Tag: Yossi Garfinkel

Report from Jerusalem #63, 24th September 2014

Oldest Metal Object ever Found in the Region

It is claimed that a small copper object found in an excavation at Tel Tsaf, south of Beit Shean in Israel, is the oldest metal object ever found in the Middle East. The object is described as an awl, a small pointed pin-shaped tool that was used for punching holes, and was dated to the late 6th or early 5th millennium BCE. It was found in a rich commercial centre that dates to around 5000 BCE and excavation commenced there in 1970. The claim is published in the journal PLOS ONE by Dr. Danny Rosenberg of Haifa University and Dr. Florian Klimscha of the German Archaeological Institute of Berlin. The site had been identified as a wealthy trading centre due to its large mudbrick buildings and the number of storage silos holding vast quantities of wheat and barley.   Other findings included pieces made from obsidian, shells from the Nile and figurines of people and animals. The copper awl, 4 cms. long, was found by Prof. Yossi Garfinkel in a sealed grave covered by large stones inside a silo, indicating the importance of the buried body and that of the awl to the deceased. This copper artifact and its date moves back the known use of metal in the region by several hundred years.

Huge Ancient Reservoir at Beit Shearim

In an excavation conducted by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) in conjunction with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) at the burial sites of Beit Shearim, 15 km. south-east of Haifa, a huge underground reservoir was found. It had two staircases for water carriers going up and down and had a capacity of 1,300 cubic metres of water, and the INPA dated it to the Roman period of the early centuries CE.

Internet Archaeological Museum

The IAA announced that it was launching an Internet Archaeological Museum “accessible at the touch of a button”. It will be organised in collaboration with the Israel and Rockefeller Museums and the Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library and will feature some 2,500 artifacts of the most important collections of the Levant. The site will be accessed at www.antiquities.org.il and will be updated regularly by the IAA.

Byzantine Compound at Beit Shemesh

A large and well preserved compound was recently uncovered by the IAA at Beit Shemesh, 15 km. south-west of Jerusalem. The excavators, Irene Zibelbrod and Tehilla Libman, said the site was surrounded by a substantial wall and enclosed an industrial area and a residential one. They found a large olive press and a very large winepress with two treading floors and a collecting vat, and they believe that the site had been a monastery of the Byzantine period, although no church or evidence of other religious activity had been found. The impressive size of the presses and other industrial remains suggested that the compound had acted as a regional centre with numerous rooms, some with mosaic floors. The excavation was conducted prior to the expansion of Beit Shemesh, and the archaeological remains will be preserved as a landmark in the new residential area.

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg,

W.F. Albright Institute, Jerusalem

Report from Jerusalem #53, 12th August 2013

Syrian Civil War Damage

Due to the ongoing disturbances, it is reported that the famous 12th century Crusader castle, the Crac des Chevaliers, has suffered severe damage. The castle is located on a hill outside the city of Homs, where the rebels have been using it as a stronghold and base for their snipers. In their attempt to regain control of Homs, the castle was bombed by Government forces and suffered a direct hit which destroyed some of the internal fortifications. In the past the Crac des Chevaliers has been a great tourist attraction.

Khirbet Qeiyafa, and King David’s Palace?

On 17th July Prof. Yossi Garfinkel of Hebrew University organized a tour of the site at Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Elah Valley, south of Beth Shemesh, where he has been digging for the last five seasons.  He announced that his work here was now complete and that he would be moving his team to Lachish for the next season to re-examine its early strata. During a festive site dinner for the occasion, he also announced that he had found the remains of a luxurious mansion and large storage facility that he designated as King David’s palace on the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa, which he has identified as biblical Sha’arayim, because of its two gates. Garfinkel claims that the presence of a well-planned city with a royal palace of the time of the 10th and 11th century BCE., as dated by C-14 analysis, is evidence of state organization under a central authority and administration during the early years of the Judean monarchy. In his opinion the archaeological evidence thus underpins the Biblical account, but this is not a view accepted by other scholars. The site excavations will be preserved and the area will shortly be laid out as a national park, making it easily accessible to visitors.

