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Report from Jerusalem #36, 6th November 2011

Dead Sea Scrolls On-Line

As mentioned previously, the Scrolls were to be brought on line in a joint project organized by the Israel Museum and Google, and five of the most complete scrolls went on-line at the end of September.  By 5th October, there had been over a million viewers from 213 countries, speaking 236 different languages, including all the Arab countries neighbouring Israel, except for Syria.  Nearly half-a-million viewers originated from the US. The site is named http://dss.collections.imj.org.il, and the high resolution photographs are considered to show more detail than can be seen by the naked eye.  Chief among the scrolls available is the great Isaiah scroll, which is shown in original and translated into English line-by-line, and can be searched by specific phrases and verses in that language. A Chinese translation is in preparation as Biblical studies are very popular in China.

Ancient Assembly-Line at Qesem Cave

In early October, archaeologists Prof. Avi Gopher, Dr. Ron Barkai and Dr. Ron Shimelmitz, of Tel Aviv University, announced that they had uncovered thousands of cutting blades in the Qesem Caves near Tel Aviv, which they date to the lower Paleolithic age of 400,000 to 200,000 BCE.  Such blades had previously been associated with the emergence of homo sapiens about 35,000 years ago, but it now appears that they were produced at a much earlier date and in great numbers where the conditions were favourable.    The blades were produced in the cave on a kind of production line arranged for selection of  the raw material, choice of cutting implements, and the finished product, that being a flint with one sharp edge and one dull edge for easy handling.  The cave is attributed to the Amudian culture, and shows use of daily fire and a division of space for specific tasks and functions.  The blades were used mainly for butchering animals, whose hides were taken to another spot for processing into skins for several purposes.

Revised Siting of “King’s Garden” in German Colony

The King’s Garden, mentioned in the Song of Songs (4:16; 5:1) has traditionally been located in the area south of Silwan (as mentioned in Nehemiah 3:15) and tradition also has it that Solomon wrote the scroll of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) there, but now Professors Oded Lipschitz and Nadav Na’aman of Tel Aviv University have said it is to be found in the Emek Refaim valley, at what is today the north end of the German Colony of Jerusalem, between the old Railway Station and Liberty Bell Gardens.

Their argument is that the present excavations at Ramat Rahel, to the south of Jerusalem, conducted by Lipschitz and the University of Heidelberg, show that there was an important government tax centre for vegetable produce in the 8th century BCE at a site on level ground  between Ramat Rahel and the City of David, which would place it around the Emek Refaim street that runs through the centre of the German Colony.

They claim that this area was the Valley of Shaveh (the “level” valley), also called the King’s Valley, where the King of Sodom met Abraham (Gen. 14:17).  If they are right, then Emek Refaim, famous today for its cafés, boutiques and two vegetable stores, will have acquired a reputable history going back three thousand years and more.

Heritage Site in Safed

Trial excavations at the Kahal Centre in mid-Safed, in the Galilee, conducted by Livnot Lehibanot, a private NGO, under the supervision of the Israel Antiquities Authority, have revealed a number of late medieval dwellings, a bakery, a ritual bathhouse, cisterns and courtyards.  It is intended to extend the site and prepare it for public viewing to give a picture of Jewish life in the city in the sixteenth century, when it was the premier Kabbalistic centre of the world.  To this end, the government is allocating funds to the tune of four million shekels (about £700,000) to complete the work and prepare it for opening to the public within the next five years.

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg,

W.F.Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem

 

Report from Jerusalem #35, 22nd September 2011

Two-Horned Altar from Tell-Es-Safi

The site of Tell es-Safi is considered to be the Philistine city of Gath and work had been going on there for many seasons, under the direction of Prof. Aren Maier of Bar-Ilan University. A recent find has been a large stone altar with two squarish horns. It was found within the ruins of a large building of the lower city that was destroyed by Hazael of Aram in the 9th century BCE. The altar is made of a single piece of stone, which is unique for its size, according to Prof. Maier. The dimensions are 50cm by 50cm by one metre high, which is equivalent to the cubit by cubit by 2 cubits high of the wooden incense altar of the Mishkan, as described in Exod. 30:1. Although one side is broken, Prof. Maier claims that the altar only had the two horns on the one side, not the usual four, and the reasons for this are obscure, though it may have been a Philistine characteristic. Another important find of the season was a jar with an inscription, which seems to have been in a Philistine version of Hebrew, but is as yet undeciphered.

