Todd Bolen, Author at BiblePlaces.com

Wednesday Roundup

Concerning yesterday’s ceremony inaugurating the “Water Gate” in Jerusalem, Leen Ritmeyer responds to my question of whether any archaeologist believes Eilat Mazar with a careful, well-illustrated presentation of his conclusions. Ritmeyer was actually the one to suggest to Mazar in the 1980s that the structure may be a gate, but instead of investigating the possibility, she called a press conference to announce the discovery!

Arutz-7 has a two-minute video tour of the newly opened Ophel City Wall site. Ferrell Jenkins posts more photographs.

In his latest Asia Minor Report (posted online by Leen Ritmeyer), Mark Wilson provides a link of free online books of early explorers in Turkey. The archive has lists of similar works for Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Greece, and Italy.

Wilson also points to a website with panoramic photos of sites in north central Turkey.

FRIGKÜM’s website features three-dimensional panoramic photos of the various Phrygian sites (n.b. the labels are in Turkish). The pictures were taken in 160 locations throughout the three provinces as part of the Phrygian Valley 360 Degree Virtual Tour Photography Project. The photography is breathtaking so check it out. The apostle Paul probably saw some of these amazing monuments when he traveled through Phrygia on his second journey (Acts 16:6).

In regular features at the Jerusalem Post, Danny Herman takes viewers on a four-minute video tour of the Western Wall Tunnels, Yehoshua Halevi explains how he takes nature photographs in Israel, and Wayne Stiles considers whether archaeologists are really excavating New Testament Bethsaida.

Newly excavated parts of the underground Crusader city of Acco (Acre) are now being opened to the public.

Templars Tunnel in Acco

Tagged Discoveries, Jerusalem, Resources, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Ophel City Wall Site Inaugurated

From a press release from the Israel Antiquities Authority:

In a festive ceremony to be held Today – Tuesday, June 21, 2011, the Ophel City Wall site, a complex of buildings uncovered along the route of the fortifications from the First Temple period (tenth-sixth centuries BCE), and the display of the earliest written document ever uncovered in Jerusalem will be inaugurated. The opening of the site, located in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park, and the exhibit in the Davidson Center are made possible through the generous donation by Daniel Mintz and Meredith Berkman.
[…]
Upon completion of the excavation and conservation work at the Ophel City Wall site, visitors will now be able to touch the stones and walls whose construction tells the history of Jerusalem throughout the ages. It is now possible to walk comfortably through the built remains, in places that were previously closed to the public, to sense their splendor and learn about the history of the region by the signage and the different means of presentation and illustration.
[…]
The highlight of the excavations is the complete exposure of the gate house. The plan of this impressive building includes four rooms of identical size, arranged on both sides of a broad corridor paved with crushed limestone. The plan of the gate house is characteristic of the First Temple period (tenth-sixth centuries BCE) and is similar to contemporaneous gates that were revealed at Megiddo, Be‘er Sheva’ and Ashdod. The excavator, Eilat Mazar, suggests identifying the gate house here with the ‘water gate’ mentioned in the Bible: “…and the temple servants living on Ophel repaired to a point opposite the Water Gate on the east and the projecting tower” (Nehemiah 3:26). The ground floor of a large building that was destroyed in a fierce conflagration can be seen east of the gate. Mazar suggests that this structure was destroyed by the Babylonian conquest of the city in 586 BCE. Twelve very large, clay store jars (pithoi), which probably contained wine or oil, were discovered on the floor of the building. Engraved on the shoulder of one of these pithoi is the Hebrew inscription “לשר האו…”. The inscription indicates that this pithos belonged to one of the kingdom’s ministers, perhaps the overseer of the bakers.
During the course of the excavation the earliest written document to be exposed to date in Jerusalem was discovered. This unique find, which is of extraordinary importance to the history of the city, will now be on permanent display to the public in the Davidson Center. This is a very small fragment of a clay tablet engraved in Akkadian cuneiform script, which was the lingua franca of the time. Among the very skillfully written words that can be read are the words: “you were”, “later”, “to do” and “they”. The tablet and the writing are typical of the tablets that were used in antiquity throughout Mesopotamia for international correspondence.

The full press release, along with 19 photographs (including the one above), is available at the IAA site (temporary link). I’d be curious to know if there are any other archaeologists who agree with Mazar’s identification of the structure she excavated as a gate. Some years ago it seemed that even those most sympathetic to her views did not follow her on this, but perhaps that has changed. I note that the press release does not state that this is a gate but that “Mazar suggests” that it is a gate.

Temple Mount of Jerusalem from the southwest

UPDATE: Joseph Lauer sends along links to the story in the Jerusalem Post, Bloomberg, and Arutz-7.

UPDATE (6/22): Leen Ritmeyer provides his response to my question about the identification of the building.

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem, Tourism

NPR Radio: Reading Ancient Graffiti

The Weekend Edition of NPR News features a story of Karen Stern’s study of ancient graffiti.

[Karen] Stern, 35, is an archaeologist and an assistant professor in the history department at Brooklyn College. Her passion is the tomb graffiti of the ancient Jews in what was then Roman Palestine. Graffiti has been “published, but sort of disregarded,” she says. “Whereas I think it is intimate, vocal and spontaneous, and adds to the historical record.”
[…]
An expedition to the Southern Galilee a few hours north ends at the site of one of the country’s richest burial sites: Beit She’arim. It is both national park and necropolis; a city of the dead dating back to the first century. There are more than 30 excavated tombs here.
[…]
It’s in the Cave of Coffins that Stern points to two inscriptions in ancient Greek. They are tiny and clustered near niches once holding oil lamps.
One says, “Take courage, Holy Parents of Pharcitae, udes adonitas — no one is immortal.” Stern explains that the dead who are being brought into the catacombs shouldn’t feel that they are weak just because they’ve passed on.
She reads aloud the other inscription: “Good luck on your resurrection.”

