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“Writings Out of Time” Fall Lecture Series

The University of Arizona Library is hosting a lecture series this semester on writing in the ancient world. The first lecture was yesterday, but four more lectures are slated. From the website:

Lecture I – October 1, Thursday, 3:00 p.m.

Ancient Near Eastern Literacy and Libraries: Their Significance for the Scholarly Tradition of the ‘West’
Anne Kilmer, in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America, Tucson Chapter

Lecture II – October 19, Monday, 3:00 p.m.

Speaker Panel:

From Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Arizona: The First Writing, Indiana Jones and the Arizona State Museum Basement’s Mystery
Ewa Wasilewska, Associate Professor/Lecturer, Department of Anthropology and the Middle East Center, University of Utah

The Origins of the Alphabet: From Proto-Sinaitic to Greek
Ronald S. Hendel, The Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Egyptian Hieroglyphs: Writing with Pictures and Painting with Words
Richard H. Wilkinson, Regents’ Professor of Egyptian Archaeology, School of Anthropology, Department of Classics and Department of Near Eastern Studies, The University of Arizona

Lecture III – October 29, Thursday, 4:00 p.m.

Archaeological Preservation Efforts and Agonies in Northern Iraq, 2006
Jesse Ballenger, Ph.D. Candidate and Haury Fellow, Department of Anthropology, The University of Arizona, in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America, Tucson Chapter.

Lecture IV – November 5, Thursday, 4:00 p.m.

Life and Death on the Estate of a Princess in 21st Century BCE Mesopotamia
David Owen, The Bernard and Jane Schapiro Professor of Ancient Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Curator of Tablet Collections, The Jonathan and Jeannette Rosen Ancient Near Eastern Studies Seminar, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America, Tucson Chapter.

Lecture V – November 9, Monday, 7:00 p.m.

Lecture location: Tucson Jewish Community Center, 3800 E River Rd.

The Art of Writing in Ancient Israel
William Schniedewind, Professor of Biblical Studies and Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Lecture presented as part of the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies Shaol Pozez Memorial Lectureship Series.

Tagged Lectures

The Jewish Quarter before 1948

Jewish Quarter from the Temple Mount

It wasn’t all that long ago that this area looked very different. This photograph, taken from the Temple Mount, looks towards the Jewish Quarter. I don’t have a “today” comparison because sensitivities now do not allow one to access this area.

Dominating the skyline are two domed synagogues, once major landmarks in the Old City: the taller Tiferet Israel (“Glory of Israel”) on the left and the Hurvah (“Ruin”) on the right. Sadly, both structures fell victim to the hostilities of 1948. During the final fighting for the Jewish Quarter in May 1948, both synagogues, which had served as strategic positions for the quarter’s Jewish defenders, were intentionally blown up by Arab forces. Then, with Israeli control of the Old City after 1967, the remains of both buildings were consolidated and preserved as memorials. Until 2006, the Hurvah site sported a memorial arch which became a visual symbol of the new Jewish Quarter and an Old City landmark. Today the Hurvah is being rebuilt, exactly to its original mid-19th century appearance.

In the foreground are the houses and other structures of the Mughrabi Quarter, an Arab neighborhood which covered what is now the expansive Western Wall plaza and the adjacent excavated areas around the Temple Mount. After Israel captured the Old City in the 1967 Six Day War, within a matter of days the Mughrabi Quarter’s residents were forced out and relocated, and most of the buildings seen here were razed. However, the lower floors of some of the houses became the base of an earthen ramp that provided access to the Temple Mount’s Mughrabi Gate from 1967 until 2004, when part of the ramp collapsed. Now, these same houses—and more ancient structures beneath them—are being exposed archaeologically in advance of construction of a new Mughrabi Gate foot-bridge.

This photograph and description are taken from the Jerusalem volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection. The photograph is originally from the Library of Congress, LC-matpc-04722, and the description was written by Tom Powers. The $25 CD includes 685 high-resolution photographs and the equivalent of a 200-page book of annotations such as the one above.

Tagged American Colony Photos, Jerusalem

Counting Birds in Israel

From the Jerusalem Post:

Volunteering for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel’s annual survey of migrating birds in Israel’s skies is not for the novice bird-watcher. First, the watcher has to spot the flecks hundreds of meters up in the air, then identify them and then estimate their numbers – all while the birds are flying overhead at around 50 km per hour.
For experienced bird-watchers, like Nico Noondhof and Erwin Booij – who flew here from the Netherlands especially to volunteer for the survey – it is a chance to see flocks of eagles and pelicans that simply do not grace the skies of any other country in such numbers.
“It’s amazing,” Noondhof told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, in a field near Nahalal in the Jezreel Valley. Outfitted with his own equipment – telescope, binoculars and camping chair – Noondhof has been counting birds of prey and pelicans for hours on end daily.
Noondhof has traveled widely to watch birds, throughout Europe and Asia and the Middle East, “but it cannot compare to Israel during the migrating season.”
In the few hours during which the Post joined the survey line, 700-800 eagles flew by and about 2,200 pelicans winged their way south in one giant flock.
[…]
On Tuesday, survey project coordinator Jonathan Meyrav was constantly on the phone to his contact in the air force, warning him of impending flocks. The birds are tracked from the Hula Valley in the North down through the Jezreel Valley. The air force plans its take-offs and landings from the nearby base as best it can in light of Meyrav’s reports.
At one point, the planes didn’t take off at all as the pelicans flew by. At another, they took off the other way to avoid the birds. And at still another point, they took off into the birds’ flight paths but then banked sharply away, to train in another area of sky.
Israel is in a unique position to observe bird migrations, as it is a way station between Europe and Asia and Africa. Over 500,000 birds traverse its length each season.
It is the only place in the world to see so many birds of prey, like the greater spotted eagle, the lesser spotted eagle, the kite and others, as well as pelicans flying over, Dan Alon, who coordinates all of SPNI’s birding centers explained.