Damascus Gate Restored

The most ornate of the Jerusalem Gates, the Damascus Gate or Sha’ar Shechem, has been fully cleaned and restored after four years of work on the ancient walls of the city.  The restoration work included the reconstitution of the projecting external guardbox that was cantilevered over the main arched entry, and served as a sentry box for one soldier to monitor all who entered from the north. It was destroyed during the 1967 war and was finally restored and unveiled last month. The gate is highly elaborate and was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent from the famous Islamic architect Sinan Minmar (1489-1578) of Constantinople in the mid-sixteenth century CE. Sinan was also the architect of the Sulemaniye Mosque, the second largest in Istanbul, whose huge dome rests on four massive pillars. The Damascus gate is planned with a double chicane which in plan is like the Hebrew letter Lamed, with two right angle turns. In elevation it sports 22 or more stepped finials, and it is founded on an earlier Roman gate from the time of Hadrian. According to Avi Mashiah, the architect of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) who supervised the work, this gate is the most beautiful one of the wall and therefore it has been amply recorded in drawings and photographs which enabled the restoration to be completed accurately. The work was carried out in carefully planned stages so that the many small-scale Arab merchants, who lined the walls of the gate, were able to continue trading without interruption.

Kenyon Institute: Move into Non-Archaeological Fields of Study

The Kenyon Institute, formerly the British School of Archaeology, in the Sheikh Jarrah area of East Jerusalem, has just announced a new series of lectures on Palestinian politics. The lecture for last week was entitled “The Question of Palestinian Representation in Historical Context and the State Recognition Initiative”, and was given by Dr. Abdel Razzeq Takriti of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. The Centre is also starting a series of classes in spoken Arabic, to run over the next three months.

From the point of view of the archaeological community of Jerusalem and the wider world, it would be most unfortunate if the Kenyon Institute, run by the Centre for British Research in the Levant, abandons the concern for archaeological subjects for which it was originally founded.

Continuos Occupation at Yavne-Yam

The ancient port of Yavne-Yam, that lies on the Mediterranean coast between Jaffa and Ashdod, recently gave up its latest secrets.  A complex of a fortress and a bath-house of the late Islamic period were excavated last season by a team from Tel Aviv University headed by Prof. Moshe Fischer. He pointed out that this latest find confirmed the use of the port city from the Middle Bronze Age period up to medieval times, and showed that the Islamic population continued the Roman practice of providing lavish bathing premises alongside their main public buildings. The latest finds, not yet published, indicate that the port was occupied continuously for a period of over three thousand years.

The Underground Passage from Robinson’s Arch to Siloam Pool

Work by Prof. Ronnie Reich of Haifa University and Eli Shukron of the IAA has continued on this amazing underground passageway and the sewer that ran below it, where a Roman sword and a tiny golden bell were found recently. The excavators have now been able to continue their exploration right up to the Herodian retaining wall of the Temple Mount (the Haram es-Sharif) and have uncovered the stepped foundations that underlie the massive ashlars of the wall, near to its maximum height of over 40 metres at the south-west corner, where it rises from the bedrock of the Tyropaean Valley. The discovery of the base of the wall attracted enormous interest and the site was visited by the Mayor of Jerusalem and other important dignitaries and politicians, who were reported to have been seen weeping at the wonder of the exposed foundations of the retaining wall to what is, for Jews, their holiest site. It is hoped that the site can be prepared for public viewing in the near future. It will certainly be interesting to see how Herod’s engineers coped with the problem of founding their huge walls on the naturally irregular bedrock of the mountain.

Corpus of Graffiti  Inscriptions

Over the years individual explorers have come across graffiti scratched into cave walls and other rough surfaces in many different places and languages. It is now the intention to publish all the known and readable ones that have been found in Israel over many years by several different scholars.  Prof. Jonathan Price of Tel Aviv Classics Department says the study of these casual writings has been neglected so far but their importance has now been recognised and the Corpus will be of great interest to historians.  The graffiti so far known are dated from the 4th century BCE, the early Hellenistic period, to the early Islamic age of 7th century CE and the Corpus is likely to contain 13,000 items in over ten languages. Some examples are the Greek name “Christo” found on limestone walls in the Judean hills, the Jewish family name “Sh-ph-n” (“rabbit”) found in a first century CE burial cave, and the name “Yonatan” in another burial cave. Many scrawls were found in the extended caves used by the Jewish population to hide from the Romans during the Jewish Revolts of 66 and 135 CE. some of which have still to be deciphered.