Tell Es-Safi, The Philistine Gath

After seventeen years of excavation, the archaeologists of Bar-Ilan University, under the direction of Prof. Aren Maeir, demonstrated to the press the various stages of the development of Tell es-Safi, one of the cities of the Philistine pentapolis, which lies in the plain inland from Ashkelon. Evidence is now clear of its various destructions and redevelopments from the 17th to the 9th centuries BCE.  Heavy destruction occurred under Hazael of Damascus in about 830 BCE, and then the rebuilt houses show evidence of sliding off their foundations, which the archaeologists attribute to the earthquake of 760 BCE, mentioned in the Book of Amos (1:1). The mudbrick houses somehow survived and evidence of extensive burning relates to the later destruction by the Assyrian Emperor Sennacherib on his way to assault Jerusalem in 701 BCE.

The Bar-Ilan archaeologists will shortly be able to use the latest on-site equipment, as they expect to receive an X-ray Fluorescent Spectrometer (XRS) for use together with their Fourier Transform IR Spectrometer (FTIR), equipment that is usually confined to the laboratory and which will now be available for use on site. This will allow microscopic samples to be analysed on site, said Maier, which will save having to send them away for analysis, and so save valuable time and give the site the information it requires on the spot. It will allow for evidence to be gathered in the field, which previously had to wait for long periods to be processed in off-site laboratories.  The equipment has been donated by the university president, Prof. Moshe Kaveh, who had recently visited the site with his grandchildren and was impressed by their keen interest.

Ancient Oil Press in Jerusalem

In an emergency salvage dig before foundations were constructed for the dormitory of the Jerusalem College of Technology, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has uncovered an ancient olive press, consisting of a large collection vat, a stone bowl and a stone wheel, all within a karst (limestone) cave.

No date has been given but the IAA said that the existence of the ancient press, and another similar one found in the area a few years ago, is evidence of a thriving early olive-oil industry in the Bet Hakerem area of west Jerusalem. The discovery will enable the College and the IAA to retain the finds in situ to demonstrate the workings of an ancient oil press, which forms part of the history of technology.

Matching Geniza Fragments Online

Computer scientists have devised an online system to record disparate fragments from the Cairo Geniza, that are held by different museums and individuals, and enable them to be matched and put together without having to travel to the various locations where they are held. The system has been devised by Prof. Ya’acov Choueka of the Friedberg Geniza Project of Tel Aviv University, who has, with a team of programmers, digitized 360,000 fragments that are looking for a match. The images come from 60 collections all over the world and the system was recently unveiled at the 16th World Congress of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University last month. The project is still looking for another 300,000 fragments from museum libraries in Western Europe, Russia and some private collections. Individuals will be able to access the system at www.geniza.org

Village of Shikhin in Galilee

A joint expedition of the Kinneret College, Samford University and Kentucky Christian University, co-directed by Dr. Motty Aviam of Kinneret, has recently uncovered the village of Shikhin in the Galilee near to Tzippori (Sepphoris), the latter was the capital of the Galilee at one time. The village is mentioned by Josephus Flavius and in the Talmud as a village of many potters in the first century CE. The site has evidence of the remains of an early synagogue and considerable pottery works, including moulds for oil lamps, which are rare in a village. The excavation is important, according to Aviam, as it fills in a gap in the history of the Galilee between the First Temple and the Hasmonean periods, when there has been little evidence of its inhabitants. The proximity of the village to the former capital is also important as it will demonstrate how the local population lived in the rural areas in relation to the centre, and the expedition is keen to uncover more of the material culture that will demonstrate how the rural population lived.

