Museums Archives - Page 97 of 101

Dead Sea Scroll Fragments Purchased by SWBTS

From a story posted by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary:

Less than a year after acquiring three fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, has added three more biblical fragments, making it the largest collection of an institution of higher education in the United States. The new fragments were obtained from a private collector in Europe through the generous gift from a friend of the seminary. “The acquisition constitutes another significant milestone in the development of our programs in biblical studies and archaeology,” said Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern. “We are especially grateful for the friends of Southwestern who have made these acquisitions, as well as three other fragments, possible and for Mrs. Patterson and Candi Finch who worked so tirelessly to get them to Fort Worth.” The set of six fragments is one more than the set owned by Azusa Pacific University near Los Angeles, which acquired five pieces in 2009. The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago also owns a fragment. Steven Ortiz, associate professor of archaeology and biblical backgrounds and director of the Charles D. Tandy Archaeology Museum at Southwestern, noted that having one fragment would be just as important as owning six. “It is not a race to see who can collect the most fragments,” Ortiz said. “The goal is to get these out of the hands of private collectors and make them available to the public, especially scholars. […] Early analysis shows the new fragments include portions of Deuteronomy 9:25–10:1, Deuteronomy 12:11-14, and Psalm 22:4-13. Psalm 22 is known as a prophetic messianic psalm that describes the brutality of Jesus’ death 1,000 years before he was crucified.

The full story is here.

Tagged Dead Sea, Museums

Sarcophagus of Queen Helene on Display

The most impressive tomb in all of Israel from any of the biblical periods is the “Tomb of the Kings.” Despite its modern name, the tomb actually belonged to Queen Helene of Adiabene, a royal convert to Judaism from a Mesopotamian kingdom. Her tomb was constructed about a decade after the crucifixion of Jesus a few hundred meters north of the Garden Tomb. Gaining access to the tomb today is more difficult than the average tourist site, but it is well worth it.

Tomb of Queen Helene of Adiabene, aka Tomb of the Kings

One thing you will not see at the tomb, however, is Queen Helene’s sarcophagus. This 2,600-lb (1,200 kg) stone coffin was shipped to the Louvre following the tomb’s excavation in the 1860s. I’ve hunted around the French museum looking for this sarcophagus, but without success. The object has been safely stored in the basement for years and years. Nevertheless, the French were reluctant to loan the sarcophagus to Israel where people could actually view it. After a year of negotiation, the sarcophagus has arrived at the Israel Museum where it will be on display for four months as part of the exhibition, “Breaking Ground: Pioneers of Biblical Archaeology.”

Queen Helene is not mentioned in the New Testament, but there is a connection. Josephus (Ant. 20.2.5) writes that she supplied food for Jerusalem during the famine that is mentioned in Acts 11:27-30.

During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28 One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) 29 The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. 30 This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.

Haaretz tells the story and provides a photo. For more about the tomb itself, including photos and links, see this page at BiblePlaces.com. Several years ago, archaeologists working in Jerusalem claimed that they located her palace in the City of David.

Tagged Jerusalem, Museums, New Exhibits

Chalil Raad: Arab Photographer in Palestine

In connection with a new exhibit at Tel Aviv’s Nachum Gutman Museum, Dana Schweppe has a profile in the weekend magazine of Haarezt on the Christian Lebanese photographer Chalil Raad who lived and worked in Jerusalem from 1891 to 1948. The article wrestles with whether Raad betrayed the Arab Palestinians because he also took photos of Jewish Palestinians (as they were then known).

