Hershel Shanks: Authentic or Forged? What to Do When Experts Disagree? His example: Geologists vs. philologists on the Jehoash Inscription.

Michael S. Heiser recommends the archive of ISIS, the journal of the ancient chronology forum.

Charles E. Jones lists titles relating to antiquity from the Brooklyn Museum Publications now available online.

A husband and wife team have been leading an excavation of  ‘Ayn Gharandal in southern Jordan.

“A new ancient city considered to be the Zeugma of the West and thought to be one of the lost cities of Anatolia has been unearthed in İzmir.” (Hurriyet Daily News)

The Exhibition Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology is now open at the Discovery Science Center in southern California.

Israel: Seeing is Believing – This six-minute film has some nice footage. The focus is as much on the modern as on the ancient.

At only $8.54, the ESV Study Bible for the Kindle is a great deal. Note that the index feature does not work with Kindle 1, Kindle Fire, or the Kindle apps.

HT: Charles Savelle, Jack Sasson, G. M. Grena

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The Cura Aquarum in Israel will be held next week at Neve Ilan. Many of the lecture topics are of interest.

Monday October 15, 2012 (Neve Ilan Hotel)


Session A: 09:00 – 10:30 Ancient water systems in Israel 1
Chairperson Jim Parker

1. Is There Light at the End of the Tunnel? The Gezer Water System Project – Dan Warner, Tsvika Tsuk, Jim Parker and Dennis Cole

2. A New Assessment of the Upper Aqueduct to Jerusalem: its Date and Route – David Amit and Shimon Gibson

3. Dating and engineering of Siloam Tunnel, Jerusalem – Amos Frumkin and Aryeh Shimron


Session B: 11:00 – 12:50 Ancient water systems in Israel 2
Chairperson Dennis Cole

4. The Inverted Siphon Pipelines to Tel Bet Yerah/es-Sinnabris – Yardenna Alexandre

5. The “’Otzar” in Ancient Ritual Baths: Second Temple Period Innovation or Anachronistic Interpretation? – Yonatan Adler

6. When were the Qanat Systems introduced to the Holy Land? – Yosef Porath

7. The Early Islamic aqueducts to Ramla and Hebron – Amir Gorzalczany and David Amit


Session C: 14:15 – 15:15 Ancient and modern water systems in Israel 3
Chairperson Ronny Reich

8. Touring Israel’s ancient water systems – Tsvika Tsuk

9. Water in Israel and in the Middle East – past, present and future – Shimon Tal


Session D: 15:35 – 17:00 Turkey 1
Chairperson Werner Eck

10. Grundwassernutzung in der hethitischen Hauptstadt Hattusa um 1600 v. Chr. – Hartmut
Wittenberg

11. Ancient Water Systems of the Lamas Çayi and the surrounding hinterland – Dennis Murphy

12. Die Datierung der römischen Kaikos- und Madradag-Kanalleitungen in Pergamon – Henning Fahlbusch


Session E: 17:20 – 18:50 Turkey 2
Chairperson Henning Fahlbusch

13. Das städtische Abwassersystem von Pergamon – seine Entwicklung in hellenistischer und römischer Zeit – Kai Wellbrock

14. The aqueducts and water supply of Tralleis – Eddie Owens

15. Antike Wasserbauten von Antiochia (Tuerkei) – Mathias Döring

Tuesday October 16, 2012 (Neve Ilan hotel)


Session F: 08:30 – 09:30 The Military
Chairperson Mathias Döring

16. Das Heer und die Infrastruktur von Städten in der römischen Kaiserzeit – Werner Eck

17. Water as weapon and military target in Ancient Mesopotamian warfare – Ariel Bagg


Session G: 09:50 – 11:20 Groundwater and Roman Aqueducts
Chairperson Eli Dror

18. Ground water use and understanding in ancient times: lessons for today and tomorrow – Michael Knight

19. Sinter deposits in Roman aqueducts – Gül Sürmelihindi and Cees Passchier

20. The Atlas Project of Roman Aqueducts (ROMAQ) – Cees Passchier, and Gül Sürmelihindi
Session H: 11:50 – 13:15 Greece and Spain – Sanctuaries, Mills and Aqueducts
Chairperson Dennis Murphy

21. The role of water in ancient sanctuaries. The Sanctuary of Amphiaraos – Anna Androvitsanea

22. When Ceres commands her nymphs – An investigation of the relation between mills and aqueducts in the antique Mediterranean – Stefanie Preißler

23. The Glass kiln (Horno de Vidrio), a drop tower in the water supply to the city of Toledo (Spain) during the Roman era – Marisa Barahona

More details about the conference are available here.

