The Times of Israel runs a story today on the early work and photographs of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology located on the Mount of Olives. While many of the photos published in the story are not new or exclusive, the article itself has some interesting information about the institute’s first director Gustaf Dalman. For instance, Ilan Ben Zion informs us that:

• Though a renowned scholar of the land and its customs, Dalman only lived in Palestine for 12 years.
• Though director of an archaeological institute, Dalman was forbidden by the board from conducting excavations.
• Dalman blasted the British when he resigned from the Palestine Exploration Fund. “Deeply saddened by the British government intention, in alliance with barbarians and idolaters, to destroy German cultural work in the world…”
• After World War I, the British forbade Dalman from returning to Palestine.

Some other notes about the photos:

• The article includes two different slideshows, with a total of 29 images.
• The images are from multiple collections and are not all from the German photographers, despite the copyright notice.
• The image identified as “a well in Silwan” is actually a rare photo of Ein Rogel, the location of Adonijah’s attempted coup (1 Kgs 1:9).

The story also reports on two important current excavations of the German Protestant Institute, Tell Zira’a and Jerusalem’s Church of the Redeemer.

For some years we’ve been working on another set of German photographs published by Dalman and we hope to have that completed and available before the year is out.

HT: Antonio Lombatti, Mike Harney