Stephen G. Rosenberg

W.F. Albright Institute, Jerusalem

 

Report from Jerusalem #34, 22nd August

Boundary stone found in Lower Galilee

A local visitor to the small community of Timrat, which lies a few kilometres west of Nazareth, happened to come across a large stone inscribed in black with the three Hebrew letters reading “Shabbat”. Mordechai Aviam, head of Archaeology at the nearby Kinneret College, has suggested that this was a marker for the Shabbat boundary around the village, marking the extent allowed for walking beyond the village on the Sabbath in the Mishnaic period.  The letters are large and clear and extend over a length of half a metre.   Boundary markers have been discovered at other locations but are inscribed in Greek and, according to Aviam, this is the first one to be found in Hebrew.  The stone is dated to the Roman/Byzantine period when the village would have been inhabited, and volunteer teams are now being sent to the area to search for more examples.

Ancient Shechem to be opened to the Public

A team from Holland and the Palestinian Authority has been working since 1997 at Tel Balata, the site of the ancient city of Shechem, and they plan to open the site to the public next year. It is hoped that the remains uncovered, and in some cases reconstructed by the Drew-McCormick Expedition directed by G.E.Wright in the early 1960s, will soon be available to be seen by visitors. Tel Balata, just east of modern Nablus, has been the site of a Palestinian refugee camp and in the last few years has become a centre of  old car sales and a dumping ground for second-hand and stolen vehicles. All this is being cleared away by the present expedition, supported by a team from UNESCO, and it is hoped that the site can be presented next year in a form useful to scholars and attractive to tourists.

Jerusalem sewage ditch yields up more treasures

From the waste water channel that runs from the Temple Mount to the Siloam Pool, in which the small golden bell was recently found, a Roman sword with part of an attached belt and a small inscribed stone were recently uncovered in the silt by Eli Shukron, working for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The sword had a two-foot iron blade and is a military type that Shukron believes may have been stolen from the Roman garrison by a rebel Jew and then abandoned in the escape passage. The inscribed stone, from the same period, of the Roman destruction of the City in 70 CE, shows a menorah of five branches on a triple leg base. It is a fairly rough rendition and unclear why only five branches are shown though it may be that the artist did not want to reproduce the exact form of the menorah, since that might have been considered sacrilegious outside the Temple. The sword was found fused to its leather scabbard, badly decayed but with two ring buckles that had attached it to a soldier’s belt.

Phasaelis City Uncovered

At a site 20 km. north of Jericho, Hananiah Hizmi, working for the Archaeological Department of the Authority for Judaea and Samaria, is uncovering the 15 acres of a town planned by Herod the Great and started in the year 8 BCE, according to Josephus. It was the last of Herod’s great projects (he died in 4 BCE) and was being built as an agricultural complex in the name of his brother Phasael.  In this desert area, water was a problem and Herod’s engineers managed to bring it in by a thousand-metre long ground-level aqueduct from the springs now called Petzael. The site had been covered by Palestinian and Bedouin shacks and, as alternative accommodation has been provided, the huts have been cleared and the remains of the city uncovered. They include a water basin of 40m by 30m and 6m deep which was used to store the spring water and distribute it to adjoining fields. So far only two months of work have been spent on site and it is clear that much more time needs to be expended, as it is hoped to uncover all the residential and public buildings of this “new town” in the desert. If the remains come up as expected, this will be another example of a Herodian miracle, the building of a viable community in desert surroundings. The site continued in occupation for some time, as the excavators found the remains of a Byzantine Church with a mosaic floor. Today the name is preserved as the location goes under the title of El Fasayil and there is a small Jewish village at the springs called Petzael.

Bathhouse Hercules  in the Jezre’el Valley

In preparation for the building of a railway connection between Bet Shean and Haifa (partly for the benefit of Jordanian access to that port), a rescue dig at Horvat Tarbanet, west of Afula, has uncovered a  bright white marble torso and two fragments  that are clearly part of a statue of the Greek hero Hercules.  It is headless and portrays a highly muscular body with a lion’s pelt draped over the left arm (the animal’s head is visible), similar to the well-known Hercules Farnese statue of the Roman period.  The find was made by Walid Atrash of the IAA, who claims it to be of exceptional artistic quality. The torso, which stands about half-a-metre high was found by a bathhouse pool that had two rows of benches and a water-pumping system. The statue probably stood in a niche by the pool. It is dated to the late Roman period and it has been suggested that it was later deliberately smashed – hence the fragments – by iconoclasts in Byzantine or Islamic times.

