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Weekend Roundup

Leen Ritmeyer explains why he disagrees with Eilat Mazar’s claim that the Second Temple is “waiting to be unearthed.”

Shmuel Browns has a well-illustrated article on Popular Archaeology entitled “Netzer’s Legacy: The Wonders of Herodium.”

Wayne Stiles makes a connection between the feast of Shavuot (Weeks or Pentecost) and Beth Shemesh.

Al Arabiya News profiles the Nimrud ivories, and Ferrell Jenkins provides some additional commentary and photos.

Haaretz takes the occasion of the inauguration of Jerusalem’s Light Rail to reminisce about an earlier, short-lived rail project from Jerusalem to el-Bireh/Ramallah. The author describes it as an electric rail system, but the accompanying photo shows the train billowing smoke.

The Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem is almost entirely Ultra-Orthodox.

An article in the Telegraph lists the top five religious mysteries as the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy
Chalice, the True Cross, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Sudarium of Oviedo.

The New York Times celebrates the completion of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, ninety years after it was begun.

If you’re wondering what is brand new and most popular for the week, see the lists at bib-arch.org.

Tagged Holidays, Jerusalem, Museums, Shephelah, Temple Mount

Tourists to Athens Frustrated with Museum Closures

If you’re thinking of a trip to biblical lands, you might want to choose a country other than Greece this year. From the Guardian:

The greatest repository of ancient Greek art – the National Archaeological Museum of Athens – has become the latest victim of the economic crisis engulfing Greece, with visitors getting only a peek at its renowned collections.
As the long-awaited tourist season begins, the debt-choked country’s top attraction is in the news for all the wrong reasons: closed exhibition halls, neglect and exasperated holidaymakers.
“This is our first time to Greece and of course we’re disappointed,” said Shareen Young, from Orange Country, California, who on Friday found herself locked out of the venerable institution because of a staff shortage. “I had really wanted to see the golden Mask of Agamemnon and other treasures of Troy.”
Barbara Vimercati, an Italian tourist, was also left standing outside the museum’s monumental bronze doors. “It says it’s open until 4pm but it’s not, and there isn’t even a note explaining why,” she said, making do with a glimpse of cellophane-wrapped statues in an adjacent corridor. “It’s unbelievable. We don’t understand.”
Most Greeks, including the museum’s keepers, are similarly at a loss. “We have 11,000 exhibits, five permanent collections and galleries over more than 8,000 square metres of space,” said Alexandra Christopoulou, a museum representative. “The season begins in April. I really don’t know why it has taken so long for the culture ministry to send extra personnel.”
With just 30 guards to supervise displays that require at least 130 on a daily basis, only eight of the museum’s 64 exhibition halls were open to the public last Sunday, according to the Kathimerini newspaper. Visitors have reportedly almost come to blows with staff when they discover that their €7 (£6.25) ticket gives them access to only a fraction of the displays.

The story continues here.

HT: Jack Sasson

National Archaeological Museum of Athens

Tagged Greece, Museums, Tourism

Ennion Glass Exhibit at Israel Museum

Ennion created some of the most beautiful pieces of glass of all time. He was producing mold-blown glass in the years when Jesus lived in Galilee. If Ennion worked in Sidon, as many suppose, Jesus may have passed by his shop (Matt 11:21; 15:21; Mark 7:31). Such a large collection of Ennion’s works have never before been on display.

From Israel Museum’s facebook page:

Made by Ennion: Ancient Glass Treasures from the Shlomo Moussaieff Collection – on view through January 28, 2012.
The Israel Museum presents an exceptional group of ancient mold-blown glass vessels, many of them made by Ennion, a master glassworker who was the first to put his name on his art. Ancient glass bearing the name of the artist is exceedingly rare, and never before have so many examples been gathered in a single display. The exhibition brings together forty-three pieces, nine of them signed, including a number of pieces that rank among the highest achievements in glassworking of all time. Approximately half of the works are on loan from the rich collection of Shlomo Moussaieff and are exhibited to the public for the first time.

The J. Paul Getty Museum has a brief biography of Ennion.

Ennion worked as a glassmaker about 1 to 50 A.D. His signature is known from over thirty surviving pieces, and many other works are attributed to him on the basis of style. Ennion created the ground-breaking technique of blowing glass vessels into molds. This new process allowed the vessel and its decoration to be created at the same time and permitted the creation of multiple copies of the same vessel. Ennion’s clear, precise designs distinguish his work; he also minimized the visibility of the lines caused by the seams in the mold.
The location of Ennion’s workshop is debated, in part because his work is found throughout the Roman Empire. Some scholars believe he worked in Sidon in modern Lebanon, while others assert that he worked in northern Italy. The inscriptions he frequently used as decoration may provide a clue. Though his name may have been Semitic in origin, he signed it in Greek, the language of the eastern Mediterranean, not Italy. The city of Sidon, where he may have worked, had all the raw material for glass-making and extensive trade connections.

