Category: Sites

names of archaeological sites

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

 

Report from Jerusalem, #31, 11th May

Demonstrations over Graves in Jaffa

Problems continue with the ultra-orthodox trying to prevent the digging up of human remains for development and archaeological research. The latest incident has centred on the Andromeda Hill site in Jaffa, where 150 skeletons have been uncovered during archaeological digs that have been going on for some time before the building of the “Eden Hotel” luxury project. The digs were proceeding over the last year, and have also uncovered many pig bones among the human remains which, in the view of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), indicated that the burials were of a pagan nature and would not be of interest to the “Atra Kadisha”, the ultra-orthodox Jewish movement.

It seems that previous excavations in the area in 1993-1994 turned up a jar containing a foetus burial that was dated to c.1900 BCE. In the view of the IAA that find was conclusive evidence of the pagan nature of the area’s population.

Last June protests were held, both near the site and in Manhattan near the home of the US developer, and in late March of this year, hundreds of followers of the Atra Kadisha movement held a mock funeral for the remains. Whenever human bones of any nature are uncovered by the IAA, they are treated reverentially and handed to the relevant funeral authorities after examination, and very rarely retained for further research.

Return of ancient Christian artifacts demanded by Jordan

The story goes that a Bedouin farmer found a cache of small metal plates, bound by leaden rings, formed into codices, about 70 in number, in Northern Jordan between 2005 and 2007, and had them smuggled into Israel for sale. Another Bedouin, Hassan Saeda, living in Northern Israel, is holding them and claims that they are his family heirloom. It is said that Israeli archaeologists, (having been contacted by Saeda, who has been trying to sell the artifacts), say that the pieces are forgeries.

The Jordanian authorities however claim that the codices or miniature books  are extremely important and of significance equal to that of the Dead Sea scrolls, but so far the IAA have declined to comment, having no detailed knowledge of them. Nevertheless David Ellington, a British historian of Christianity, is said to have told the BBC that the codices are a major discovery of Christian History and that he hoped to have them moved to Jordan for examination. The codices are in Hebrew and Greek but written in a code so far undeciphered, though the language is clear.

It seems that a report on the matter was printed in the Daily Telegraph recently, and there has been much speculation about them on the internet, so readers in the UK may have more knowledge of this matter, as all details on the subject are very scanty in Israel, and no-one seems to have seen the pieces, which may well seem surprising if they really are so important.

Jacobovici discovers “Nails of the Cross”

Simcha Jacobovici, the Canadian-Israeli maker of popular films on Biblical Archaeology, hit the headlines in mid-April by announcing that he had retrieved two Roman nails from the IAA storerooms and that they were the nails of the cross on which Jesus was crucified. He said that the nails had come from the ossuary of Caiaphas, the High Priest who had handed Jesus over to the Roman authorities. The ossuary had been reported by the IAA but no details of the nails had been given or even recorded and Jacobovici was of the opinion that they were very significant, claiming that they had been buried with the remains of Caiaphas to indicate his guilt in arresting and reporting Jesus to the Romans.

Jacobovici has made films on the Death of Jesus and on the Exodus, and Israeli archaeologists have said that although his latest claims make good TV, they do not make good history.

The Kenyon Institute. formerly the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem

In recent years the name of the British School has been changed to the Kenyon Institute to give it a more modern title and yet retain its prime connection to the archaeology of the Holy Land, in honour of Kathleen Kenyon, the great British archaeologist. It is housed in an attractive older building in the Sheikh Jarrah district of northern Jerusalem and houses an extensive archaeological library, two lecture rooms and a convenient hostel for the use of visiting scholars. It has for years been sponsoring lectures and even digs on archaeology and in September 2007 gave room to a one-day conference on “British Groundbreakers in the Archaeology of the Holy Land”, which was organized by this society, the AIAS, and was addressed by scholars from Israel, Palestine and Jordan, while the UK was represented by several speakers from the PEF.

Funding for the Institute comes mainly from the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), and the Institute is administered by the British School in Amman, Jordan, but has its own local director and staff. There were a number of recent changes in the directorship and the present acting director is Omar Shweiki.

The Institute has not been very active in the recent past but has now started a series of three lectures entitled “The Modern Middle East”, which centres on the recent revolutions in the Arab world, commonly called “the Arab Spring”.