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg,

W.F.Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem

 

Report from Jerusalem, #33, 26th July

National Heritage Sites

Some time ago it was reported that the Government was committed to funding restoration and protection works to a number of sites of special national and historical significance and these comprised 150 locations. The Prime Minister has now signed an order to allocate funds to the first nine of such sites, which marks the beginning of this major project. The “starter” sites include an historic railway station near the Sea of Galilee, the Shai Agnon House in Jerusalem, the battlefield at Yad Mordechai in the Negev (where the Egyptians were halted in 1948) and the first agricultural school in Israel. The total costs involved at this stage are over 30 million shekels ( £5.5 million pounds). The lucky sites are all fairly modern ones which, curiously, are less well protected than many ancient ones, and it is hoped that the turn of the archaeological areas will come soon.

Tel Shikmona, Best Example Of Four-Roomed House

As mentioned previously, the ancient site of Shikmona, at the foot of the Carmel range to the west of Haifa, which was partly excavated forty years ago, is undergoing re-excavation by the University of Haifa, under the direction of Drs. Shay Bar and Michael Eisenberg. They reported that an outline of a four-roomed house, the type-cast Israelite dwelling, had been seen on photographs of the long neglected and dirt-covered site, which spanned from the Late Bronze Age to the Islamic period. Present rehabilitation work on the site shows it to have started as a fairly modest village that grew into a prosperous centre, trading with nearby Cyprus and Lebanon for luxury goods such as elite pottery and vessels to transport the purple dye of the shells of the Phoenician coast. The ground floor of the four-roomed house is in near perfect condition; it is dated to the early Iron Age, and will be preserved and incorporated into a national park planned for the site.

Second Temple Stolen Ossuary Declared Authentic

Three years ago the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) recovered an inscribed ossuary that had been stolen from an unknown tomb. The inscription read “Miriam, bat Yeshua ben Caiaphus, Cohanei Ma’aziah miBeth-Imri” in Aramaic. The importance of the inscription suggested a possible forgery but it was recently authenticated by Dr. Boaz Zissu of Bar-Ilan  and Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv Universities. They found that the ossuary came from a burial cave in the valley of Elah, near Beth Shemesh, southwest of Jerusalem. The High Priest Caiaphas is known from the trial of Jesus, but it was not known that his family was associated with the priests of Ma’aziah, who formed one of the 24 courses of priests that served their allotted two weeks in the First Temple according to I Chron. 24:18.  The name Beth-Imri might refer to a family of the Ma’aziah clan, or it might refer to the name of a village in the north Hebron hills called to-day Beth-Ummar. The ossuary is in good condition, complete with lid, and it is decorated on the face with two six-spoked rosettes, symbols of everlasting life.

Computer Programme To Identify Authorship

Prof. Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University is an expert on authorship attribution and has perfected, with others, a computer system of analysis called Authorship Attribution Algorithms (AAA), which is based on style and wording and is used to analyse authorship of criminal and other  suspicious documents and which, he says, can also be used to identify authorship of Biblical texts.

Although much work on Biblical analysis has been done by individual scholars in the past, they are sometimes accused of personal bias, which, according to Koppel, cannot be levelled at his computer programme. The researchers have taken sections of the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and jumbled them up together, then analysed them by their AAA method, and the computer was able to accurately separate the two authors. However further results have not yet been published but it seems that Koppel and his team have started work on the several books of the Tanakh. Further results are awaited.

Golden Bell Found In Drainage Channel From Temple Mount

Much excitement has been generated by an announcement of the finding of a small golden bell in the debris of the drainage channel under the walkway that leads from the Temple Mount, in the area of Robinson’s Arch, to the Siloam pool. This stepped walkway has been excavated by Prof. Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron over the last few years and it is hoped to open it to the public shortly. In the past, discarded items of clothing and food vessels were found, which indicated that the walkway had been used as an escape route during the Roman sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Now a small golden bell, about the size of a 5 pence piece has been recovered by Eli Shukron from between layers of debris in the drainage channel below the walkway. The bell is of pure gold and has a tiny ring at the top for attachment to a garment, and the assumption is that it was one of the bells attached to the skirt of the garment of one of the priests, or even the High Priest himself, in the late Second Temple period. Such an ornament is mentioned in the description of the High-Priestly garments for the Tabernacle in Exod. 28: 33 & 34. However it is not clear that such an ornament was worn by anyone except the High Priest and it is difficult to understand how such a garment came to be worn outside the area of the Temple itself, unless it was at the time of tumult during the Roman destruction of the Temple and the city.

Ophel Archaeological Park, Jerusalem

After preliminary mention of the site in Report no. 32, when it was inaugurated some weeks ago. it is now clear that the Ophel park will not be open to the public for at least another month. The site incorporates lengthy walkways among the Israelite and Byzantine walls linking the City of David area to the south of the Temple Mount, and the centerpiece is an Iron Age gateway that the excavators suggest may be the Water Gate mentioned in Nehemiah 3:26. It is certainly an impressive structure and still stands 4m high.