Crusader Period Hospital in Jerusalem

The Israel Antiquities Authority announced that they had discovered part of the original hospital that stood in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, called the Muristan, which is a Persian word meaning hospital. The area was named for the Knights of St. John Hospitallers who occupied it after they were evacuated from the El Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, and now the site of the hospital has been found. The original building covered an area of 1.5 hectares (nearly 4 acres) but only one section remains on a site owned by the Wakf (Islamic Religious Authority) and to be developed as a restaurant by the Grand Bazaar Company of East Jerusalem. The exposed section is characterized by large pillars and gothic vaults spanning six metres (20 ft) and would have been surrounded by smaller halls. The IAA team, led by Amit Re’em and Renee Forestany, said that they identified the large hall from work done by Conrad Schick before 1900, who had mapped out its ruins from documents of the period in Latin and French. Re’em claimed that the hospital had been divided into several departments and could have accommodated up to two thousand patients in an emergency.

The Crusader staff had worked with Arab colleagues, whose knowledge of medical matters was far in advance of that of their Christian colleagues at this time. Saladin, who defeated the Crusaders in 1291, had renovated the hospital and allowed several Crusader monks and nuns to remain there to serve the local people. The existing hall is not open to visitors, but will now be renovated as part of the new restaurant, whose clients will be able to appreciate and absorb its medieval atmosphere together with its gastronomic delights.

Samaritan Byzantine Occupation by Appolonia

In advance of the northern development of Herzliya, archaeologists from Tel Aviv University, led by Prof. Oren Tal, and the IAA, led by Moshe Ajami, are examining a number of refuse pits that were the town dumps of an extensive Samaritan settlement, just south of ancient coastal Apollonia-Arsuf, of the late Byzantine period. The main pit so far excavated has thrown up 400 Byzantine coins, 200 Samaritan lamps, and gold and silver jewelry that includes an octagonal ring, inscribed with the Hebrew name of God on the outside of each of the eight sides. Some of the lamps were still sealed and unused and the excavators are intrigued by the fact that much of the refuse had been dumped before use. They speculate that there may have been some cultic reason for the Samaritans to discard unused material. They said that the community was a large one and that the octagonal ring was evidence of a high level of religious observance during the period of the sixth century. Investigation of the material continues and it is the intention of the IAA to clear all the findings from the site so that development of the area can proceed. [Evidence that the occupation was substantially Samaritan has not yet been made clear, but should be forthcoming when the coins are examined further, ed.].

 Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg,

W.F.Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem

Report from Jerusalem #42, 31st May 2012

First Temple Shrines at Khirbet Qeiyafa

The site, about 30km south-west of Jerusalem, continues to provide surprises. The excavator, Prof. Yossi Garfinkel, recently announced that he had found in three rooms of the site model clay shrines with decorative openings. He dates the shrines to several years before the establishment of the First Temple and suggests that the features of their openings can explain one of the biblical terms used in connection with the Temple. The openings or doorways are formed by triple-rebated frames of a distinctive nature and Prof. Garfinkel suggests that this is the explanation of the obscure term “shequfim” that is related to the Temple windows (I Kings 6:4). Carbon dating by Oxford University on ten burned olive pits has dated the city to between 1020 and 980 BCE, when it was destroyed. However it was later rebuilt in the Hellenistic period, but the model shrines relate to the earlier city, in which there were found no graven images, and no pig bones among the many animal remains of sheep/goat and cattle. This leads Prof. Garfinkel to claim that this was an Israelite city of the time of David located in the valley of Elah, the border area with Philistia. However, the model shrines look as if they may have contained small figurines and so they can be interpreted as having been pagan shrines, but no figures were found and this idea is rejected by the excavator.

Ancient Rabbinic Tomb at Tzipori (Sepphoris)

Three years ago a farmer in the agricultural village of Moshav Tzipori came across a burial cave on his land with a carved stone door inscribed with the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, a Talmudic sage of the third century CE. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) became interested and conducted an excavation and removed the inscribed door. Mitch Pilcer, the farmer, objected but later the IAA filed charges against him for illegal excavation and damage to an ancient site and antiquities. The initial case came to court only recently, and has raised a lot of interest among the ultra-orthodox, who claim that the ancient rabbi may himself appear as a witness, in accordance with the legend that Rabbi Yehoshua’s soul ascended to heaven directly from his tomb, a gateway between heaven and earth. Pilcer is keen to have the door restored to its site but the IAA is adamant that they must retain it for safekeeping.

