Wonder what it’s like to be on an archaeological excavation? This two-minute time-lapse video filmed a few weeks ago at Khirbet el-Maqatir (Ai?) will give you one perspective.
For the first time in 30 years, the scaffolds have been taken down at the Parthenon of Athens. Take your photos before they return in September.
A “Brief Summary” of the 2009 Season at Tell es-Safi/Gath is now available online.
The recent fire at Gamla apparently did not harm the synagogue or any of the antiquities.
Researchers are using nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques on coins from 1st century Judea in order to more precisely establish their dates and place of origin. One discovery: copper apparently came from certain mines a century earlier than previously thought.
BAR has a look at the face of Herod Philip from a rare coin (Luke 3:1).
Der Spiegel has a fascinating profile of Zahi Hawass, “Secretary General of the Supreme Council of
Antiquities” of Egypt. (Compare that title with the “Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority” and you’ll be prepared for some of the pomposity related in the story.)
The Jerusalem Post features a travel article on Acre (Acco, Ptolemais).
The Italian professor who originated the theory that Har Karkom in Israel is the true Mount Sinai now claims that his view will soon be adopted by the Vatican. Anati’s arguments are summarized here.
Apart from the potential acceptance by the Vatican, I am not aware of any scholars who agree with
Anati’s proposal. Among the problems: he has to date the book of Exodus to 1,000 years earlier than the Bible indicates (cf. 1 Kings 6:1). Among the pluses: his Mt. Sinai is a shorter drive from Tel
Aviv.
The current issue of World Archaeology is devoted to “Turkey’s Treasures.” Myra gets a lengthy article (cf. Acts 27:5), Perge gets one page, and Laodicea and Ephesus are also featured. Arycanda reminds me of Termessos, both stunning sites located in the scenic mountains of southern Turkey.
The magazine article is currently available for viewing online, with many beautiful photographs. It reminds me why I consider Turkey to be one of the most picturesque and interesting countries I have visited.
I am sometimes asked how I get photos of biblical sites without swarms of people. I have a few tricks. One is to be the group leader so you are first on the scene. Another is to go in February when few tourists are visiting. If you have Photoshop and a tripod, there’s another ingenious way.
HT: Biblicalist, Dr. Mariottini, Paleojudaica, Explorator, Joe Lauer
- Tagged Egypt, Golan, Greece, Philistines, Technology, Turkey, Weekend Roundup
From the Jerusalem Post:
The world’s oldest Jewish cemetery just went online.
A new project undertaken by the City of David archeological Park, located south of Jerusalem’s Old City and at the foot of the Mount of Olives cemetery, has begun the process of identifying and documenting tombstones throughout the entirety of the Mount of Olives and uploading the data to the Web.
Tens of thousands of graves on the mount have already been mapped and incorporated into a database, in the first-ever attempt to restore the graves and record the history of those who were buried there. The project includes the creation of a Web site (www.mountofolives.co.il) that aims to raise awareness of the City of David and to honor the memory of those buried in the cemetery, as well as to inform about the tours and activities available.
Additionally, the Web site tells stories of the people buried in the cemetery and, through a simple search window, one can locate the documented graves by name.
“We hope that this Web site will give people all over the world the opportunity to remove the dust of generations from the graves of their loved ones, and to both restore and reveal the stories buried underground,” Udi Ragones, the public relations director for the project, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
“There’s so much history there, so many stories, that this project is fascinating both from a personal perspective as well as an historical one,” he said.
While more than 20,000 gravestones have already been documented, organizers estimate that there are between 200,000 and 300,000 in the cemetery, which leaves an enormous amount of work left to be done.
The already documented graves include those of the reviver of the Hebrew language, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Nobel Prize for Literature laureate Shai Agnon, former prime minister Menachem Begin, Hadassah Women’s Organization founder Henrietta Szold, founder of the Bezalel Art School Boris Schatz, Chaim ben Moses ibn Attar, also known as the Ohr ha-Chaim after his popular commentary on the Torah, and Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate.
The full story is here.
HT: Joe Lauer
Jewish ceremony in cemetery on Mount of Olives, early 1900sThis photo is taken from the Jerusalem volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection (Library of Congress, LC-matpc-06376).
