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Weekend Roundup, Part 2

Turkey has launched a new ship for underwater archaeology that is considered to be one of the largest archaeological vessels in the world.

NY Times: “A 2,000-year-old collection of medical tools, recently unearthed in Hungary, offer insight into the practices of undaunted, much-maligned Roman doctors.”

Melissa Cradic explains the value of the the open-access web exhibition, “Unsilencing the Archives: The Laborers of the Tell en-Naṣbeh Excavations (1926-1935).”

Zoom lecture on June 23, 10:00am ET: “Beyond Impressions: Cylinder Seals of the Neo-Assyrian Period as Experiential Object,” by Kiersten Neumann (Zoom link)

New release: Picturing Royal Charisma: Kings and Rulers in the Near East from 3000 BCE to 1700 CE, edited by Arlette David, Rachel Milstein, Tallay Ornan (Archaeopress, £32; open access ebook)

New release: Être et paraître. Statues royales et privées de la fin du Moyen Empire et de la Deuxième Période intermédiaire (1850-1550 av. J.-C.), by Simon Connor, is available for free here.

Walking The Text’s recommended resource of the month is Peoples of the New Testament World, by William A. Simmons. (Also available on Logos.)

If you are not familiar with the Lanier Center for Archaeology, you can find out more about their programs here.

New video from World History Encyclopedia: “The Famous Baths of the Roman Empire”

Mark Hoffman has been thinking about AI and biblical art.

HT: Agade, Explorator

The excavations at Shiloh are most impressive in terms of their size and enthusiastic workers. They are making good progress in achieving their goals, and I look forward to forthcoming announcements.

Tagged Lectures, Resources, Technology, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 1

“A woman walking along the Palmahim Beach discovered an over 3,000-year-old figurine of the Egyptian goddess Hathor floating in the water.”

A group of first-graders discovered an Egyptian scarab on a field trip to Azekah.

The first-ever excavations of the Hasmonean fortress at Hyrcania recently began.

Abigail Leavitt is reporting on her experiences in the excavations of Tel Shiloh, most recently with Week 3. Tim Lopez gives his perspective in Spanish.

“Thousands who were illegally holding antiquities in their homes returned the items during a two-week campaign this month, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Ministry of Heritage reported.” One of the more impressive artifacts returned is a small anchor from the Roman period.

Writing for Christianity Today, Gordon Govier explains how archaeological discoveries have strengthened the case for the historicity of David.

Chandler Collins reflects on Nadav Na’aman’s recent proposal to place the earliest city of Jerusalem on what is today’s Temple Mount.

The “Road of the Patriarchs” is the subject of a new TBN documentary.

Bryan Windle is on Digging for Truth discussing Hoshea, the last king of the northern kingdom of Israel.

Zoom lecture on June 29: “The Jewish Character of Jerusalem in the Early Roman (Second Temple) Period as Attested by Archaeological Records,” by Ronny Reich.

Chandler Collins is inviting participation in his online “Biblical Jerusalem and Its Exploration” course this fall as well as his Jerusalem study tour offered in March by the Biblical Archaeological Society in collaboration with Jerusalem University College.

Other JUC courses offered online this fall include:

Archaeology of Religions in the Bible, by Chris McKinny and Kyle Keimer
Cultural Backgrounds of the Bible, by Oliver Hersey
The Life and Times of Paul, by Chris Vlachos

James Riley Strange reflects on the life of Dennis E. Groh, who died in April.

HT: Agade, Explorator, BibleX

A view of Hyrcania taken a few weeks ago, from the east

Tagged 10th Century, Israel's Coast, Jerusalem, Judah, Lectures, Sad News, Shephelah, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 6

The Museum of Stone Tools is a newly opened virtual museum featuring 3D models of stool tools from ancient to modern times.

The Codex Sassoon, one of the oldest complete Hebrew Bibles in existence, was sold by Sotheby’s for $38.1 million. The codex was purchased by the American Friends of ANU – Museum of the Jewish People (formerly Museum of the Jewish Diaspora) and will be donated to the Tel Aviv museum.

“The Sackler Library has been renamed the Bodleian Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library following the removal of the Sackler name from various parts of the University of Oxford.”