Early Gold Jewellery from Megiddo

According to the excavators, the most valuable cache of gold jewellery of the Biblical period has now been discovered at Megiddo. The cache is dated to pre Iron Age I and belonged to the Canaanite inhabitants. It was found in a clay vessel unearthed in 2010 but has only recently been fully cleaned and evaluated. It includes nine large gold earrings, a gold ring seal and over a thousand small beads of gold, silver and carnelian, a semi-precious stone. One of the earrings is in the shape of a basket holding an ostrich-like bird and shows Egyptian influence, according to Professors David Ussiskin, Israel Finkelstein and Eric Cline, leaders of the expedition. The jewels are being studied further at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Museum before being exhibited to the public in due course.

Clay Seal Confirms Status of Bethlehem

During careful sifting of dirt from the passage to the Temple Mount from Siloam Pool, a tiny clay bulla or seal was uncovered with three lines of inscription. The wording reads….” In the seventh…..Bat lehem….to the kin(g)”. According to the excavator, Eli Shukron, this will have been the seal of a tax receipt referring to a quantity of produce delivered to the king, who may have been Hezekiah or one of his predecessors or successors, the script dating it to the 8th century BCE, and it shows that Bethlehem was part of the Judaean kingdom. The information was conveniently released to the press just before the festival of Shavuoth (Pentecost) when the book of Ruth, telling of the Moabite girl who came to the city of Bethlehem, is read in the synagogue.     

Mosaic Floor of Synagogue Vandalised

Extensive damage to the mosaic floor and walls of the synagogue of Hamat-Tiveryah (southern Tiberias) was discovered earlier this week. The damage included graffiti against the Director of the IAA, blaming him for desecrating ancient Jewish graves in the area. This has suggested that the perpetrators were ultra-orthodox elements. The Synagogue, of the 4th century CE and earlier, has fine mosaics with a central zodiac, representations of the Temple Ark and candelabra, and several donor inscriptions. The damage will be repaired but the work, according to the IAA and the National Parks Authority who administer the site, will cost millions of shekalim. Some areas of mosaic will have to be replaced by facsimiles based on photographs. The police will do everything possible to bring the vandals to justice.

Forgery Trial Lingers On

Although the seven-year-old forgery trial relating to the Yehoash tablet and the James, brother of Jesus ossuary ended recently, with the two defendants being found not guilty of forgery, the case is now continuing regarding the ownership of the two artefacts. The IAA is adamant that they should not be returned to the defendants, while the defendants claim possession, after having been found innocent of the original charges. One of the defendants, Oded Golan, was found guilty of the minor charge of dealing in antiquities without a licence, to which he has pleaded guilty, and has now been given a commuted prison sentence and fined 30,000 NIS (£5,000). The trial Judge Aharon Farkash has implied that he cannot easily resolve the conflicting ownership claims and may be forced to the “Solomonic” decision to have the two pieces destroyed. This has caused alarm amongst the experts, who were not able to agree on whether the pieces were fakes or not, but who nevertheless do not want to see them destroyed. The ossuary was found to be an original, though the inscription on it was queried, and the dark stone tablet is of great curiosity value, even if not genuine.  So the trial judge is back in the hot seat again.                              

Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg

W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem

Report from Jerusalem, #20, January 2010

Earliest settlers at Gesher B’not Ya’akov site, north of Lake Kinneret

This site on the banks of the Jordan has yielded evidence of very early artifacts of the Acheulian culture, according to researchers from the Hebrew University, so early in fact, that they seem to indicate human activity half-a-million years earlier than previously thought. There was in this area a freshwater lake (later Lake Hule, now drained) that changed over the years and which supported “a hundred thousand years of hominid occupation”. The evidence comes from a high density of fish and crab bones indicating the earliest signs of fish consumption by prehistoric people. There are remains of charred wood and signs of processing of basalt and other stone hand tools located around a hearth. The tools are in the form of hand axes, scrapers, and choppers, as well as hammers and anvils that suggest the processing of nuts for roasting and eating.