The complete article is here.

Birds above Jordan River north of the Sea of Galilee

Tagged Galilee

Mahane Yehuda

Western visitors to Jerusalem are often impressed with the city’s large open-air market, Mahane Yehuda. Arutz-7 runs an illustrated article about it today.

You can learn much about a city by exploring its open air market and listening to its stories. By the end of the 19th [secular] century Jerusalem was growing, with Jews returning to their homeland. In addition, immigrants from numerous nationalities and religions from Europe, Ethiopia, Turkey, and Russia were also contributing to the urban fabric of the city. New neighborhoods were built outside the walls to alleviate the overcrowding in the Old City.

The Jerusalem neighborhood of Mahane Yehuda was established in 1887 with 162 houses, founded by three business partners: Johannes Frutiger, Joseph Navon, and Shalom Konstrum, and named after Navon’s brother Yehudah. Frutiger was a German Protestant who owned the largest private bank in Palestine; it was he who acquired the license for the Jaffa-Jerusalem Railway with Navon from the Ottoman government.

The full article and photos are here.

Mahane Yehuda, Jerusalem

This might be a good opportunity to mention an Israeli film related to the feast of Sukkot (which begins on Friday evening). Ushpizin is a delightful 90-minute movie about a husband and wife whose celebration of the holiday is interrupted by some unexpected visitors. The film is in Hebrew with English subtitles. The movie won awards in Israel for “best picture” and “best actor,” but it’s popular enough in the U.S. that I found it for rent in our local Blockbuster. Amazon has it used for $8.

Tagged Jerusalem

Kh. Qeiyafa and the Southern Adventist University

Southern Adventist University’s Institute of Archaeology joined the excavation team at Khirbet Qeiyafa this summer. Their recent DigSight newsletter includes photographs and a description of their experiences and future plans. You can read the newsletter online here. I’ll just make a few observations, primarily because there has been almost no other news from the Qeiyafa excavations this year. That may be related to an inability to decipher the ostracon, could suggest there is some great discovery yet to be reported, or more likely is the result of a rather regular season, without any dramatic news like last year. Archaeology is, after all, 99% physical labor, data collection, and laboratory analysis. The best “finds” come out of the synthesis of the data, when a site’s history and culture is accurately understood. In brief, some things I noted in the newsletter:

Dr. Michael G. Hasel, director of SAU’s Institute of Archaeology is associate director of the KQ excavation.
The team is planning to work at KQ until 2012 when they will begin their own excavations under the umbrella of the Elah Valley Regional Project.
The gate that Yosef Garfinkel visually identified last fall was excavated and it is apparently still identified as a gate. (This is significant because it is a second gate at the site.)
The Hellenistic settlement is immediately preceded by Iron IIa floors upon which were “almost complete restorable vessels, including a lamp, chalice, and large storage jars with thumbprint impressions.”
The casemate wall rests on bedrock, “indicating without a doubt that the massive wall system associated with the western gate does in fact date to the early tenth century B.C., despite recent opposing suggestions by some scholars.”
Garfinkel’s lecture at the Institute on November 17 is entitled, “Excavating the Biblical City of Sha’arayim.” He apparently has not changed his identification of the site since last year.
Garfinkel’s ASOR lecture (11/19) is a double session, entitled “Khirbet Qeiyafa: A Fortified City in Judah from the Time of King David.” See a full list of related lectures at Luke Chandler’s blog.

The newsletter has more, including opportunities for the general public and a way to subscribe to the newsletter.

Tagged Excavations, Shephelah

Pool of Siloam, Then and Now

Understanding the ancient Pool(s) of Siloam is a bit difficult. First, there is the pool where Hezekiah’s Tunnel emerges. This pool is small, shallow, and unimpressive. In 2004, a monumental reservoir was discovered to the south, dating to the 1st century A.D. (for more on that, see here and here).

Scholars today do not yet know how the two pools are related. The Lower Pool was quite likely the place of the miracle of the healing of the blind man (John 9). The area above was the site of a pool in the Late Roman period, and continued in use in the Byzantine period when a 5th century church was constructed over it. What existed here before the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 is not known.

Pool of Siloam, view to the north, present day

Today if you visit the pool at the end of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, there are a few column drums from the Byzantine pool, but little else to suggest the beautiful complex that pilgrims visited. That hasn’t always been the case, however, for the excavations of Bliss and Dickie in the 1890s revealed some of the ancient walls. In the photo below, behind the donkey is a wall of large, well-dressed stones with a classical molding. The excavators identified this as the northern side of the square Roman pool.

Pool of Siloam, view to the north, early 1900s

After the excavations, Muslims erected a mosque over the northwestern corner of the area, covering all traces of the earlier pool and the Byzantine church built to commemorate it.

This photograph is one of 45 in the “City of David” set included in the Jerusalem volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection. Photo: Library of Congress, LC-matpc-08471.

Tagged American Colony Photos, Jerusalem, Then and Now