Resources Archives - Page 5 of 129

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

A mosaic in a 4th-century Roman villa in Cappadocia now measures 6,000 square feet, and they’re not done digging. (Most of the photos don’t seem to be showing up right now.) This article has a few images, and this one has a video made with still images.

“Turkey has unveiled a new archaeology research centre that includes the country’s first archaeometry laboratory and vast digital archive” in the city of Gaziantep.

“On the plateau overlooking the ancient Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, a major outdoor art exhibition brings together the work of 14 international contemporary artists who have created site-specific installations responding to the iconic monuments.”

Sara E. Cole writes about current research into the “Book of the Dead” texts in the Getty Collection.

New release: The Nubian Pharaohs of Egypt: Their Lives and Afterlives, by Aidan Dodson (AUC Press, $35)

New release: Women in Ancient Egypt: Revisiting Power, Agency, and Autonomy, edited by Mariam F. Ayad (AUC Press, $95)

Zoom lecture on Dec 5: “Crafting Luxury: Dress in Ancient Persia,” by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. “In conjunction with the British Museum’s recent exhibition Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece, it was decided to attempt to create the types of garments worn by the elite of the Persian court in the Achaemenid period.”

Rome Reborn 4.0 is a digital model of Rome as it appeared in the year AD 320. Users are able “to glide above the historic landmarks while listening to expert narrations about 43 monuments, temples, structures, and locations.”

One of the books highly discounted for Accordance right now is What the Old Testament Authors Really Cared About: A Survey of Jesus’ Bible, edited by Jason DeRouchie. This is my preferred textbook for Old Testament class, and I wrote the chapter on 1-2 Chronicles. On sale for $20. Amazon has it in hardcover for $47.

At a festschrift celebration, Gary Rendsburg gives a 20-minute presentation about his 45 years in academic life.

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken

Tagged Discoveries, Egypt, Italy, Lectures, Museums, Resources, Tourism, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 1

A new dataset of radiocarbon dates from Gezer “provides an independent source of absolute dates that will allow researchers to better understand the events at Gezer and to place them in a regional perspective.” Of particular interest is that the Solomon gate dates to the time of Solomon, contrary to the Low Chronology promoted by Finkelstein who calls the study “meaningless.” The underlying journal article is here.

When the war began in Israel on October 7, Israel’s museums acted quickly to protect their most precious artifacts.

Avshalom Halutz writes a “short history of Gaza,” reviewing the last 5,000 years of the coastal city’s conflicts (Haaretz premium)

Ariel David reports on the recent study that argues that Jerusalem’s Millo was “defensive complex that protected the ancient water spring of Jerusalem for centuries.”

Online lecture in the BAS Scholars Series on Dec 6: “The Life of Jesus Written in Stone: The Earliest Commemorative Churches in Roman Palestine,” by Jordan Ryan, Wheaton College ($10)

Online “gala event” on Dec 10: “New Discoveries in the Temple Mount Sifting Project Research,” with Zachi Dvira, Gabriel Barkay, Haim Shaham, Anat Mendel-Geberovich, and Mordechai Kedar

New release: From Nomadism to Monarchy? Revisiting the Early Iron Age Southern Levant, edited by Ido Koch, Oded Lipschits and Omer Sergi (Eisenbrauns, $100)

Jerusalem Seminary is offering a 6-week audit-only version of “Israel Matters: A Theology of People and Land,” with Gerald McDermott, for only $79. A full description is here.

Now online: A Biblical Archaeology Conference held last Saturday, hosted by the Institute for Creation Research, with presentations by Randall Price and Tom Meyer

Bible Mapper Atlas has added a number of new maps in the last few months:

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken

Tagged 10th Century, Israel's Coast, Jerusalem, Lectures, Museums, Resources, Shephelah, Temple Mount, Weekend Roundup

New Video Series: Land of the Bible, with William Varner

My longtime colleague William Varner has traveled to Israel more than 50 times, and a few years ago he worked with a team to film a complete tour. The resulting video series has been used with great effect in several courses at The Master’s University, and now TMU’s Center for Thinking Biblically has made the entire series available for free—no tuition required!

