Report from Jerusalem #67, 2nd March 2015

Oldest Human Skull Yet Found in the Middle East

Archaeologists and anthropologists have reported the finding of a fossilized partial skull in the Manot Cave in western Galilee seven years ago but only now reported after extensive verification of its date. Dr. Omri Barzilai of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) claimed that the skull was 55,000 years old and “one of the most important discoveries in the history of human evolution”. He was standing outside the cave of the discovery, 40 km. north-east of the Carmel caves, and pointed out that the cave entrance had collapsed thousands of years ago and thus had hermetically sealed the remains and preserved the skull. He said that morphometric analysis had shown that the skull belonged to modern Homo Sapiens and thus was the earliest modern human skull ever found in the Middle East. Professor Israel Hershkovitz of Tel Aviv University explained that two main migrations of ancient and modern Homo Sapiens from East Africa occurred 120,000 years ago and again between 60,000 and 70,000 years ago and while modern Homo Sapiens went on to conquer the world, his ancient cousin never made it past the Middle East. However the migrant route of modern Homo Sapiens passed through the Levant on its way to Europe and Asia – the Levant being the only land route between Africa and Europe. It is not clear why only the skull of the corpse was found and the explorers (who have had to abseil many metres down into the cave) said that it is hoped to find further remains as the excavation continues.

Arrest of Grave Robbers at Antiquities Site

At the end of January, three young Bedouin men were apprehended by Guy Fitoussi, archaeologist and inspector of the IAA Robbery prevention Unit, at an ancient Ashkelon burial site and handed over to the Police. The men had come with a metal detector and digging equipment to the Byzantine-era tombs, but claimed to the police that they were only searching for worms to fish with at the nearby dock. Fitoussi said that they were attempting to open three 1,500 year old graves to search for artifacts such as jewellery and coins that may have been buried with the dead. He said that their activities in disturbing the graves were causing irreparable damage to future archaeological research and would destroy clues to understanding the lives and culture of the former inhabitants. Due to increasing looting of ancient sites in the area, the IAA Robbery Prevention Unit have mounted regular night-time surveys of the area, and it was during one of these that the looters were apprehended.

Fine Wine of the Byzantine Era

During exploration in the Negev desert conducted by Haifa University professors Guy Bar-Oz and Dr. Lior Weisbrod and Dr. Tali Erikson-Gini of the IAA, ancient charred grape seeds of the Byzantine era of 1,500 years ago were uncovered in an antique pile of botanical and animal remains. It is claimed that these seeds were of a sought-after wine of the period called the “Wine of the Negev”, an extremely expensive wine drunk by the society’s elite.

The seeds were found after careful sifting and it was not clear where they had come from. Guy Bar-Oz said that the vines from which the seeds would have come had not survived but their existence showed that such vines had grown in the Negev and had flourished without the need of large amounts of water, as was needed by vines in Europe. The next step, the explorers said, was to work with biologists to research the DNA of the seeds, and they would also now attempt to try to grow vines from the seeds and make wine from the grapes.

Treasure Trove of Gold Coins Found Off Caesarea

A very large collection of gold coins was recently discovered in the harbour of Caesarea National Park. The stash of coins was found by divers of the local diving club and reported to the IAA, who said that the divers were good honest citizens to have immediately reported the collection of coins. The director of the Marine Archaeology unit of the IAA, Kobi Sharvit, said that there would likely be a wreck nearby of a Fatimid treasury ship that was on its way to Cairo with tax revenues. Or it may have been that the coins were meant to pay the salaries of the Fatimid military garrison stationed in Caesarea. The discovery consisted of nearly two thousand gold coins of the 11th century CE and was the largest collection ever found in Israel. The coins were in denominations of dinars, half-dinars and quarter-dinars and varied in size and weight. The oldest coin to be found was a quarter-dinar minted in Palermo, Sicily of the ninth century CE, while most of the coins were minted under the Fatimid Caliphs Al-Hakim and son Al-Zahir of 996-1036 CE who had developed Caesarea and adjoining coastal areas. In spite of their long incarceration, the coins were in good condition but some had been bent and showed tooth marks which, according to the IAA, demonstrate that they were physically checked by their owners or their traders.

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg

W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem

Report from Jerusalem #48, 18th February 2013

“Debris” Removed from Temple Mount

As mentioned last month, six lorry-loads of material were removed from the Temple Mount in early January, discovered by Zachi Dvira (Zweik) who works with Gabby Barkai on the sifting project. The Jerusalem Police declared this to be ordinary debris, but the archaeologists see it as valuable excavated material, that has been removed from the Temple Mount against the High Court order prohibiting removal of any material from the Mount. Archaeologists are trying to retrieve the material from the local refuse dump and bring it to the sifting site for proper examination.

Preservation of 300 Historical Sites

The 700 million shekel (about £120M) program is going ahead with one third dealing with Biblical and Second Temple sites, and the remaining with later periods. The earlier projects include funding for projects in the City of David, Tel Shilo, the Machpelah cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Herodian remains near Bethlehem. Although the news does not give full specifics, it is clear that the allocated money is being used for these purposes, and further funds will be made available in due course.

Israel Antiquities Authority Archives Digitized

The above-mentioned fund is also being used to support the publication of a database with the records of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The documents will become available to scholars and include 19th century letters on excavations at the City of David, plans for the restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after the earthquake of 1927, and the extensive archives of the Rockefeller Museum. The work will give scholars access to valuable documents and will also ensure preservation of the archives, many of whose documents are suffering from disintegration because of poor paper quality and poor storage facilities in the past. Most of the documents are in English (they will receive Hebrew annotation) and are available on line here but no date has yet been given for the completion of the work.

Restoration of Avdat National Park

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority has now completed restoration of the UNESCO Heritage site of the Avdat National Park in the Negev that was vandalized in October 2009. The work was carried out at a cost of nearly nine million shekels (£1.5m) but the Authority has made it clear that some of the archaeological evidence of original stonework has been lost forever due to the damage done by the vandals.

Herod the Great Exhibition at the Israel Museum

This fine exhibition opened at the Israel Museum on 12th February 2013 and will run for eight months. It is a tribute to Herod’s great building projects and also to the lifetime of investigation that Ehud Netzer devoted to their uncovering. In fact it appears that it was Netzer who started planning the exhibition after his location of Herod’s Tomb on Herodion, and before his tragic death at that site in October 2010. The exhibition mentions Herod’s tumultuous life, as a great fighter, lover and indeed murderer, but it is his tremendous building structures that are given pride of place, such as his many palaces, the port of Caesarea and Herodion itself. Herod’s tomb is shown with a reconstruction of the central tholos, using the actual carved stones from the site, and restorations of the three smashed sarcophagi that were found there. There are many clear wooden models, as were favoured by Netzer, of the tomb and other projects with ingenious films showing their locations in Masada, Jericho, Caesarea and elsewhere and how their construction took place in such difficult terrain. Netzer was of the opinion that Herod had played a personal role in the planning of these oversized projects.  Without him no architects or engineers would have dared to produce such ambitious plans, he thought.

There are wonderful original oversized carved Ionic and Corinthian capitals as were used at the Temple porticos and at Herod’s many palaces, but pride of place is given to the work at Herodion.  The original unique paintings of the royal box at the intimate hillside theatre at Herodion are displayed.

It appears that everything Herod did was on the grandest of scales and with the finest materials. As has been truly said, Emperors built for posterity but Herod built for eternity. This exhibition, coming more than two thousand years after his death,  makes that clear; it is a great tribute to the better side of Herod’s genius and energy, and also to the indefatigable work undertaken by Ehud Netzer over nearly fifty years.

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

Report from Jerusalem, #28, 5th January 2011

Non-Destructive Investigation By X-Ray

Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University has discovered a method of investigating clay and other materials by non-destructive methods, using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry . Having built up a data-base of results from former intrusive methods, he can now organize the analysis by merely scanning the object and comparing the results with the previous data. The scans will then show the type of clay or other material and its geographical origin. He is thus able to examine new finds and also older museum specimens without the need to break off a piece or cut off a sample. The method has been used on the Late Bronze Age fragment of a cuneiform letter from the City of David excavations that is dated to the El-Amarna period. Prof. Goren’s analysis shows that the tablet material is the Terra Rossa soil from around Jerusalem and it is therefore most probable that the item was written by a scribe in the Jerusalem area and may indeed have been part of a letter dictated by the Jebusite king Abdi-Heba to Egypt, to the court of Amenhotep III or IV at El-Amarna, and the fragment may have been part of the copy retained by the sender.