[The land of Palestine] could look like an exotic biblical land, like a wonderful wasteland, like a ripe fruit waiting to be picked. All that was needed was the right lens. This was the prevailing mentality when Chalil Raad (whose first name is often given as Khalil ) first picked up a camera and learned to use it. The idea was to photograph Eretz Yisrael not as it was, with its vibrant Palestinian towns and villages, but as the West world wanted to see it: mostly empty and available for the conquering.
[…]
“The Zionist and Palestinian narratives [in Raad’s work] exist in parallel but do not converge into a dialogue,” Sela says. “The photographs tell about two different places that do not interface, even though this is one small country. Each side describes its own fantastical reality.” What sets Raad apart, Sela says, is that his work incorporates both narratives.
[…]
Raad, too, “transgressed” by depicting the country from a viewpoint that Edward Said would decades later term “Orientalism.” He photographed a young Palestinian woman working in a field and titled the result “Ruth the Gleaner”; an Arab in a kaffiyeh evokes the New Testament parable of the prodigal son; and three Palestinians next to a tree are said to be at Gilgal, where the manna ceased to fall. But Raad went beyond the photographic mainstream. He was the first photographer who created an Arab-Palestinian identity by photographing both the Arab community and the rich local life. He photographed the society in which he lived – villages and cities, commerce and industry, agriculture and family life – and informed it with a presence that had never before been reflected in photography.

Raad sounds like an interesting figure and I would love to see his photographs. I wonder, however, if the political angle is overplayed a bit here and Raad was more inspired to photograph scenes he found interesting and people who paid him than he was to contribute to some larger political agenda.

Individual and undated photographs lend themselves beautifully to the viewer creating whatever narrative he wishes.

Tagged Museums, New Exhibits

Cyrus Cylinder Loaned to Iran

The BBC reports that the Cyrus Cylinder is on a four-month loan to the museum in Tehran. The British Museum had previously agreed to loan the artifact but delays led the Iranian museum to warn it would cut all ties with the British Museum.

The Cyrus Cylinder is well known because it describes practices of the Persian king (ruled 559-530 BC) similar to that described in the Bible.

I returned the (images of) the gods to the sacred centers [on the other side of] the Tigris whose sanctuaries had been abandoned for a long time, and I let them dwell in eternal abodes. I gathered all their inhabitants and returned (to them) their dwellings (Context of Scripture 2: 315).

As predicted by Isaiah, the Israelites were allowed to return to their land under Cyrus. This is reported in the last two verses of 2 Chronicles and the beginning of Ezra.

Ezra 1:1–4 (NIV) In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing: 2 “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: “ ‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. 3 Anyone of his people among you—may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem. 4 And the people of any place where survivors may now be living are to provide him with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.’”

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The Cyrus Cylinder is in my “top 15” list of artifacts in the British Museum.

Tagged Museums

Special Exhibit in Chicago: Inventions of Writing

From the Oriental Institute Museum’s website, via ANE-2:

A new exhibition at the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago will show visitors how scribes in the ancient Middle East invented writing, thus transforming prehistoric cultures into civilizations.

Writing is one of humankind’s greatest achievements. Writing took a variety of forms, many of which are displayed in the exhibition, “Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond” that runs from September 27 to March 6 at the museum, 1155 East 58th Street.

Exhibit curator Christopher Woods, Associate Professor at the Oriental Institute, said, “In the eyes of many, writing represents a defining quality of civilization. There are four instances and places in human history when writing was invented from scratch – in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica – without previous exposure to or knowledge of writing. It appears likely that all other writing systems evolved from the four systems we have in our exhibition.”

Among the items on display will be the earliest cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq),
dating to about 3200 BC, which are on loan from the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin. They have never before been exhibited in the United States. The pictographic signs, a precursor to writing, are part of a writing system that developed into cuneiform, a wedge-shaped script that was incised on clay tablets. Examples of that form of writing will also be exhibited.

[…]

A computer kiosk will include videos and interactive presentations that enhance the exhibit. One video will show visitors how ancient scribes wrote cuneiform on clay tablets and painted hieroglyphs on papyrus.

Interactive presentations will show how Oriental Institute scholars have been the first to use CT scans to reveal the contents of sealed clay “token balls” which are thought to be a precursor of
Mesopotamian writing. Another interactive will demonstrate how the newest photographic techniques allow previously illegible texts to be read. Others will show how ancient cuneiform signs changed over time, and how early letters gradually evolved into the letters of our Latin alphabet.