The article continues with a report of her visit with Boaz Zissu to a hidden cave at Horvat Lavnin in the Shephelah where they each discovered a new inscription. The NPR website includes the 13-minute audio and 16 photographs.

Horvat Lavnin, possible site of biblical Achzib, in the Shephelah of Judah

Tagged Discoveries, Galilee, Shephelah

Controversy over Plans for Lifta, ancient Waters of Nephtoah

On the outskirts of modern Jerusalem lies an abandoned Arab village that is likely to be identified with the biblical waters of Nephtoah. The site is listed on the Judah-Benjamin border in the tribal lists of Joshua (cf. Josh 18:15).

Joshua 15:8–9 (NIV) Then it ran up the Valley of Ben Hinnom along the southern slope of the Jebusite city (that is, Jerusalem). From there it climbed to the top of the hill west of the Hinnom Valley at the northern end of the Valley of Rephaim. From the hilltop the boundary headed toward the spring of the waters of Nephtoah, came out at the towns of Mount Ephron and went down toward Baalah (that is, Kiriath Jearim).

As Anson Rainey notes in The Sacred Bridge (p. 181), the name of the Arab village Lifta preserves the ancient name of Nephtoah. Gabriel Barkay has suggested that Mei (waters of) Nephtoah preserves the name of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah (“What’s an Egyptian Temple Doing in Jerusalem?” Biblical Archaeology Review 26/03, May/Jun 2000; online here).

The site is in the news today because of controversial plans to transform the crumbling village into luxury apartments and a hotel. From the Jerusalem Post:

In January, the Israel Lands Authority published a tender to build 212 luxury apartment villas and a hotel in the area of Lifta, turning the crumbling stone houses into lavish residences.
A coalition of activists successfully petitioned the Jerusalem District Court to halt the tender in March. The petition, filed by former Lifta residents, Rabbis for Human Rights, and Jafra, a Palestinian heritage organization, calls for the courts to freeze the bidding process and for the ILA to require that an independent monitoring organization complete a survey of the area to determine what should be preserved and what can be developed.
[…]
But the current legal impasse seems miles away from the peacefulness of Lifta, which has stood abandoned but largely intact for 64 years. It is the only completely abandoned Arab village that was not destroyed or inhabited by Jews after 1948, though its empty buildings have provided a haven for drug dealers, prostitutes and the homeless.
[…]
Isaac Shweky, the director of the council, takes a pragmatic approach to Lifta’s development: The site is in desperate need of repair, and if nothing is done it will continue to crumble away and eventually be reduced to nothing, as the weeds and vandals reclaim all 54 of the remaining structures. The cost to preserve the buildings would be astronomical, in the hundreds of millions of shekels. The only way to fund the preservation of the buildings, he believes, is to develop the site commercially.

The story includes a video interview with a former resident of the town who desires that the ruins be preserved as a witness to al-Naqba (“the Catastrophe”) of the founding of Israel in 1948.

Lifta, site of the biblical “Waters of Nephtoah”

Tagged Jerusalem

Israel’s Polluted Skies

If you’ve ever compared the (lack of) clear air in Israel today with scenes in older photographs, you may not be surprised that one factor affecting Israel’s skies today is pollution arriving from other countries. From Haaretz:

Air pollution from North Africa and Europe containing toxic materials has reached Israel, according to a series of studies by the Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Tests show that toxic materials also get here on particles of desert dust.
[…]
Scientists have been studying air particles arriving in Israel for years, and it is known that pollution can move long distances. But only in recent years has a precise analysis been made of the pollution and its origins.
The meteorologic data indicates that for two thirds of the days of the year, air currents arrive from Western and Eastern Europe, and for more than one-fifth of the year, air currents arrive from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and North Africa.

The story continues here.

The Sea of Galilee. Clear skies are the norm in David Bivin’s photographs from the 1960s.

Tagged Weather

Weekend Roundup

Hezekiah’s Pool in the Old City of Jerusalem has been a place for depositing garbage for many years.

City authorities are no longer ignoring the health hazard but have begun removing the debris by tractor. The report in Haaretz sent Tom Powers to take some photos and speculate on possible discoveries that could be made if trash removal leads to archaeological excavation. Ferrell Jenkins pulled out some of his earlier photos and discusses the pool’s name and date.

An IMAX film entitled “Jerusalem” but with aerial footage from all of Israel is scheduled for release in 2013, notes Leen Ritmeyer. A six-minute preview is already online.

Tel Burna (Libnah?) has a roundup of activities from the first week of the summer excavation.

On the BiblePlaces page at Facebook, Michael Sisson recommends the iTunes app “British Library 19th Century Collection” for good works about the Holy Land by early explorers. The collection will increase from its current 1,000 works to more than 60,000 titles later this summer.

While you wait for the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review to land in your mailbox, you can get a preview of the contents. This includes an announcement of a brand new section of their “award-winning Web site,” Bible History Daily. The screenshot indicates that it will have an RSS feed.

Tagged Jerusalem, Resources, Shephelah