The evidence of dating is not clear and sceptics have suggested that the remains could be typical of any date of camping site with fish bones, nutshells and a hearth. It remains to be seen what further evidence of dating the Hebrew University researchers will be bringing forward.

Taliban, one of the Lost Tribes?

A senior research fellow at the Institute of Haematology of Mumbai (Bombay) has been awarded a grant to the Technion of Haifa to study the possibility that the core of the Taliban movement has a blood link to one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. This subject, which up to now has been in the realms of fantasy, is given a certain legitimacy by the fact that the examination of DNA samples and links can now be put on a scientific basis. Shahnaz Ali, an Indian scientist, will be supervised by Prof. Skorecki of the Technion who is well-known for researching Jewish genetic origins.

The majority of the Afghan Taliban are Pashtuns, and it has been their belief that they are the descendants of the Afridi Pathans, and there is a popular theory that their tribes are descendants of the Israelite tribe of Ephraim, that was exiled by the Assyrians in 722 BCE.
Shahnaz has taken extensive blood samples of the local Taliban population and the grant will enable him to analyse them at Haifa, where the work is expected to take up to one year.

Khirbet Qeiyafa (Valley of Elah fortress) ostracon deciphered.

The pottery shard with ink writing, uncovered last year by Prof. Yossi Garfinkel at the above site, has now been deciphered by Prof. Gershon Galil of Haifa University. It is written in ink in a form of Paleo-Hebrew script on five lines separated by a series of dashes, an unusual feature. Galil notes that the language is Hebrew as it uses certain words, such as “almanah” (widow) not used in the language of adjoining cultures. The sentiments expressed, such a taking care of slaves and strangers, are not to be found in the writings of neighbouring nations, but relate closely to social issues expressed in Hebrew writings, such as Isaiah 1:17, Psalms 72:3 and Exodus 23:2.

Galil postulates that the fact that scribes were active at this period in peripheral areas such as this site, must indicate that in the capital and other urban areas, scribes were perhaps even better trained and able to record significant data.

The ostracon, judging by the context in which it was found, is of the tenth century BCE and is therefore the earliest example of Hebrew writing known so far (presumably some experts consider it earlier than the Gezer Calendar). Galil also notes that the writing is evidence of a kingdom that administers a form of justice in its territory, and this would indicate an administration existing in the tenth century BCE, which would be the period of King David, according to the Biblical chronology.

The text of the shard, in English (as published by Galil) is as follows.

“You shall do (it), but worship the (Lord),
Judge the sla(ve) and the wid(ow)…. judge the orph(an),
(and) the stranger. (P)lead for the infant…. plead for the po(or and)
the widow. Rehabilitate (the poor) at the hands of the king.
Protect the po(or and) the slave…support the stranger”.

This is a most important find but the reading printed here made by Galil is strongly challenged by some scholars and not accepted by Garfinkel himself. It seems that for some reason Galil, who is a fine historian but not known as an epigrapher, has rather jumped the gun and come to a reading and to conclusions that are not accepted by many archaeologists and epigraphers. One looks forward to seeing the full scholarly publication of the text, when hopefully we can expect to see a consensus on the reading and its implication for the history of the period.

Early settlement at Ramat Aviv, north of Tel Aviv.

There was intelligent life in Tel Aviv eight thousand years ago, and near the University! The Israel Antiquities Authority have recently uncovered a structure in Ramat Aviv dating it to between 7,800 and 8,400 years ago. It lay on the northern bank of the Yarkon river, where it was joined by its Ayalon tributary, the kind of well-watered site selected by the earliest settlers, who left behind basalt bowls and animal remains, including hippopotamus bones and sheep/goat teeth, according to Ayelet Dayan who directed the dig for the IAA.

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