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg,

W.F.Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem

Report from Jerusalem, #32, 21st June

Bethsaida – Stratum  VII

Excavations at Bethsaida, which lies close to the northern shore of Lake Kinneret in the Galilee, re-started in June of this year. The work there has been conducted under the direction of Professors Rami Arav and Richard Freund for the last 25 years and has uncovered impressive remains of the Iron Age City that may have been the capital of the petty kingdom of Geshur.

Work this season will reach the foundations of the city, Stratum VII, which is currently dated to the middle of 10th century BCE. This is the period of the possible kingdom of David and Solomon, whose existence is doubted by the Tel Aviv School of Archaeologists, in opposition to the biblical account. This is a subject of debate at present and it is hoped that evidence this season from Stratum VII may help to throw light on the problem.

Hebrew University Museum – 70th Anniversary

A special exhibition has been mounted by the Hebrew University Museum of Jewish Antiquities on Mount Scopus to mark its 70th anniversary, having been founded back in the time of Prof Sukenik. Besides many items such as inscriptions, pottery and coins from the well-known excavations sponsored by the university, there are on show ceiling tiles from the Dura-Europos synagogue of the 3rd century CE, whose colourful frescoes are preserved in the National Museum of Damascus, the synagogue having originally been located in what is today Eastern Syria. The ceiling tiles are highly decorated and some of them mention the names of Samuel the Cohen, Abraham the treasurer and Samuel ben Supharah, who were presumably involved in the building of the synagogue.

Acre – Byzantine Structure Uncovered

The recent uncovering of an impressive building in the city of Acre, the ancient port north of Haifa, has prompted the speculation that this might be the remains of a church of the 6th century CE. The building was constructed of ashlar stonework and included a courtyard with a well and terracotta pipework. If they are the  remains of a church, it will be the first one discovered in the city, according to Nurit Feig of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), who directed the excavation, and would add weight to the recorded fact that the Bishops of Acre and Caesarea attended international congresses in the city during the Byzantine period. According to Vatican archives an Italian pilgrim visited the churches of Acre in 570 CE, but no other public buildings of the period have so far been discovered in Acre.

The newly excavated building was found to contain a mosaic, roof tiles, pottery and coins. It was founded on a Hellenistic layer that included Rhodian amphorae and locally made pottery. The find cannot yet be opened to the public but will be fenced off and protected by sand and a textile covering while the adjoining mall and car park are completed.

Austrian Hospice –  Salvage Dig

A rescue dig is in progress at the Austrian Hospice, famous for its coffee, cream and Sachertorte, on the Via Dolorosa in the Old City, Jerusalem. The site is close to the triumphal arch built for Hadrian’s visit to Aelia Capitolina in 135 CE, and the eastern Cardo of the city. The Austrian Hospice began rebuilding a low retaining wall on their north-eastern boundary, which had collapsed a few years ago. When excavating for a new foundation, older structures were immediately revealed and the IAA were called in. To date they have uncovered a substantial archway from the Ottoman period and a well-preserved medieval vaulted chamber. Considerable remains of 14th century CE imported tableware, including bowls from Italy and the Far East, indicate that this was an area occupied by well-heeled inhabitants, indeed an elite medieval society. The work continues.

Egyptologist Held For Selling And Smuggling Antiquities

It was reported that a retired US university lecturer in Egyptology was guiding a group of about twenty American tourists around the sites of two Tells in the Galilee and was selling them valuable archaeological artefacts for them to take out of the country. The suspect guide was detained at Ben Gurion airport by Customs and IAA officials but allowed to leave after signing a confession and posting a large deposit to ensure his return for future trial. The tourists were stopped at the Egyptian border at Taba, where they were found to be taking out valuable items. The photographs of the antiquities found on the guide and in his hotel room show fairly standard series of Roman oil lamps and bronze and silver coins of the Second Temple period.

The information released by the police and the IAA is sketchy pending the trial, and it is believed that the IAA are using the case to warn tourists against buying antiquities from unauthorized dealers and taking them out of the country, which is a criminal offence with a penalty of up to three years imprisonment.

Stop Press! Opening of Ophel City Walls Site

21st June saw the official opening of a new archaeological park to the north-east of the City of David Centre. The excavations were directed by Dr. Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University, who described the remains as being possibly situated around the Water Gate mentioned in Nehemiah 3:26. These descriptions are still controversial and it is hoped that more information will be available in the next Report.

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg,

W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem