The main spring was located at the northeast foot of the hill. Here, early explorers visited the entrance to a water system, though because of bats and debris/wash only a small part of a tunnel could be accessed. About the first 100 feet (30 m) of the tunnel were described in great detail by Gottlieb Schumacher in 1910, and it was excavated in 1973 on a small-scale by Z. Yeivin. The main excavation of the tunnel took place in 1996 and 1997 under the direction of Hamdan Taha.

(Excavations were also conducted on top of the hill, but publication is still forthcoming.) The location of the tunnel is marked in green on this site plan.

What raised my interest in this were reports the last two years of the water system outside Al-Walaja, near Bethlehem. In three seasons, the excavators at Khirbet Bal’ama cleared a total of 380 feet (115 m) of tunnel, but since they did not reach a shaft-entrance at the top of the hill, they suspect a long section of tunnel remains to be explored. Of the tunnel sections which were excavated, archaeologists discovered three entrances to the tunnel, the lowest of which provides access to the cistern/spring of Bir es-Sinjil (or Sinjib). The photo below shows the lowest entrance. The stairs with metal handrails on the right lead up to the second entrance.

The tunnel was apparently constructed in the Iron Age, though this is based largely on inference rather than clear, direct evidence. It was secondarily used in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The cistern/spring was in use all the way up to the modern period. Nearly all of the explored tunnel is rock-cut. The tunnel has a parabolic ceiling between 10 and 16 feet high (3-5 m), and there are 57 rock-cut steps and lamp niches in the walls. The plan below shows the three entrances, steps, and slope of the tunnel. The three excavated entrances are approximately equidistant from one another, with about 100 feet (30 m) of tunnel between them.

I look forward to publication of the excavations conducted on top of hill, and hope for future work to be carried out on the tunnel and the site. The main publication of the tunnel was very difficult for me to locate in the U.S.:

Taha, Hamdan and Gerrit van der Kooij.
2007  The Water Tunnel System at Khirbet Bal’ama. Khirbet Bal’ama Archaeological Project Report of the 1996–2000 Excavations and Surveys, volume II. Ramallah: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage.

A perhaps more-accessible report can be found in:

Taha, Hamdan.
2000  “Excavation of the Water Tunnel at Khirbet Belameh, 1996-1997.” Pages 1587–1613 in Proceedings of the First International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Rome, May 18th-23rd 1998. Ed. P. Matthiae and E. Enea, Alessandra. Rome: Università degli studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” Dipartimento di scienze storiche, archeologiche e antropologiche dell’antichità.

The first is the Iran Stele, a limestone stele of Tiglath-pileser III which is preserved in fragments that were found in western Iran. The stele depicts the king and symbols of deities, and the inscription records the king’s annals, including a report that he imposed tribute upon (among others) king Menahem of Samaria (2 Kings 15:19).

The second is the “Jerusalem Prism” of the Assyrian king Sennacherib. Sennacherib recounts his campaign to Sidon, Philistia, and Judah in 701 B.C. He reports how he defeated the Egyptians at Eltekeh and Tamna (2 Kings 19:9), reinstalled Padi as king of Ekron, and then conquered many of Judah’s towns while confining Hezekiah to Jerusalem like a caged-up bird (2 Kings 18-20).

Sennacherib recorded the account of this campaign on several other prisms and cylinders like this one, such as the Taylor and King Prisms and Rassam Cylinder (British Museum) and the Chicago Prism (Oriental Institute).

Readers may also be interested in the British Museum’s free Image Service, which is not new. Once you search the museum’s online collection for the item in which you have an interest, you will be able to see if there are photographs available. After clicking on the thumbnail, you can enlarge the photo or see if there are “More Views” available. Below the photograph, there should be a link “Image service: Use image.” This link will take you to a page where you can register or sign-in to the Image Service and request the photograph. The website will ask you to select how you intend to use the photograph; options include “Classroom or teaching material” and “Private or professional study or research (without print publication).” Once you submit the request, the photograph will be emailed to you within a day or two. The stated limit is 100 images per month. I successfully requested about a dozen images in one sitting for use in a classroom PowerPoint.