Aelia Capitolina, A Roman Bathing Pool in Jerusalem

During excavations for a new mikvah (ritual bath) in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, a rescue dig by the IAA, directed by Dr. Ofer Sion, uncovered a large bathing pool that had been used by the Tenth Legion (Fretensis) of the Roman army in about 200 CE.  Evidence of the Roman build was the large number of floor and roof tiles with the stamp of the legion, and the many stamped roof tiles show that the facility was completely roofed. The location in the Jewish Quarter, some distance from the presumed army HQ in the Armenian Quarter, shows that the occupying soldiers were spread out throughout the city. The Tenth Legion was involved in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and later in the rebuilding of the city by Hadrian, after the abortive Bar-Kochba revolt of 135 CE. when it was renamed Aelia Capitolina.

The excavators were amused to find one of the roof tiles impressed with the paw marks of a dog.  Presumably the cur had walked over the wet tiles that had been spread out and left to dry.

Monastery of St. George in Wadi Qelt, West of Jericho

On 30th November a ceremony was held at the Monastery to celebrate the completion of a new road to St. George’s, that had been built by the Ministry of Tourism and other bodies to improve access, at the request of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III.  The present road had suffered damage from flash floods and a minor earthquake over the last few years, and the new one will make it easier for pilgrims and tourists alike, to visit this remarkable 5th-7th century complex of buildings that appear to hang from the side of the steep desert mountain over the lush green wadi below.

It is thought that the original buildings were constructed above a fourth-century synagogue. They were destroyed during the Persian invasion of Jerusalem in 614 CE. and later restored by the Crusaders. The interior boasts some very fine icons and frescoes. Today, St. George’s is one of only six monasteries still active in the Judean desert area.

Funding for Restoration of Historic Sites

In the context of the National Heritage Plan announced last February, the first tranche of 91 million shekels (16 million sterling) has now been allocated for work to 16 major sites, ancient and modern. One of the archaeological sites is Herodion, where work was recently halted due to the tragic death of Ehud Netzer. It can now continue with restoration of the unique frescoes at the small theatre, that will be preserved and made ready for presentation to the public by experts from the Hebrew University.

Another site will be the large Byzantine-period synagogue at Umm el-Kanatir, in the Golan heights, which is being restored piece by piece using computerized technology organized by Yeshu Drei and archaeologist Haim Ben-David.

Sudden Fierce Storm , Destruction and Discovery

Winter in Israel started with a destructive storm on 12th and 13th December, that wreaked havoc along the Mediterranean coast in particular. Many sites were affected but worst of all was Caesarea. Some of the foundations of the northern aqueduct were exposed and parts of the Crusader city wall suffered fractures due to subsidence. The Crusader-period breakwater, that protected the southern arm of the Herodian harbour was broken into three pieces and the port wall left unprotected from southern wave damage. Repair work will have to begin very shortly to avoid major damage to the ancient port.

At Ashdod-Yam, the ancient fortress close to the shore suffered damage.

In ancient Ashkelon, at the national park, there was damage to a mosaic floor and a row of several columns was overturned. On the beach ten metres below, the storm that hit the cliffs exposed and toppled a classic white marble Roman statue about 1.2m high. It was headless and without arms but depicted a fine female figure in a carefully folded toga and sandals and has been presumed to be of Aphrodite. It is from a bath house, exposed at the head of the cliffs, and may have been part of the dedication of the baths, that are dated to c. 300 CE.

Early Homo Sapiens from Cave in Israel, 400,000 Years Ago?

In 2000 Prof. Avi Gopher and Dr. Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University discovered the Qesem Cave where they claim to have found the earliest evidence of modern man. The cave is near Rosh Ha’ayin, about 20 km. east of Tel Aviv, and the archaeologists have located a series of human teeth that they claim are closer to the dental apparatus associated with anatomically modern Homo Sapiens, rather than their earlier brothers, the Neanderthals. They have found in the cave evidence of flint knapping, the mining of sub-surface materials for flint production, hunting and the cutting and sharing of animal meat, evidence of regular burning and so on, all activities associated with anatomically modern Homo Sapiens.

The claim is that these findings antedate the earliest evidence of anatomically modern Homo Sapiens from Africa and thus the scholars claim that the species existed at the Qesem cave many years earlier than presently realized. The dating of the teeth to between 400,000 and 300,000 years ago is however not yet at all clear and further results from the ongoing excavations are awaited before reaching any firm conclusions.

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg,

W.F.Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem