New Exhibits Archives - Page 29 of 30

Tel Dan Inscription at Israel Museum

If you’re in Israel this summer, you may be disappointed that the Archaeology wing of the Israel Museum is closed for renovation (until 2010 or so). But some students of mine yesterday were going through other sections of the museum and found the Tel Dan Inscription displayed in the Youth wing. The anthropoid sarcophagi are also on display.

The Isaiah Scroll is on display now until the end of August. While two shorter sections of the scroll have been rotated on the permanent display over the years, the two longest sections have not been displayed since 1967. Visitors can now see Isaiah 1-28 and 44-66.

Update (5/21): The above has been corrected to reflect that the inscription is in the Youth wing.

Tagged Museums, New Exhibits

Philistine Temple (Found) and Gate (Rebuilt)

A couple of developments in the land of the Philistines are worth noting:

A Philistine temple is being excavated at a site south of the five major Philistine cities. The temple dates to late Iron I (circa 1000 B.C.) and is a few miles south of biblical Gerar (Tel Haror) and northwest of Beersheba. Aren Maier has a brief report of his visit and some of the finds.

The Canaanite gate at Ashkelon has now been completely restored. They claim that it is the “oldest arched gate in the world,” but pushing the date of the Ashkelon gate a little earlier and the date of the Dan gate a little later. Even archaeologists are competitive! The JPost has a picture of the gate with a modern arch which looks like it was designed for schoolkids. Below is a photo before they added the arch.

Ashkelon Middle Bronze Gate (circa 1800 B.C.)

Tagged Discoveries, New Exhibits

Weekend Roundup

There are a number of stories I’ve noted over the past week or so that may be of interest.

The Philistine city of Gath has been “civilized” with the creation of a new national park. I think they should have called it the Gath National Park, instead of the Tel Zafit National Park, as no one seriously questions the identification any more. The site is now off-limits to 4-wheel drive vehicles (that makes it a climb to the top!) and signs are posted around. See the Official/Unofficial Gath Blog for details.

A special exhibit this summer will feature a long portion of the Isaiah Scroll. The first 28 chapters (8 feet; 2.3 meters) will be displayed at the Shrine of the Book from May 13 to August 15, 2008. The Isaiah Scroll was once on display in the center of the exhibit, but because of stress on the manuscript, it was replaced by a replica many years ago.

You don’t have to go anywhere to see these 12 stunning photos of Egypt from National Geographic

(HT: Dr. Claude Mariottini).

The biographer of Kathleen Kenyon recently gave a lecture on the archaeologist at Baylor University. This link is to a (flawed) news report and not the lecture itself. I mentioned the biography itself before here.

Here’s a good little article on the excavations in the City of David around the possible palace of David. If you’ve kept up on the story, you won’t find anything new here, but it is an informed presentation. CBN has another, less helpful, tourist visit to the City of David.

(HT: Joe Lauer)

Tagged Jerusalem, New Exhibits

Book Released on Looting of Iraq

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago has just published an 88-page book on the looting in Iraq in the aftermath of the war. From their website:

Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past
Edited by Geoff Emberling and Katharyn Hanson, 2008 With an introduction by Professor McGuire Gibson, this up-to-date account describes the state of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad and chronicles the damage done to archaeological sites by illicit digging.

The book can be ordered for $30 or downloaded in pdf format for free. An exhibit of the same name opens at the Oriental Institute on April 10.

Tagged New Exhibits, Resources

King David Museum Opened

A new museum of sorts has opened in the Old City. From Arutz-7:

A rich mix of Jerusalemites came out on a brisk Jerusalem night in early March to celebrate the city’s newest museum: The King David Museum and Genealogy Center. Located in the heart of the Old City, the museum is a celebration of the most celebrated king in Jewish history, the author of the Book of Psalms and a major subject of the biblical Book of Samuel. The museum tracks the unbroken Jewish connection to the city Jerusalem, that was first conquered and made the capital of Israel by King David. The permanent exhibition features artifacts from the first and second temple periods including earthenware, ceramics, coins, arrowheads, and more. There is also a section dedicated to printed matter about King David and the Temple Mount, featuring the first known printed book of Psalms, published in 1511, and a swath of original printings that date from 1696 to modern times. Another section of the museum features a series of jarred spices. Mixed together in the correct proportions, the spices were combined to create the incense that was offered daily in the Holy Temple…. The King David Museum and Genealogy Center is located at 19 Tiferet Yisrael Street in the Old City of Jerusalem. Opening Hours are Sunday- Thursday, 9 am – 9pm, Friday 9 am – 1pm. For more information, please call (02) 628-1502

The full story is here.

Tagged Jerusalem, New Exhibits

Ancient Jewish Reactions to Pagan Statues

I found the subject of this article in the Jewish Journal to be quite interesting. How would a Jewish rabbi react to statues of Greek and Roman gods? One point that the writer does not seem to recognize though is the ease with which hellenized cities could be avoided. Just as one can easily live in Israel today and avoid the “pagan centers” of Tel Aviv and Eilat, it is not difficult to imagine the religious avoiding Beth Shean and Caesarea in the Roman period. To give one example, there is no record that Jesus ever entered either city.

Imagine a rabbi encountering a statue of Zeus in Roman Palestine, circa 70 to 300 C.E. — a monotheist’s nightmare.
“The myth is that he would have uttered something like the Yiddish ‘gevalt,'” said professor Yaron Z. Eliav of the University of Michigan, who recently spoke about Jews and statues at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. “We imagine he would have put his hand over his face, the way an ultra-Orthodox Jew might shield his eyes from a poster of a woman in a bikini.”
But the sages who wrote classical texts, such as the Talmud, could not afford to ignore such statues, which were like the mass media of the ancient world.
Images of gods, mythological monsters, sports heroes and emperors were everywhere: atop pedestals and in niches, adorning public buildings, temples, fountains and tetrapyla, the colonnaded structures marking street intersections. They were intended to be lifelike and often heavily painted, as revealed in the Getty’s new exhibition, “The Color of Life: Polychromy in Sculpture From Antiquity to the Present.”
“One could not have strolled heavily Jewish cities such as Tiberias or Caesarea without encountering Roman sculpture every step of the way,” said Eliav, as he strolled amid ancient statues at the museum. “While the assumption has been that the sages opposed everything Graeco-Roman, they were in fact far more sophisticated and varied in their response.”

The article continues here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged New Exhibits