This trend in lectures suggests that the Institute is turning to the study of current affairs, which the AIAS and the archaeological community in general, would find unfortunate if it implied any move away from the original speciality in archaeology.

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg –W.F.Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem

Report from Jerusalem, #30, 27th March

Bethlehem Church, UNESCO Heritage Site?

The Palestine Authority has recently applied to UNESCO to designate the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem a World Heritage site. If agreed, this would be the first heritage site in the Palestine Authority area. At present the Authority’s area is not recognized by the United Nations as a state so their sites cannot get heritage status, but the applicants hope that the historical importance of the Church will override that consideration.

At present several sites in Israel have UNESCO Heritage status, including Megiddo, Tel Dan, Masada and the Bauhaus buildings of Tel Aviv, and several more are under consideration.

Jericho’s ancient Tower

Recently the Neolithic tower at Tel Jericho has been described as “the world’s first skyscraper” and claimed to be a marker of the summer solstice. The tower is dated to c. 8500 BCE and is the first known stone monument to be built by humankind. It is conical in shape and 8.5 metres high. It has an internal staircase and was plastered externally. In the past it had been considered to be a fortification, a place of refuge during flooding, a ritual centre or a symbol of communal power. Now Ron Barkai and Roy Liran, archaeologists at Tel Aviv University, claim to have found a distinct line of sight between the stair aperture of the tower and the mountain called Qarantal that lies directly west of the ancient site. By computer analysis they have worked out that at the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, at this early period the mountain cast a shadow on the tower just before sunset.

This finding leads them to suggest that the tower was built, at great expense of labour, as a symbol used to demonstrate to villagers the advantage of giving up their hunting ways and settling down to a life of farming around the oasis.

Atlantis and Tarshish identified?

Prof. Richard Freund claims to have discovered Atlantis, the mythical city mentioned by Plato as being just beyond the Pillars of Hercules and disappearing into the sea after a violent earthquake. In a film by Simcha Jacobovici, who has done a number of popular films related to biblical subjects, Freund claims that Atlantis was a site off the coast of southern Spain, shown by aerial photos to be three concentric circles of sunken land around an island port. For extra interest Jacobovici has said that this Atlantis was the Tarshish known from the Bible, which mentions the ships of Tarshish (Ezek. 27 and elsewhere) and that Jonah took a boat to Tarshish (Jon. 1:3), which some scholars have equated with Tartessos in southern Spain.

Freund is professor at the University of Hartford and co-director of the ongoing dig at Betsaida with Ron Arav. As for Tartessos, in Spain, this has been equated with Tarshish because Herodotus mentions it as a port reached by the Phoenicians (1:163), but it is much simpler and robably more correct to say that the biblical Tarshish is the port of Tarsus, on the southern coast of Turkey, near to Phoenicia, whose local name is exactly as the Hebrew.

New Ground-penetrating Technology

A new “algorithmic toolkit” developed by Professor of Geophysics Lev Eppelbaum and his team at Tel Aviv University will be able to reveal underground archaeological remains free of interference from later obstructions like pipes, cables and modern construction. A clear picture, free of local “noise”, will emerge and enable archaeologists to work in densely built-up cities without the need for preliminary excavation. The system is called Multi-physical-archaeological-models, or Multi-PAM for short, and will cut expenditure of time and costs by many factors, but so far few details of how the apparatus works have emerged.

Three brief notices: Second Temple coins, headless Roman statue, Byzantine Mosaic

1. During a raid in Mazra’a, south of Nahariyah, police found a cache of ceramics and coins of the Second Temple period in the yard of a family who had been suspected of hiding weapons. The find has been taken to the local museum and further details are expected to be announced.

2. After the storm of 20th February, a headless Roman-style statue was found on the beach at Caesarea. It was nearly a metre tall and possibly of the goddess Aphrodite. This follows a similar find made at Ashkelon after a previous storm this winter.

3. In the Gaza strip, archaeologists from the Ecole Biblique of Jerusalem have uncovered a fine mosaic floor of the Byzantine period at the site of the St. Hilarion Monastery at Umm al-‘Amr. The work is supported by the French Consulate General and UNESCO and will include restoration and safeguarding the mosaic from damage by the public and the elements.

Stephen Rosenberg
W.F.Albright Institute, Jerusalem