- Tagged Jerusalem, Technology
You can now tour the Lynn H. Wood Archaeological Museum in Collegedale, Tennessee, with audio narration provided by William Dever and Michael Hasel, according to this month’s issue of DigSight. The 52-minute tour takes the visitor through the museum’s 16 display cases. Hasel, the museum curator, says, “I’ve traveled to dozens of museums all over the world, and I haven’t encountered another museum that uses iPods for their tours . . . I think we’re using cutting-edge technology.” The iPod displays photos of the artifacts to assist the visitor in identifying what is being described.
The newsletter also announces that the personal library of William Dever has been placed at Southern Adventist University. The library catalog is available online at library.southern.edu.
Next on the schedule for the Museum Lecture Series at SAU is K. Lawson Younger, speaking on “Aramean Astral Religion in Light of Recent Discoveries.” The lecture will be given on March 17, 2010 at 7:30 in the Lynn Wood Hall Chapel.
- Tagged Lectures, Museums, Technology
The “Hall of Ages” in Jerusalem was opened recently after new techniques were developed to prevent the room from collapsing during excavation. This room is located in the Western Wall Tunnels area and gets its name because the hall was used by various people groups over the centuries.
You can now visit Pompeii with Google Street View. The idea is very impressive, though execution was (for me) slow, perhaps because of a slew of excited visitors. Here’s a direct link.
A reconstruction drawing of the Aramean siege of Gath in the 9th century is posted on the Gath Weblog.
The officials at the Megiddo prison are still planning to relocate the inmates in order to open a visitor’s center focused on the early Christian place of worship.
- Tagged Italy, Jerusalem, Shephelah, Technology
If an inscription is discovered today and you want the best photographs of it, you go to the Zuckerman brothers at USC. Their work revealed a more extensive inscription on one of the Ketef Hinnom amulets, and they were called on for photographing the recent Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon.
The LA Times has a brief review of their work, including the equipment they use.
Researchers at USC’s West Semitic Research Project have helped uncover its hidden narrative with the aid of lighting and imaging techniques that are credited with revolutionizing the study of ancient texts.
Over the last three decades, the USC project has produced thousands of crisp images of inscriptions and other artifacts from biblical Israel and other Near Eastern locales, making the pictures available to the public in an online archive, InscriptiFact.com.
Among the items shown in the online collection is a Dead Sea Scroll dating to the 1st century that discusses a buried treasure in modern-day Israel. (It’s impossible to pinpoint the precise location because landmarks mentioned in the text no longer exist.)
The database also features an Aramaic inscription on a sheet of papyrus written by a group of Jews in Egypt five centuries before the birth of Jesus. In the text — whose image is so sharp it reveals the grain of the papyrus — Jews petition distant Persian rulers for permission to rebuild a temple.
“A picture is worth a thousand words,” said Bruce Zuckerman, a USC religion professor who founded the research project in the early 1980s. “Sometimes big issues in history can turn on the interpretation of a single letter.”
Zuckerman’s foray into the world of photography and ancient texts grew out of his frustration over the poor quality of archaeological photos.
[…]
“What West Semitic Research Project did was create a collection of photos of inscriptions that were unlike anything that had been done before,” said Wayne Pitard, a religion professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has collaborated with the Zuckermans. “It’s just astonishing.”
Their research project occupies two floors of an academic building at USC. Its offices are filled with gadgetry dreamed up by the Zuckermans and their research team and by engineers off campus.
One office holds the Twister, a contraption with a large-format camera that snaps pictures of ancient “cylinder seals” about the size and shape of triple-A batteries.
The seals — featuring pictures and symbols that once served as a form of personal identification — are mounted on a turntable and slowly moved around in a circle while the camera snaps photos, producing a single large image.
“The picture is better than holding it in your hands,” Bruce Zuckerman said.
The full story is here.
HT: Paleojudaica
UPDATE: My memory about photographing the Qeiyafa ostracon may have been mistaken and thus I’ve lined out the statement above. If it’s true, however, that the ostracon was brought to the U.S. for photographing but was not taken to the Zuckerman lab, then I can only wonder why.
- Tagged Technology