The Chester Beatty Library is hosting a virtual tour of its First Fragments: Biblical Papyrus from Roman Egypt exhibition. The exhibition catalog is available here (€15). Available as open access: The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri at Ninety: Literature, Papyrology, Ethics, edited by Garrick Vernon Allen, Usama Ali Mohamed Gad, Kelsie Gayle Rodenbiker, Anthony Philip Royle, and Jill Unkel (De Gruyter, $143; free pdf).

The Met has changed its approach to items that entered its collection illegally.

The site onomasticon.net has been updated to include newly published personal names from the Iron Age II southern Levant.

The Bible & Archaeology Fest XXVI will be both in person in San Antonio and livestream.

New release: The Ancient World Goes Digital: Case Studies on Archaeology, Texts, Online Publishing, Digital Archiving, and Preservation, edited by Vanessa Bigot Juloux, Alessandro Di Ludovico, and Sveta Matskevich (Brill, $198).

“Yale introduces LUX, a groundbreaking custom search tool for exploring the university’s unparalleled holdings of artistic, cultural, and scientific objects.”

Mark Hoffman compares ChatGPT with BibleMate.org, an alternative whose “mission is to provide biblically accurate answers and guide users on their faith journey. It’s about ensuring AI doesn’t just offer information but contributes meaningfully to spiritual growth.”

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Arne Halbakken, Ted Weis, Stephanie Durruty, Wayne Stiles, Alexander Schick, Gordon Franz, Explorator

With the restrictive hours at Arbel making it very difficult to descend the famous cliffs, you might prefer an alternate trail that begins at the Arbel synagogue and passes through the Valley of the Doves. No time restrictions on this hike (marked green on the 1:50k map).

Tagged Lectures, Museums, Resources, Technology, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 5

Excavations in the Sarachane Archaeology Park in Istanbul uncovered a fragment of a statue of the Greek god Pan holding a flute.

Turkish Archaeological News rounds up the top stories in the month of May, including mention of three new museums to open in Kuşadası (ancient Ephesus)

Writing for Religion Unplugged, Kim Lawton reports on her recent travels to the seven churches of Revelation. She interviewed me as part of her research.

The Christian Post has a feature on places in Turkey related to the apostle Paul.

A retired garbage collector helped uncover two dozen bronze statues in central Italy.

Three more victims of the Vesuvius eruption were discovered recently at Pompeii.

The National Archaeological Museum of Naples will be opening a new branch in the city to display more of its collection.

Stephen DeCasien investigates the development of the naval ram in early maritime warfare.

Katerina Velentza describes her project to “interpret anew where, when, why and how sculptures were transported by sea in the ancient Mediterranean world.”

New video from the British Museum: “How the Greco-Persian Wars changed the way Athenians drank their wine” (16 min).

Terry Madenholm investigates how the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed suicide.

“Last week the American Academy in Rome launched a major update to the Arthur & Janet C. Ross Library’s Digital Humanities Center, giving the repository a new look and feel while increasing access to the collections and their research value in several important ways.” This resource is easily searchable, especially by location, with lots of old photos.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Arne Halbakken, Ted Weis, Stephanie Durruty, Wayne Stiles, Alexander Schick, Gordon Franz, Explorator

The Lod Mosaic Museum protects a beautiful Roman-era mosaic, but I think it’s unlikely to get many visitors, especially with the $10 entrance fee.

Tagged Discoveries, Italy, Museums, Photo Resources, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 4

Zohar Amar believes that the best candidate for the balm of Gilead is resin from the Atlantic pistachio tree.

The latest video from Expedition Bible is “Peniel: Where Jacob saw the Face of God and lived.”

“The oldest known to-scale architectural plans recorded in human history” are engravings of desert kites discovered in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. More than 6,000 desert kites have been discovered in the Middle East and Asia to date.

Archaeologists discovered rare copper ingots from the Early Bronze Age in Oman.

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered two embalming facilities at Saqqara.

“Archaeologists offer a new explanation for one of the century’s grislier finds, ‘a carefully gathered collection of hands’ in a 3,500-year-old temple” in Avaris.

“Egyptian conservationists are racing to save ancient relics buried with some of Cairo’s most renowned residents as bulldozers flatten parts of a vast cemetery that houses forgotten kings.”

