Tag: CBRL

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, #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