A.D. Riddle, Author at BiblePlaces.com

Last Days for Roads of Arabia

(Post by A.D. Riddle)

The “Roads of Arabia” exhibition ends its U.S. tour on January 18, 2015, at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. The website does not indicate any further venues for the exhibition, so this might be the last chance to see it. Here are some of our posts about it on this blog (from most recent to earliest):

Roads of Arabia Volume in PDF (July 02, 2014) [The pdf is still available as far as we can tell]
Roads of Arabia Exhibition (June 24, 2014)
Roads of Arabia in Houston (January 08, 2014)
Roads of Arabia Exhibition: Update (April 23, 2013)
Museums and Cultural Heritage (April 05, 2011)
Archaeology of Saudi Arabia (February 27, 2011)

The official website of the “Roads of Arabia” exhibition is online here. I did not notice before that the site has a downloadable “Roads of Arabia Bibliography” at the bottom of this page (direct link). This looks like a helpful resource to have on hand. The first two items of the bibliography are exhibition catalogs. The first of these can be downloaded at the link given above. The second one looks very similar to the first catalog, but it is not exactly the same. Poking around online, I was able to locate a few of the individual chapters. These appear to have better quality images than the full-volume pdf.

“Introduction: Roads of Arabia – Archaeological Treasures of Saudi Arabia”by Ali Al-Ghabban and Stefan Weber.
“Natural Environment of the Arabian Peninsula” by Max Engel, Helmut Brückner, Karoline Meßenzehl.
“Old Arabia in Historic Sources” by Daniel Thomas Potts.
“Ancient Tayma’: an Oasis at the Interface Between Cultures New Research at a Key Location on the Caravan Road” by Arnulf Hausleiter [in German].
“Dedan: Treasures of a Spectacular Culture” by Said Al-Said.
“Writing Systems and Languages of Arabia – A Tour” by Michael Marx.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art also has a downloadable bibliography related to the exhibition.

Tagged Arabia, Museums

CORONA Atlas of the Middle East

(Post by A.D. Riddle)

I recently discovered a mapping resource hosted by the University of Arkansas, the CORONA Atlas of the Middle East. The CORONA Atlas is not a brand new website (it was reviewed in 2012), but it says it is still in BETA stage. Simply put, the CORONA Atlas of the Middle East overlays CORONA satellite imagery over Google Earth imagery.

What is CORONA imagery?

During the Cold War, CORONA was a codename for one of the United States’ top-secret satellite missions created to capture high-resolution imagery. The first mission was launched into space in 1960, and the program continued until 1972. The imagery was declassified in 1995, making it available to the public.

What is the value of CORONA imagery?

From the CORONA Atlas of the Middle East:

In regions like the Middle East, CORONA imagery is particularly important for archaeology because urban development, agricultural intensification, and reservoir construction over the past several decades have obscured or destroyed countless archaeological sites and other ancient features such as roads and canals. These sites are often clearly visible on CORONA imagery, enabling researchers to map sites that have been lost and to discover many that have never before been documented.

For example, in 1998, James Hoffmeier and his team were able to locate additional sections of Egypt’s east frontier canal in northern Sinai thanks to CORONA imagery.

What has the University of Arkansas done with the imagery?

First, even though CORONA imagery is in the public domain, there are costs associated with digitization of the original film and acquisition of the files. The University of Arkansas has purchased much of this imagery and made it available for researchers. Second, the University of Arkansas corrected the spatial geometry of the photos for distortion (orthorectification) and has positioned the imagery in real geographic space (georectification). This allows the CORONA Atlas to overlay the CORONA imagery on top of other imagery that is positioned in the same geographic space.

How can the CORONA Atlas of the Middle East be used?

Recently, I was trying to locate the site of Samsat in Turkey. Samsat is believed to be ancient Kummuḫ, capital of a Neo-Hittite kingdom by the same name. (In the Hellenistic period, it was replaced by the kingdom of Commagene.) The problem with finding Samsat today, however, is that it now lies at that bottom of Lake Atatürk Dam. It is very hard to find a tell in a lake. The Atatürk Dam was built on the Euphrates River and was completed in 1990. The reservoir flooded the valley of the Euphrates River and its tributaries, and the lake today covers approximately 320 square miles. The CORONA Atlas of the Middle East allows me to see Samsat (and the Euphrates River) before it was submerged, and to locate it with precision in Google Earth, because you can adjust the transparency of the CORONA imagery. The CORONA atlas also has tools for measuring, obtaining coordinates, and capturing imagery for other uses.

Here is a comparison of images taken from the CORONA Atlas of the Middle East. On the left is the Google Earth imagery, in the center is the CORONA imagery with some transparency over Google Earth, and on the right is the CORONA imagery.