A “Just for Fun” portion of the exhibition will help visitors compare writing systems and to write their name and simple sentences in various scripts. From the computer station, visitor will be able to send an e-post card in hieroglyphs or cuneiform to their friends.

A fully illustrated catalog edited by Professor Woods accompanies the exhibit.

The exhibit is supported by a grant from Exelon Corporation, the Women’s Board of the University of Chicago, and private donors.

The museum is open Tuesday, Thursday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.; and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. Suggested donation for admission is $7 for adults, $4 for children. For additional information, go to www.oi.uchicago.edu.

Cuneiform tablet, Early Dynastic period, on display at the Oriental Institute Museum

Tagged Museums

Palestine Park, Chautauqua, New York

A friend tipped me off that my summer travels this year would have me near Chautauqua Institution in western New York, the location of Palestine Park. Originally built in 1874, the model of the land of Palestine (as it was then known) has been reconstructed and enlarged over the years to its present size of 350 feet long (110 m) at a scale of 1.75 feet to the mile (0.34 meters to the km).

The model blends into its surroundings and you don’t realize you’ve arrived until you’re standing in it. This is a view of the area from the “north” with the edge of “Mount Hermon” visible on the right.

The best view of the model is from the top of Mount Hermon. Lake Chautauqua stands in for the Mediterranean Sea, but since the park is on the lake’s western shore, the sun rises on the wrong side of this “world.”

The model includes major landmarks such as Mount Tabor, the Hill of Moreh, and the Jezreel Valley, but I found it difficult to easily identify the physical features because of the uniform shade of the green grass.

In the photo below, you can see the Sea of Galilee distinctly, and in the foreground the labeled sites are Nain (left) and Mt. Moreh (center).

The two major lakes are the most easily identifiable features and both are shaped appropriately. The Sea of Galilee (below) is surrounded by biblical cities (not exactly in the right places), including Tiberias, Magdala, Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Gergesa. Perceptive visitors may wonder why the “Mount of Beatitudes” is placed on a high mountain on the lake’s west side. This reflects a 19th-century view that Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount at the place today known as Mt. Arbel.

Every Sunday and Monday evenings a local pastor, allegedly in costume, gives presentations of the model using biblical stories. Mounts Gerizim and Ebal, located under the boys, would provide an ideal place for many wonderful and important history lessons.

Jerusalem is uniquely marked on the model with a depiction of the (modern) Old City walls. The model labels a mixture of sites from the Old Testament, New Testament, and later periods.

Approximately sixty sites are identified, including the Mount of Olives and Bethany (behind Jerusalem in the photo below).

The model also includes the rugged hill country of Transjordan and labels sites including Macherus, Mt. Nebo, Ramoth-gilead, and Gerasa. The large lake shown below is the Dead Sea. For a better photo that includes the lisan peninsula, see yesterday’s post.

For more information about the premises where the model is located, you can visit the website of the Chautauqua Institution (but Palestine Park is ignored on the site). The entrance fee for the morning was $16, which I felt was a bit unfair, especially since I only spent about 15 minutes at the model (but more than that walking in from the parking lot). Wikipedia has a brief article about the place, and you can quickly locate the site on Google Maps here. If you visit in the summer on a Sunday or Monday evening, you can join the free tour (weather permitting). At other times , you can enjoy a self-guided tour with the assistance of either a cassette tape or a booklet.

A connection I only learned when writing this post is that the man who directed the creation of the park, John H. Vincent, co-wrote Earthly Footsteps of the Man of Galilee, one of the first works that I selected for the Historic Views of the Holy Land series. He is listed on the title page as the “Chancellor of Chautauqua.” There is a whole history of American interest in the Holy Land in the 1800s of which I have been ignorant.

If you have visited Palestine Park and have any observations or suggestions for potential visitors, feel free to comment below.

Tagged Museums, Tourism