Here is a quick index of the eight sections, with notes to help you navigate to specific episodes.

Old Jerusalem (12 episodes, including the topography of Jerusalem, Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Christ Church, and the Tower of David Museum)

City of David (15 episodes, including Hezekiah’s Tunnel, Pool of Siloam, Davidson Museum, Kidron Valley tombs, and Southern Steps)

Temple Mount and more (19 episodes, including Mount of Olives, Jerusalem model, the Shrine of the Book, Western Wall Tunnel, Bethlehem, Herodium, and four episodes on Hebron)

Mount Zion and more (14 episodes, including Burnt House, Temple Institute, Via Dolorosa, Pools of Bethesda, Schindler’s Grave, and Garden Tomb)

Benjamin and Jericho (12 episodes, including Michmash, Wadi Qelt, High Place of Gibeon, and the Mount of Temptation)

Negev and more (22 episodes, including Gezer, Azekah, Lachish, Beersheba, Arad, Tabernacle Model, Masada, and Qumran)

Nazareth and more (17 episodes, including Caesarea, Mount Carmel, Megiddo, Jezreel, Mount Tabor, and Sepphoris)

Galilee and more (21 episodes, including Capernaum, Gamla, Caesarea Philippi, Dan, Beth Shean, Ai, Shiloh, and Mount Gerizim)

Tagged Jerusalem, Judah, Lectures, Negev, Resources, Samaria, Temple Mount, Tourism

Weekend Roundup

Haaretz has an update on the season at el-Araj (Bethsaida?) that just concluded. “The archaeologists are not saying they found the house of Peter. They are saying they found a Byzantine basilica that goes back earlier than thought, to the late fifth century, that was built over a ‘venerated wall’ that the builders presumably thought had belonged to the house of Peter. It didn’t, but the wall next to it may have.”

According to a new article in the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review written by Chris McKinny and friends, the Millo of Jerusalem was not an earth filling on the slopes of the City of David but the “Spring Tower” guarding the Gihon Spring. The full article is currently available online to all.

Leen Ritmeyer reports on some inscriptions recently discovered inside the Golden Gate in Jerusalem.

Now on Academia: Leen Ritmeyer’s article, “Imagining the Temple Known to Jesus and to Early Jews,” published in The Temple of Jerusalem: From Moses to the Messiah, edited by Steven Fine (Brill, 2011, $227).

The latest issue of Tel Aviv is now available, with several open-access articles including:

An Early Iron Age Moat in Jerusalem between the Ophel and the Southeastern Ridge/City of David, by Yuval Gadot, Efrat Bocher, Liora Freud and Yiftah Shalev. This is a significant discovery that will affect how we think about ancient Jerusalem.
A Seal Impression of ‘ShemaꜤ Servant of Jeroboam’, by Shmuel Aḥituv, Avner Ayalon, Mira Bar-Matthews, Yuval Goren, Michael Magen, Eliezer D. Oren & Orit Shamir. They argue that it is not a modern forgery.

In the final episode of the Flora & Faith series, Brad Nelson goes to the wilderness and considers the role of the rotem tree in the story of Elijah. A free study guide for the entire series is also available.

Up to 50,000 bronze coins from the 4th century AD have been discovered off the coast of Sardinia. The coins are in excellent condition.

“Investigators say they have figured out how bronze statues from a shrine built 2,000 years ago in Asia Minor to venerate the emperors of Rome ended up in museums around the world.”

The second set of fully lemmatized Amarna letters has been released on Oracc. “The online edition of the Amarna Letters aims to make transliterations, translations, and glossaries of the letters and administrative texts available to both scholars and the wider public. At this time, the project comprises 305 texts.”

Jonathan Tubb, archaeologist and curator at the British Museum, died in September.

New release: Representations of Writing Materials on Roman Funerary Monuments: Text, Image, Message, edited by Tibor Grüll (Archaeopress, £16-40)

The Albright has a number of fellowships, awards, and internships available for next year. The application deadline is December 1.

