BiblePlaces Blog - Page 283 of 558

More Evidence of Hellenistic Harbor of Ptolemais/Acco

In April 2009, Israeli archaeologists announced the discovery of a harbor at Acco dating to the 3rd-2nd centuries BC. More evidence has been uncovered in recent excavations, including a destruction layer and a slipway probably used for military ships. From the Israel Antiquities Authority:

According to Kobi Sharvit, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority Marine Archaeology Unit , “Among the finds we’ve discovered now are large mooring stones that were incorporated in the quay and were used to secure sailing vessels that anchored in the harbor c. 2,300 years ago. This unique and important find finally provides an unequivocal answer to the question of whether we are dealing with port installations or the floor of a building. In addition, we exposed collapse comprised of large dressed stones that apparently belonged to large buildings or installations, which was spread of a distance of dozens of meters. What emerges from these finds is a clear picture of systematic and deliberate destruction of the port facilities that occurred in antiquity”. Sharvit adds, “Recently a find was uncovered that suggests we are excavating part of the military port of Akko. We are talking about an impressive section of stone pavement c. 8 meters long by c. 5 meters wide that was partially exposed. The floor is delimited on both sides by two impressive stone walls that are also built in the Phoenician manner. It seems that the floor between the walls slopes slightly toward the south, and there was a small amount of stone collapse in its center. Presumably this is a slipway, an installation that was used for lifting boats onto the shore, probably warships in this case”. According to Sharvit, “Only further archaeological excavations will corroborate or invalidate this theory”.
The bottom of the ancient harbor was exposed at the foot of the installations. There the mooring stones were found as well as thousands of fragments of pottery vessels, among which are dozens of intact vessels and metallic objects. The preliminary identification of the pottery vessels indicates that many of them come from islands in the Aegean Sea, including Knidos, Rhodes, Kos and others, as well as other port cities located along the Mediterranean coast.

The story includes photographs of the ancient quay, a mooring stone, and an imported bowl. High-resolution images are available from the IAA here.

The city of Acco was known as Ptolemais in the Hellenistic and New Testament periods. It is mentioned once in the New Testament in connection with Paul’s return from his third missionary journey (Acts 21:7). You can read more about the city here.

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Israel's Coast

Giveaway: Any Five Volumes of the Pictorial Library

Last month we gave away the Israel Collection of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands to two winners. This week we are going to let the winners select the five volumes of their choice.

Perhaps if you win, you will choose the Israel Collection, volumes 1-5. If you are more interested in the travels and writings of the apostle Paul, you might opt for Eastern and Central Turkey (vol. 9), Greece (vol. 11), The Greek Islands (vol. 12), and Cyprus and Crete (vol. 13), and Italy and Malta (vol. 14).

If your interest inclines more to the Old Testament and you’ve already purchased the Israel Collection, we’d recommend Jordan (vol. 6), Egypt (vol. 7), Lebanon (vol. 8), Eastern and Central Turkey (vol. 9), and Cultural Images of the Holy Land (vol. 17).

There are quite a few options, depending upon your particular interest. If you can’t decide, you can order the entire collection for a discount of 35% off the price of individual volumes. (And if you place an order this week and win the drawing, we’ll refund your complete purchase.)

We have one drawing from which we will select two winners at random. You may enter the drawing one time only. The contest ends on Friday.

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Tagged Giveaway

The Date of the Beginning of Iron II

In 1996, Israel Finkelstein proposed a significant lowering of dates in the Iron I-II periods in Israel.

This sparked a debate which has often been heated in part because Finkelstein’s conclusions entail a virtual elimination of the United Monarchy as described in the Bible. This is the result of Finkelstein’s dating of the end of the Iron I period, with its poor material culture and lack of monumental construction, to the time after David and Solomon lived.

In an article published in 2008, Amihai Mazar released the results of Carbon 14 studies at four sites where “it is agreed by all that these four destructions mark the end of the Iron Age I.” He reports the results as follows:

After eliminating clear outliers, we reached the following results (all in 68% probability) (see Fig. 3, upper line, for combined averages from these four sites):
End of Qasile X: 1039-979 B.C.E.
End of Megiddo VIA: 1010-943
End of Yoqne‘am XVII: 1045-997
End of Tel Hadar: 1043-979

Just to get a better handle on the matter, I pulled out my calculator to determine the middle of the range for each site: Qasile: 1009; Megiddo: 976; Yoqneam (Jokneam): 1021; Tel Hadar: 1011. So it’s safe to say, based upon these results, that the Iron I ended and Iron II began about 1000 BC.

With the calculator still handy, I tabulated the average of the four dates. It came out to 1004 BC.

That’s a familiar number to students of biblical history who know that (1) Shishak invaded Israel in 926 BC, the fifth year of the rule of Rehoboam, such that (2) Solomon died in 931 BC, after forty years on the throne following (3) David who died in 971 and ruled for 33.5 years in Jerusalem, or 1004 BC. This 1004 BC date was acknowledged by the Municipality of Jerusalem which celebrated the 3000th anniversary of the city in 1996 (mistakenly, because of the missing year “0”).

The Carbon 14 numbers provide nothing more than ranges, with varying amounts of probability, but I thought it curious that the average date of the numbers for the beginning of Iron II just happened to be the year that David began ruling in Jerusalem.

The above quotation is from page 114 of Amihai Mazar, “From 1200 to 850 B.C.E.: Remarks on
Some Selected Archaeological Issues,” pp. 86-120 in Israel in Transition: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIa (c. 1250–850 B.C.E.). Volume 1. The Archaeology, ed. L. L. Grabbe.

