala Sultan Tekke on Cyprus. The site was discovered using magnetometers.

“A 2,500-year-old Phoenician shipwreck has been found underwater in the southeastern Spanish region of Murcia.”

MutualArt surveys the results of excavations and repatriations in Egypt this year.

Yigal Levin writes about the city of Dibon and the single reference to Dibon-Gad in the book of Numbers.

Marek Dospěl gives an overview of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Adam E. Miglio considers the similarities between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Book of Genesis.

Jessica Nitschke, the new editor of The Ancient Near East Today, explains her vision for the future of the website and newsletter.

New release: Ancient Egyptian Gold: Archaeology and Science in Jewellery (3500–1000 BC), edited by Maria F. Guerra, Marcos Martinón-Torres & Stephen Quirke (McDonald Institute Monographs; Cambridge; open access)

The Bible Mapper Blog continues to create helpful maps for Bible readers. Here are the latest:

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Explorator

The best museum in the Old City is now the Terra Santa Museum on the Via Dolorosa. Though it is not yet finished, it displays hundreds of impressive artifacts from around the country.

Tagged Discoveries, Egypt, Excavations, Jerusalem, Jordan, Mediterranean Islands, Mesopotamia, Resources, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

Scholars at UNI Graz claim that a 3rd century BC papyrus has evidence of a binding, making it the oldest book in the world discovered. The press release is in German, but the video of the press conference is partly in English. Brent Nongbri offers some thoughts.

A network of stone walls along the Nile River provide evidence of ancient hydraulic engineering.

“A team of computer scientists and archaeologists from the University of Bologna in Italy has developed a new tool for identifying archaeological sites using artificial intelligence … [which] reached a predictive accuracy of over 80 percent.”

“A team of archaeologists and computer scientists from Israel has created an AI-powered translation program for ancient Akkadian cuneiform, allowing tens of thousands of already digitized tablets to be translated into English instantaneously.”

The square in Rome where Julius Caesar was assassinated has been opened to the public.

Renovations of the Carthage Museum will begin in 2025 and expand the exhibition space to three times the current size.

The book of Esther’s independence from classical sources makes it “more important as a historical source for Achaemenian history than has traditionally been assumed.”

“An ancient Hebrew Bible and more than 100 Roman coins were recovered by Turkish military police.” The photo with the article is not the seized manuscript.

New release: A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse: Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean, by Yaron Z. Eliav (Princeton University Press, $45; save 30% with code P321).

New release: Wounded Tigris: A River Journey Through the Cradle of Civilization, by Leon McCarron (Simon & Schuster, $29)

New release: Famine and Feast in Ancient Egypt, by Ellen Morris (75 pages, Cambridge University Press, $22; free download until July 3).

In the latest episode of Thin End of the Wedge, Agnès Garcia-Ventura discusses the historiography of Assyriology.

Mark Janzen is guest on The Book and the Spade discussing the historicity of Moses.

Now that the Plutonium at Hierapolis (aka the gate to Hades) is open, Carl Rasmussen shares photos and explains what you are looking at and how the ancient rites were carried out.

HT: Agade, Alexander Schick

The worst experience in Jerusalem is walking through the drainage channel under the Siloam street. Unless you’re under 5 feet tall.

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Discoveries, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Museums, Resources, Technology, Tourism, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 4

Zohar Amar believes that the best candidate for the balm of Gilead is resin from the Atlantic pistachio tree.

The latest video from Expedition Bible is “Peniel: Where Jacob saw the Face of God and lived.”

“The oldest known to-scale architectural plans recorded in human history” are engravings of desert kites discovered in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. More than 6,000 desert kites have been discovered in the Middle East and Asia to date.

Archaeologists discovered rare copper ingots from the Early Bronze Age in Oman.

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered two embalming facilities at Saqqara.

“Archaeologists offer a new explanation for one of the century’s grislier finds, ‘a carefully gathered collection of hands’ in a 3,500-year-old temple” in Avaris.

“Egyptian conservationists are racing to save ancient relics buried with some of Cairo’s most renowned residents as bulldozers flatten parts of a vast cemetery that houses forgotten kings.”

Jerusalem Post: “Many people died after visiting King Tut’s tomb in Egypt. What exactly happened, and how does it involve the Aspergillus fungus?”

A couple of scholars have recently tried to identify all the birds in the Green Room of Akhenaten’s palace in Amarna.

“Egypt has barred the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO) in Leiden from carrying out excavations in the famous Egyptian necropolis Sakkara. The country accused the Dutch museum of “falsifying history” with the “Afrocentric” approach to the RMO exhibition Kemet: Egypt in hip-hop, jazz, soul & funk.”