Jerusalem Post: “Many people died after visiting King Tut’s tomb in Egypt. What exactly happened, and how does it involve the Aspergillus fungus?”

A couple of scholars have recently tried to identify all the birds in the Green Room of Akhenaten’s palace in Amarna.

“Egypt has barred the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO) in Leiden from carrying out excavations in the famous Egyptian necropolis Sakkara. The country accused the Dutch museum of “falsifying history” with the “Afrocentric” approach to the RMO exhibition Kemet: Egypt in hip-hop, jazz, soul & funk.”

New release (open access): Egypt and the Mediterranean World from the Late Fourth through the Third Millennium BCE, edited by Karin Sowada and Matthew J. Adams

New release: Life and the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Art from the Senusret Collection, edited by Melinda Hartwig (open access; click on right sidebar for pdf download)

New release: ‘To Aleppo gone …’: Essays in honour of Jonathan N. Tubb, edited by Irving Finkel, J.A. Fraser, and St John Simpson (Archaeopress, £16–45)

The Ideas podcast reflects on “the many afterlives of the Queen of Sheba.”

Eckart Frahm is guest on Thin End of the Wedge discussing his new history of Assyria. Also, YaleNews has a brief interview with him about the book.

A new video retraces the journey of Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, perhaps the earliest photographer of the eastern Mediterranean.

Two pillars used to decipher the Phoenician script are reunited for the first time in 240 years in an exhibition in Abu Dhabi.

Zoom lecture on June 15: “Home and Away: Studying the Deportations to and from the Southern Levant during the Age of the Neo-Assyrian and the Neo-Babylonian Empires,” by Ido Koch

Jaromir Malek, Egyptologist and creator of the Tutankhamun Archive, died recently.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Arne Halbakken, Ted Weis, Stephanie Durruty, Wayne Stiles, Alexander Schick, Gordon Franz, Explorator

The newly renovated Davidson Center in Jerusalem displays dozens of finds related to the Temple Mount, including these steps from the staircase over Robinson’s Arch.

Tagged Discoveries, Egypt, Jordan, Mesopotamia, Resources, Sad News, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 3

Gabriel Barkay was recently interviewed by ICEJ. Among other things, he says that he recently finished a book about material culture in the Song of Songs.

Gordon Franz is the latest subject in the Discussions with the Diggers series at Bible Archaeology Report. He relates the story of the discovery of the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets.

Chandler Collins has published the third issue of his “Jerusalem Tracker” newsletter, providing a list of every new publication related to Jerusalem’s history.

Bryan Windle describes the top three reports in biblical archaeology in the month of May.

The first batch of commercially available ancient yeast, discovered at Goliath’s hometown of Gath, will begin shipping later this year.

Chemical analysis of Middle Bronze grave goods at Megiddo reveals the extensive use of wine in funerary rituals.

Arleta Kowalewska and Craig A. Harvey explain what we know about Roman bathhouses in the southern Levant.

“Dor Zlekha Levy’s One Tongue audiovisual project revives Proto-Semitic, the ancestral language of Hebrew and Arabic, in song.”

Hybrid lecture on June 22 at the Albright: “The 2022 Season of the Megiddo Expedition,” by Matthew J. Adams

Hybrid lecture on July 13 at the Albright: “Back to Tell Qasile: Current Research of Old Excavations,” by Amihai Mazar

Arieh O’Sullivan tells the story of his family’s relationship with Samson’s tomb and the tomb’s transformation in recent years.

The latest episode from Walking The Text: “Jesus in Galilee, Part 3: Religious Jews of the (Evangelical) Triangle.”

“Lessons from the Land: The Kings” is the latest series produced by Appian Media. The 13 episodes are about 5 minutes each.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Arne Halbakken, Ted Weis, Stephanie Durruty, Wayne Stiles, Alexander Schick, Explorator

Nearly a century after the Americans dismantled half of the Solomonic gate, the Israelis have restored it. Now visitors can walk through the six-chambered gate as they can at Hazor and Gezer.

Tagged Discoveries, Galilee, Jerusalem, Jezreel Valley, Lectures, Philistines, Shephelah, Weekend Roundup