A recent article that reveals the lack of precision in Carbon 14 dating is “The Four Pillars of the Low Chronology,” by Daniel A. Frese and Thomas E. Levy, pp. 187-212 in Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future.

Tagged 10th Century, Analysis

Weekend Roundup

More photos and a video of the gold treasure from Apollonia have been released. The value of the coins is now given (in at least one article) as $500,000.

The “Egyptian Antiquities’ Renaissance Project” has been launched in order to turn archaeology into a major source of income in Egypt.

The Museum of the Bible, featuring the collection of the Steve Green family, will open not in Dallas and not in New York, but in Washington, DC.

I wonder if you could name 6 Christian Sites in Rome You Should Know About.

Shmuel Browns describes and illustrates the newly opened archaeological site on Mount Gerizim.

Joe Yudin visits “Genesis Land” in the Judean wilderness.

The owner of a bed-and-breakfast in Sepphoris was convicted of damaged antiquities when carrying out renovations on his property.

“Israel’s Tourism Ministry is planning to upgrade the hotel strip area at the southern end of the Dead Sea….The Dead Sea was the most crowded leisure destination in Israel in 2011, with some 857,000 visitors during the year.”

Itzhak Beit-Arieh, Associate Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, has passed away.

HT: Daniel Wright, Jack Sasson

Dead Sea from the northwest
(photo source)

Tagged Dead Sea, Discoveries, Egypt, Italy, Judah, Samaria

Updates from the Khirbet Qeiyafa Excavation

Luke Chandler is volunteering at the excavations on the northern side of the Elah Valley and he briefly notes a few items of interest:

An early Iron Age inscription has been discovered.
This may be the final season of excavating Khirbet Qeiyafa.
The excavators have identified the next site they wish to excavate.
Chandler has also has posted a series of photos from the first week of the dig.

Don’t miss his great photo of a sling stone!

Excavations near western gate of Khirbet Qeiyafa
(photo source)

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Shephelah

Picture of the Week: Mount Hermon and Caesarea Philippi

(Post by Seth M. Rodriquez)

With the recent release of the revised and expanded version of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands, I thought it would be helpful to start a series of posts that highlight some pictures from the collection.

With over 17,000 pictures in 18 volumes, there is an immense amount of material in there. My purpose will be to feature one photo per week that can be especially useful in the classroom or in the church. Although the PLBL collection contains many of the typical “postcard” shots of the usual tourist locations, its true value lies in the more unusual pictures that illustrate a particular feature of geography or archaeology that can be easily overlooked or that other photo collections fail to include. It is these types of pictures that I would like to highlight and discuss. Preference will be given to photos that were not included in the original edition of the Pictorial Library and that are not posted on the BiblePlaces.com website.

Our first photo comes from Volume 1: Galilee and the North, and is entitled “Mount Hermon and Caesarea Philippi aerial” (photo ID #: bb00140015).

In this photo, the immense size of Mount Hermon can be clearly seen while it dwarfs the remains of the ancient city of Caesarea Philippi (located at the bottom center of the photo). The ruins of the Crusader period castle of Nimrud can also be seen sitting on the ridge above Caesarea Philippi in the upper right quadrant of the photo.

This shot is helpful for a number of reasons. First, it gives the viewer an appreciation for the massive size of Mount Hermon. With its peak reaching an altitude of 9,230 feet (2,814 meters), it is almost three times the height of any other peak in the territory of ancient Israel. Secondly, it shows the geographical relation between the castle of Nimrud and Caesarea Philippi. Although I have visited both sites a number of times, the fact that they were both built on the same ridge escaped my notice until I saw this picture. However, those two reasons are not why I decided to feature this picture in today’s post.

The third and most valuable reason is that it can be used effectively as an illustration when teaching or preaching on the Transfiguration of Jesus. The Transfiguration occurs in Matthew 16:28-17:9, Mark 9:1-9, and Luke 9:27-36. In each of those books, the event is immediately preceded by the discussion that Jesus had with his disciples where Peter declared, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Matthew and Mark tell us that this conversation occurred in the region (or district) of Caesarea Philippi (Matt. 16:13; Mark 8:27).

A few days later, Jesus took Peter, James, and John up on a mountain where He was transformed in front of them. Matthew and Mark describe the location as “a high mountain” (Matt. 17:1; Mark 9:2), and Luke refers to it as “the mountain” with a definite article (Luke 9:28). Looking at this photograph it is not hard to see which mountain the gospel writers had in mind. If they were in the region of Caesarea Philippi and they went up a high mountain … indeed the most noteworthy mountain in the area … then it is not difficult to figure out which mountain was intended. Over the years, some have interpreted the “mountain” in these passages as referring to Mount Tabor on the eastern edge of the Jezreel Valley, but given the geographical indicators provided in the text, Mount Hermon is a more likely candidate.

For a teacher or preacher, a photo such as this could be used as a dramatic backdrop to a discussion of the pivotal conversation Jesus had with His disciples in this region and the Transfiguration on the mountain. By looking at this photo, the listener can easily picture the entire chain of events: the private conversation somewhere down in the valley, the physical exertion of Jesus and the chosen three as they climb the tall mountain, the glorious transformation of Jesus appearing as a bright spot somewhere on the mountain as His face and clothes shone brightly (Matt. 17:2), and finally the appearance of a shining cloud as God the Father spoke to the disciples (Matt. 17:5). The use of a photo such as this can draw students and congregations into the story and engage their minds in a way that cannot be done with words alone. The picture enhances the message.

This photo is included in Volume 1 of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands and can be purchased here.

Tagged Picture of the Week