New release (open access): Egypt and the Mediterranean World from the Late Fourth through the Third Millennium BCE, edited by Karin Sowada and Matthew J. Adams

New release: Life and the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Art from the Senusret Collection, edited by Melinda Hartwig (open access; click on right sidebar for pdf download)

New release: ‘To Aleppo gone …’: Essays in honour of Jonathan N. Tubb, edited by Irving Finkel, J.A. Fraser, and St John Simpson (Archaeopress, £16–45)

The Ideas podcast reflects on “the many afterlives of the Queen of Sheba.”

Eckart Frahm is guest on Thin End of the Wedge discussing his new history of Assyria. Also, YaleNews has a brief interview with him about the book.

A new video retraces the journey of Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, perhaps the earliest photographer of the eastern Mediterranean.

Two pillars used to decipher the Phoenician script are reunited for the first time in 240 years in an exhibition in Abu Dhabi.

Zoom lecture on June 15: “Home and Away: Studying the Deportations to and from the Southern Levant during the Age of the Neo-Assyrian and the Neo-Babylonian Empires,” by Ido Koch

Jaromir Malek, Egyptologist and creator of the Tutankhamun Archive, died recently.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Arne Halbakken, Ted Weis, Stephanie Durruty, Wayne Stiles, Alexander Schick, Gordon Franz, Explorator

The newly renovated Davidson Center in Jerusalem displays dozens of finds related to the Temple Mount, including these steps from the staircase over Robinson’s Arch.

Tagged Discoveries, Egypt, Jordan, Mesopotamia, Resources, Sad News, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

“Archaeologists in Southern Italy uncovered a trove of historical treasures in a temple in the ancient city of Paestum. The treasures include a statue of the Greek god of love Eros, Terracotta bull heads and dolphin statues.”

Art & Object reports on excavation work around the Colosseum.

“A team of marine archaeologists working off the coast of Italy has identified a submerged Nabatean temple dating to the early first century CE.”

“Ancient Babylonian treasures, painstakingly unearthed, are slowly disappearing again under wind-blown sand in a land parched by rising heat and prolonged droughts.”

Eckart Frahm is guest on The Ancients podcast to discuss the “Rise of the Assyrians.”

David Moster found a Babylonian Kudurru at Goodwill and made a video about it.

Tom Davis discusses Pauline archaeology on the latest episode of Biblical World.

New release: Ramesses II, Egypt’s Ultimate Pharaoh, by Peter Brand (Lockwood Press, 575 pages, $40)

New from Eisenbrauns: The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BC), Aššur-etel-ilāni (630–627 BC), and Sîn-šarra-iškun (626–612 BC), Kings of Assyria, Part 2, by Joshua Jeffers and Jamie Novotny. Price reduced to $91 with code NR23.

The latest BAS OnSite video tours Petra, with BAR editor Glenn Corbett as guide.

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Keith Keyser, Alexander Schick, Explorator

Tagged Discoveries, Egypt, Italy, Jordan, Mediterranean Islands, Mesopotamia, Resources, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

“Neo-Assyrian reliefs in the provinces tend to present the sacred using standardized Assyrian court motifs. A recently discovered relief at Başbük, however, offers a rare depiction of local gods in Assyrian court style but with traditional Syro-Anatolian motifs.”

“After the recent massive earthquakes, Türkiye’s Hatay Archaeology Museum stepped up efforts to protect its valuable artifacts from aftershocks by employing an in situ protection formula for heavy items and sending smaller artifacts to another museum for safekeeping.”

Archaeologists excavating a 2nd century AD villa in Rome discovered two mosaics depicting Medusa. The article does not include photos of the mosaics.

A previously unknown palimpsest fragment of Matthew 11-12 in Old Syriac has been found in the Vatican Library.

Drawing on James Hoffmeier’s recent BAR article, Marek Dospěl provides an overview of the archaeological and geological evidence for Jeremiah’s travels to Egypt.

The most lavish Mesopotamian tomb ever discovered belonged to a woman.

The Greek Reporter has the oldest photo of the Acropolis of Athens, taken in 1842.

Kim Phillips: “The sale of Codex Sassoon raises questions about what’s real and what’s hype about this important manuscript.”

New release on Logos: Manna Bible Maps Plus: Maps, Timelines, and Movies to Help Students Visualize Their Study of the Bible ($63). I have not used these and cannot offer an opinion as to their value.

Zoom lecture on April 19: “Evidence for Judean Exiles in Babylonia, 572–474 BCE,” by Laurie Pearce. Free but registration required.

The Database of Religious History is “a massive, standardized, searchable encyclopedia of the current best scholarly opinion on historical religious traditions and the historical record more generally.”

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Ted Weis, Alexander Schick, Explorator

Tagged Discoveries, Egypt, Greece, Lectures, Mesopotamia, Museums, Resources, Turkey, Weekend Roundup