This week we released two new volumes in the Photo Companion to the Bible series: Ezra and Nehemiah. These historical books have all kinds of illustrative potential, such that we have on average nearly 200 slides per chapter. They are on sale right now as a set for only $59. We are grateful for the positive response by many, including Luke Chandler, Leon Mauldin, and Charles Savelle.

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, G. M. Grena

Tagged Discoveries, Egypt, Excavations, Galilee, Jerusalem, Photo Resources, Resources, Sad News, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

Nearly 400 Roman forts across the northern Fertile Crescent have been identified through declassified satellite images.

Greg Beyer has written a short illustrated biography of King Sennacherib.

Nathan Steinmeyer explains what Akkadian is.

Three thousand photographs taken of Palmyra before its destruction by ISIS are being used in a UCSD project to create a digital model of the site.

Wayne Stiles is leading a 13-day tour of biblical Turkey that, unlike most such trips, visits all of the sites Paul traveled to on his first journey.

What route did Paul take when he left Berea in a hurry and went “to the coast” and on to Athens (Acts 17:14)? Mark Hoffman has scouted out the area and provides walking instructions for the possible paths. You can also use his maps to find your way in a car.

Breakthrough has produced a 20-minute documentary on the quest to decipher the scrolls from Herculaneum.

Jonathan Klawans makes a case that a relief of a goddess on display at the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East is a forgery.

New release: Weights and Measures as a Window on Ancient Near Eastern Societies, edited by Grégory Chambon and Adelheid Otto (PeWe-Verlag, €65; free pdf).

A YouTube channel is using AI to recreate the sound of ancient languages.

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Ted Weis, Keith Keyser, Explorator

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

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

Part of an ancient gateway believed to have been constructed by Cyrus the Great has been discovered near Persepolis.

A hoard of bronze coins dating to the 1st century BC or 1st century AD has been discovered at Alexandria Troas.

“An iron trident, believed to be used for fishing, dating to the 3rd or 4th century A.D. has been discovered in the ancient Aegean coastal resort town of Assos in northwestern Turkey.”

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient statue of a man and a statue of life-size wild boar at the sites of Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe in Turkey.

A Persian-era storage jar with finds similar to keşkek, the ancient dish of Anatolia, was discovered in northern Turkey.

“Some of the 3,500-year-old hieroglyphs discovered last year in the Yerkapı Tunnel in northern Turkey’s Çorum province have been deciphered.”

An augmented reality app “supported by Greece’s Culture Ministry allows visitors to point their phones at the Parthenon temple, and the sculptures housed in London appear back on the monument as archaeologists believe they looked 2,500 years ago.”

As a follow-up to his piece on walking from Corinth to Cenchreae, Mark Hoffman now provides detailed instructions and photographs for walking the route between Corinth and its western port at the Lechaion harbor. (That’s one more reason to start planning your next trip to Greece!)

Italian authorities plan to reduce congestion at Pompeii by promoting tourism to the nearby sites of Boscoreale, Oplontis, and Stabiae. They will reopen the Antiquarium, add free shuttles between the sites, and sell all-in-one tickets.

“Rome has launched an international design competition to create a New Archaeological Walk, reimagining the public spaces and pedestrian routes linking the city’s ancient Roman sites.”

In conjunction with the “Legion: Life in the Roman Army” exhibit opening in February, the British Museum blog gives an introduction to the subject.

New release: Cyrus the Great: A Biography of Kingship, by Lynette Mitchell (Routledge, $128; $53 Kindle)

The official portal of the Digital Ancient Near Eastern Studies Network, is now online.

“Open Educational Resources for the Ancient Near East” has received a recent translation of the Laws of Hammurabi.

“The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) is proud to announce that the number of external resource links, namely curated hyperlinks from catalogued cuneiform artifacts to their corresponding record in other digital projects and collections, now exceeds 400,000 individual links associated with more than 150 different online resources.”

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Explorator, Paleojudaica

Tagged Discoveries, Greece, Italy, Museums, New Exhibits, Resources, Tourism, Turkey, Weekend Roundup