Tagged Museums

The World’s Oldest Museum

The “world’s oldest known museum” was created by Princess Ennigaldi, the daughter of Nabonidus, king of Babylon from 555 to 539 BC. The story of its discovery and significance is recounted by Alasdair Wilkins.

In 1925, archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered a curious collection of artifacts while excavating a Babylonian palace. They were from many different times and places, and yet they were neatly organized and even labeled. Woolley had discovered the world’s first museum.
It’s easy to forget that ancient peoples also studied history – Babylonians who lived 2,500 years ago were able to look back on millennia of previous human experience. That’s part of what makes the museum of Princess Ennigaldi so remarkable. Her collection contained wonders and artifacts as ancient to her as the fall of the Roman Empire is to us. But it’s also a grim symbol of a dying civilization consumed by its own vast history.

The story continues here.

HT: Paleojudaica

Tagged Mesopotamia, Museums

Turkey Cancels Excavations of Foreign Countries

The New York Times reports on Turkey’s renewed demands that artifacts in museums around the world be given to them.

After years of pleading in vain for the return of Anatolia’s cultural treasures from Western museums, Turkey has started playing hardball. And it is starting to see some results.
This month, Germany reluctantly agreed to return a Hittite statue taken to Berlin by German archaeologists a century ago. “It was agreed that the statue will be handed over to Turkey as a voluntary gesture of friendship,” the German government said after weeks of negotiations between the countries’ foreign ministries.
Days later, Ankara announced it was stepping up a campaign to obtain a breakthrough in a similarly longstanding dispute with the Louvre in Paris over an Ottoman tile panel that went to France in 1895.
[…]
Although the Turkish cases for restitution of the sphinx and the tiles have always been more compelling than those for other treasures, like the Pergamon Altar, that were exported with permission of the Ottoman authorities, Ankara’s requests for their restitution went unanswered for years.
Then, Turkey changed tack. Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay announced earlier this year that he would kick German archaeologists out of the excavations at Hattusa, where they have been working for over a century, if the matter was not resolved. “I am determined not to renew the excavation license for Hattusa if the sphinx is not returned,” Mr. Gunay said in February.
[…]
In a first that rocked the archaeological world in Asia Minor, the digging licenses of two longstanding excavations conducted by German and French teams were revoked earlier this year.
[…]
The leader of the canceled German dig at Aizanoi, Ralf von den Hoff, said in an e-mail that his excavation had fallen victim to the ministry’s “extortionate demands” over the Hattusa sphinx.
[…]
But Germany says the return of the sphinx is a one-of-a-kind deal. “Both sides agreed that the sphinx is a singular case that is not comparable to other cases,” the German government said.
Turkey disagrees. “This is a revolution,” Mr. Gunay said last week about the agreement with the Germans. “This is a great development for the restitution of all our antique artifacts from abroad,” adding, “We will fight in the same way for the restitution of the other artifacts.”
[…]
Mr. Gunay said he foresaw a long struggle ahead, of a century or more, but added that he believed that “in the end Europe will return all of the cultural treasures that it has collected from all over the world.”

All governments take note. Turkey’s goal is nothing less than that “all of the cultural treasures” be “returned.”

The article has much more. Is there any irony in the fact that in order to get some old artifacts returned Turkey would cancel excavations which would fill their museums with new discoveries?

HT: Jack Sasson

Tagged Museums, Turkey

Germany Agrees to Give Sphinx of Hattusa to Turkey

In February, A.D. Riddle wrote here about the Turkish government’s demands that Germany give them the Sphinx of Hattusa. Turkey threatened to revoke the German license to excavate Hattusa, the capital of the Hittites. The Germans have been excavating this site before the modern country of Turkey was even founded.

Alexander Schick has informed us of an article in the German press that reports that Germany has surrendered to Turkish demands and will be sending the Sphinx to Istanbul (rough English translation here). Schick has also sent along photographs of the artifact. (Our previous post included only photos of the replica.)

The Sphinx of Hattusa (circled in red) will be given to Turkey. The replica is on the right. Also on the right is a stela of Esarhaddon from Sam’al/Zincirli, from 671 BC.

The Germans brought the Sphinx to Berlin in 1915 to restore it. At the time Germany and the Ottoman Empire were allies as the First World War was beginning.

If I was a German archaeologist working in Turkey, I’d plan to wrap my work up very soon. Those who succeed in blackmail are not likely to change their ways.

All photos courtesy of Alexander Schick.

Tagged Museums, Turkey