Objects one might wish to use in teaching could include: Enuma Elish, Atrahasis, Epic of Gilgamesh, Lachish Reliefs, Rosetta Stone, Black Obelisk, Kurkh Monolith, Taylor Prism, Armana letters, and Lachish letters. One could search for the name of a king from Assyria or Egypt or Rome, or a particular type of object such as coins, lamps, papyri, and so forth.

A helpful source to consult as to what kinds of things are to be found in the British Museum that might have relevance for Bible teaching is:

Fant, Clyde E., and Mitchell G. Reddish.
2008  Lost Treasures of the Bible: Understanding the Bible through Archaeological Artifacts in World Museums. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans.

HT: Jack Sasson

On April 8, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago opened its new exhibit, “In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East.” The centerpiece of the exhibit is (a cast of?) the Katumuwa Stele, a basalt monument with Aramaic inscription which was discovered at the site of Zincirli in 2008. The exhibit runs until next January.

More information about the exhibit is online here. The catalog for the exhibit can be downloaded free in pdf format.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the Oriental Institute is holding a symposium on Sunday, May 4, at 1:00pm. The speakers include:

Virginia Herrmann
David Schloen
Theodore Lewis
Karel van der Toorn
K. Lawson Younger

The symposium is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Information about the symposium is here and online registration is here.

Beginning at 9am on Friday, March 7, and running through 1:30pm on Saturday, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago will be hosting its annual symposium. This year’s topic is “The Early/Middle Bronze Age Transition in the Ancient Near East: Chronology, C14, and Climate Change.” The symposium is free and open to the public; no registration is required.

During the late third millennium BC one of the biggest transformations of the ancient Near East took place, affecting almost all regions from Egypt to Anatolia and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Iranian plateau. This period not only saw the collapse of urbanization in the southern Levant at the end of the Early Bronze Age III and the following pastoral Intermediate Bronze, and the rise and decline of the Akkad empire in the Upper Euphrates region, but also the end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom in the Nile valley. In recent years it has been argued that climatic reasons, especially rapid climate change in the late third millennium BC (the so-called 4.2 ka BP event) might have triggered this supra-regional collapse in western Asia and Egypt, linking it to a period of aridification and cooling.

This seminar brings together specialists working in different fields of the ancient Near East, including Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as scholars working on radiocarbon dating and climate data. Three major topics will be discussed: The radiocarbon evidence for the mid- to late third-millennium BC Near East, the chronological implications of new dates and how historical/archaeological chronologies should/could be adapted, and — based on this evidence — if and how climate change can be related to transitions in the late Early Bronze Age. Furthermore, written sources concerning late Early Bronze Age Near Eastern interrelations and/or transformation and collapse from Egypt to Syria/Mesopotamia will be taken into account.

Here is the list of presenters and topics. Several of them look very interesting. See the website for additional information. The schedule for sessions is located here.

The University of Chicago’s Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion is sponsoring a three-part lecture series on “Assyria in Israel, Judea, and the Levant.”

The first lecture presented by Irene Winter (Harvard University, emerita) is on February 11 (Tuesday). No title is yet provided for this lecture.

The second lecture by David Wright (Brandeis University) on “The Covenant Code Appendix (Exodus 23:20–33) and Assyrian Royal Inscriptions” will be given on February 26 (Wednesday).

The last lecture by Elizabeth Bloch-Smith (Saint Joseph’s University) will address “The Assyrian Military Impact on the Ground and in Biblical Texts” on March 13 (Thursday).

The series will take place in the Divinity School’s Swift Hall Common Room on the 1st floor. Lectures begin at 5:00pm and end at 6:30pm. The website for the lectures is here.