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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

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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

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The Vesuvius challenge has produced its first result: the reading of a single word from a burnt papyrus using the help of AI.

An untouched chamber tomb with well-preserved frescoes was discovered near Naples.

“Archaeologists have discovered political graffiti among the ancient remains of Pompeii.”

Royalty Now Studios has reimagined the face of Roman emperor Augustus as it might look today.

Turkish Archaeological News rounds up the top stories for the month of September.

The British Museum is asking the public for help in getting back artifacts that were sold.

A tourist was arrested for breaking off pieces of marble on the Athens Acropolis.

A new study has determined that the Parthenon sculptures (aka Elgin Marbles) were originally painted with bright colors.

HT: Agade, Ted Weis, Arne Halbakken, Explorator

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New rooms have been discovered in the Sahura Pyramid. Detailed surveys have been made using 3D laser scanning.

Archaeologists in Jordan are using a remote controlled car to investigate a network of underground water channels in the desert.

The Domus Tiberiana on Rome’s Palatine Hill has been reopened 50 years after it was closed for restoration.

The Following Hadrian blog takes a look at the only surviving copy of Hadrian’s autobiography.

An AP story explores the enduring strength of Roman concrete.

Lidar Sapir-Hen and Deirdre N. Fulton explore “the role of dogs in the social fabric of the Iron Age through a comparative study of the evidence from settlements.” They conclude from archaeological evidence that dogs served villagers as herders, guards, and occasionally hunters. The underlying journal article is also available.

Zoom lecture on Nov 6: “Tree-ring and radiocarbon refinements towards more precise chronology for the Near Eastern Bronze Age,” by Charlotte L. Pearson. Register here.

For the 200th anniversary of Champollion’s cracking the code of hieroglyphics, Jessica Phelan tells the story of how it happened.

Wired: Scientists Have an Audacious Plan to Map the Ancient World Before It Disappears

New release: Living Communities and Their Archaeologies in the Middle East, edited by Rick Bonnie, Marta Lorenzon, and Suzie Thomas (Helsinki University Press, open access)

“This fall, the Penn Museum will begin construction of its new $54 million Ancient Egypt and Nubia galleries.” Work is slated to be completed by late 2028.

Two of Doug Greenwold’s audiobooks are now available on Audible.

HT: Agade, Ted Weis, Arne Halbakken, Charles Savelle, Explorator

Statue of a griffin grasping Nemesis’s wheel of fate, from Erez, AD 210-11, as displayed in the Israel Museum this summer before the attack
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Bible Scenes has released a beautiful 3-minute video showing a 3D model of Herod’s Temple. The video was nearly two years in the making, with the assistance of Leen Ritmeyer (who gives some background here). The website has a number of free scenes, and generous permission usage is granted. You can help them create more scenes by becoming a subscriber.

Chandler Collins writes about “some unexpected architectural fragments” discovered in the Jewish Quarter in the 1970s.

The Jerusalem Post has stories about the archaeological site of Magdala and its tourist facilities.

Nate Loper surveys “the historical and archaeological connections between Israel and the Egyptian empire” in the latest episode of Digging for Truth.

Online lecture on Sept 21: “Fact & Fiction in the Empress Helena’s Travels to the Holy Land,” by Julia Hillner. Sponsored by the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society. Free.

A full recording of the “Conrad Schick and His World” conference is now online. You can find the conference booklet with abstracts here.

Abigail Leavitt reports on the lectures and field trip for a recent conference at Ariel University entitled “Boundaries and Influences in the Archaeology of Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean.”

Today is the Feast of Trumpets, the first day of the significant seventh month in the Jewish calendar. Your calendar probably identifies it as the Jewish New Year (Rosh HaShanah).

HT: Agade, Ted Weis, Arne Halbakken, Keith Keyser, David Padfield, Will Varner

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Four Roman swords were discovered in a cave near En Gedi. Three are spatha swords, and all were likely stolen from Roman soldiers by Jewish rebels during the Bar Kochba revolt.

The swords were discovered incidentally while doing multispectral imaging on a 7th-century BC inscription in the cave. The new reading of the inscription may include the word “salt.”

An Israeli teenager discovered an bronze Roman ring at Sussita/Hippos.

i24News visits the “dig for a day” program in the caves of Bet Guvrin.

The German Protestant Institute for Archaeology will celebrate its 125th anniversary with a conference in Jerusalem on October 16-17.

Jordan Ryan is a guest on The Book and the Spade discussing the 2023 excavation season at Tel Shimron.

Abigail Leavitt shares a number of photos from her walk around the Old City of Jerusalem.

The IBEX program in Israel where I taught for some years is featured in the new issue of The Master’s University Magazine.

Was a major discovery related to the Pool of Siloam made this week? Some unreliable websites suggest something new was revealed. The regular sources seem to be ignoring it, though The Jerusalem Post has recycled this reporting, with a completely irrelevant photo. When you read beyond the headline, the claim is that eight steps were discovered. A comparison of the published photo with earlier photos suggests that a portion of the lowest flight of steps, previously partially revealed, has now been fully exposed along with a portion of the reservoir and walls within.

Pool of Siloam steps. The wooden boards are located on the second (of three) flight of steps, filling in gaps in preserved stones. Photo published with the news reports this week, courtesy of the City of David Foundation. Comparison with the photos below indicates that this was taken earlier this summer.

Pool of Siloam in 2006, with three flights of stairs. The lowest flight is not fully exposed.

Pool of Siloam last month, showing third flight of steps and on-going excavations in pool below the steps. Some walls appear to be visible within the pool. Photo by John Black.

Pool of Siloam on Wednesday, September 6, showing wall inside the area of the pool. Photo by John Black.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Arne Halbakken, Alexander Schick, Ted Weis, Gordon Dickson

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