HT: Jack Sasson

Hezekiah's Tunnel, tb110705559
Hezekiah’s Tunnel in Jerusalem 
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The University of Oxford and the Vatican Library plan “to digitize 1.5 million pages of texts from their collections and make them freely available online.”

A large 3rd or 4th century poolside mosaic has been uncovered in southern Turkey, not far from biblical Attalia.

The Saqqara Serapeum was inaugurated this week.

The Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project has received a 3-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Hebrew University will begin offering online courses for free.

Check out Wayne Stiles’ descriptive and devotional thoughts about Tel Dan. “By providing alternative places of worship [at Dan and Bethel], Jeroboam appealed to the laziness of the human spirit.”

If you’re looking for full-color, poster-size maps of biblical history, take a look at WordAction’s Bible Teaching Maps. The $35 set includes 10 large maps bible-teaching-mapsand 10 reproducible charts. The maps were produced by Zondervan and Oxford University Press.

They are easily mounted on foam board for display and transport.

Christianbook.com has many Bible atlases on sale this week, as well as Gary Burge’s The Bible and the Land for $1.99.

A number of distinguished scholars passed away this week, including Manfred Goerg, Bahnam Abu As-Souf, and Itamar Singer.

HT: Jack Sasson, Joseph Lauer

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Eilat Mazar has resumed excavations in the (so-called) Ophel, and her partners at Armstrong College plan to provide regular updates. They begin with an on-location interview of Mazar.

Excavations continue to reveal Egyptian presence in Joppa from the New Kingdom period.

Mark Fairchild’s search for ancient synagogues in Turkey is profiled in the local press. The article includes an interesting video by Fairchild of his discoveries.

In light of an article in the Wall Street Journal, Charles Savelle reflects on the value of knowing biblical geography.

Ferrell Jenkins is back in Israel and he shares a rare photo of Jacob’s well.

King Tut and his predecessors may have been afflicted with temporal lobe epilepsy.

Did you forget to celebrate the 2000th anniversary of Caligula’s birthday?

Clean-up of the polluted Kishon River is finally scheduled to begin, 12 years after divers were found
to have contracted cancer.

The cedars of Lebanon are threatened by climate change.

As Rosh HaShanah (the New Year) begins in Jewish homes around the world at sundown on Sunday,

Wayne Stiles reflects on the Gezer Calendar and other ways we keep time.

The 50th anniversary of Lawrence of Arabia inspires Anthony Horowitz to travel to Jordan.

HT: Explorator, Jack Sasson
Wadi Rum Jebel el Qattar, df070307712
Wadi Rum. Photo from the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands.
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With the discovery of a LMLK seal at Azekah, Omer Sergi of Tel Aviv University gave an impromptu lecture about LMLK seals. Daily updates by volunteers are posted here.

Archaeological sites that currently take years to map will be completed in minutes if tests underway in Peru of a new system being developed at Vanderbilt University go well.”

Egyptian officials are trying to bring back tourists by opening new tombs, including the tomb of Meresankh.

An Israeli journalist has filmed a mass grave near the Golden Gate that he suggests dates to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.

Like the tower of Pisa, the Colosseum of Rome is leaning.

James Mellaart, excavator of Çatalhüyük, passed away this week.

More than a hundred people gathered at the tomb of Sir Flinders Petrie this week to celebrate the 70th anniversary of his death.

The latest in the wider world of archaeology is reviewed by the ASOR Blog.

Congratulations to Geoff C. and Frank P., winners of Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus.

HT: Jack Sasson, Wayne Stiles, Joseph Lauer

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(Post by A.D. Riddle)

There have been a dozen or so online pieces in the last two days about the colossal statue found at Tel Tayinat this summer, but most of them repeat what can be found in the official news release (see the update added to the end of our first post).

A few new photos have appeared, and the Toronto Star describes the discovery of the statue by Darren Joblonkay, a student working on the dig this summer.

(photo by Jennifer Jackson)

(photo by Jennifer Jackson)

 Darren Joblonkay with statue fragment (photo from The Star).
In the lower photo, one can barely see that the back of the statue, from the shoulders down, has an uneven surface. This must be the “lengthy Hieroglyphic Luwian inscription” in raised relief. The article in the Toronto Star gives a few intriguing details about the content of the inscription. It belongs to the Neo-Hittite king Suppiluliuma (9th cent. B.C.) and describes his “taking land from eight neighbouring kingdoms, establishing a border, and building a monument to his father.” The photo shows another piece of monumental sculpture, a column base fragment depicting a winged bull. The other reports state that the column base also has a relief of a sphinx.
The low mound of Tell Tayinat in the Amuq Plain, Turkey.
(photo source)

UPDATE: The official announcement was also released at the website of the University of Toronto, including a link to a photo of the column base fragment.
(photo by Jennifer Jackson)
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