The tell of Samsat is located in the center of the right photograph. Here is a close-up.

Head on over and poke around. It took my internet service several moments to load imagery, so it may require you to have a little patience.

Tagged Resources, Technology

Trinity Biblical and ANE Archaeology Lecture Series

(Post by A.D. Riddle)

On Tuesday, September 16, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL will present the fall lecture in its “Trinity Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology Lecture Series.” William M. Schniedewind (UCLA) will speak on the topic “Early Hebrew Scribes — When Israel Began to Write.” The lecture begins at 7:00 p.m. and will take place in Hinkson Hall, Rodine Building. The event is free and open to the public.

Tagged Lectures

Destruction of Jonah’s Tomb

(Post by A.D. Riddle)

According to Iraqi News, ISIL/ISIS terrorists destroyed what is believed by some to be the tomb of the prophet Jonah. The mosque and tomb are located in modern Mosul, Iraq on Tell Nebi Yunus (Arabic for Prophet Jonah).

The elements of ISIL controlled the mosque of the Prophet Younis in Mosul since they invaded the city…there is almost certain information stating the fact that the elements of ISIL dug up the grave of the Prophet Younis.

That is not the only thing they have destroyed…

They torched 11 churches and monasteries out of 35 scattered across the city of Mosul, and hours later destroyed statues of poets, literary and historical figures of which Mosul has long been proud.

The full article with photographs and video is here.

Tell Nebi Yunis in Mosul, Iraq.

(Photo from Panoramio).

About 50 years or so after Jonah, Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.) enlarged Nineveh and made it his capital. The walls were 7.5 miles in circumference, had 15 gates, and enclosed two mounds: Tell Kuyunjik and Tell Nebi Yunus. Here is a map of the Assyrian heartland, and here is a map of Nineveh in the time of Sennacherib.

We wrote another piece about a shrine in Lebanon which commemorates the location where the fish spit Jonah out. You can read that here.

Roads of Arabia Volume in PDF

(Post by A.D. Riddle)

In response to a post last week in which we mentioned the book Roads of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Harry Orenstein has alerted us to the existence of a pdf of the volume. The file (22.2 MB) can be downloaded from the website of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities using the last link on this page. It is a pdf of the English version of Roads of Arabia. The quality of the images has been degraded, so the pdf does not replace the printed book, but it does make the volume searchable and much easier to move around.

There are a few other documents as well. Here are direct links to each:

Tagged Arabia, Resources

Nebuchadnezzar in Lebanon

(Post by A.D. Riddle)

The ArchéOrient blog recently posted a piece by Rocio da Riva on the inscriptions and reliefs in Lebanon belonging to the Neo-Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II. (This is the king mentioned in 2 Kings 24-25; 2 Chron 36; Jeremiah; Daniel; and elsewhere in the Bible.) The original article is in French, but Google Translate does an almost-semi-respectable job of producing an English version here.

The article mentions four places in Lebanon where Nebuchadnezzar left inscriptions and/or reliefs.

Nahr el-Kalb
Wadi Brisa, aka Wadi esh-Sharbin
Shir es-Sanam
Wadi es-Saba’

Three of these sites are in the northeast of the Lebanon Mountains, oriented in the direction of Riblah, Nebuchadnezzar’s headquarters in the west (2 Kings 25; Jer 39 and 52). The inscriptions/reliefs are located along routes which lead up into the mountains and which were used by the Babylonians for felling and transporting cedars of Lebanon for construction. The locations can be viewed here in Google Maps (if I did it right).

The Nahr el-Kalb inscriptions are alone on the other side of the Lebanon Mountains, at the mouth of a river named Nahr el-Kalb on the Mediterranean coast. (Well, not entirely alone, because on the opposite bank of the river is a rocky promontory where one will find nearly two dozen other stelae left by conquerers from Ramesses II in ca. 1276 B.C. to the “Liberation of South Lebanon” in A.D. 2000. See Seth’s post here.)

Nahr el-Kalb (“Dog River”).

The inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar are secretly hidden

behind all the vegetation just right of the bridge.

Da Riva has been working on the royal inscriptions of all the Neo-Babylonian kings. A lot of her recently-published work concentrates in particular on the Lebanon inscriptions listed above, but she has also just completed an edition of the inscriptions of Nabopolassar, Amel-Marduk and Neriglissar (cover shown below). Many of her articles are available at her Academia.edu page (sign up required).

As a prelude to her editions of the Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions, Da Riva published a short introduction entitled The Neo-Babylonian Royal Inscriptions: An Introduction (2008). We recommend especially the first 19 pages where one will find a very nice, up-to-date, historical summary of the Neo-Babylonian period.

HT: Jack Sasson

Tagged Lebanon