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Museums and Cultural Heritage

In an earlier post, we mentioned a dispute between Turkey and Germany over a gate sphinx which had been excavated at the Hittite capital of Hattusa and which is now on display in Berlin’s Pergamonmuseum. Turkey’s Minister of Culture and Tourism had threatened to withdraw Germany’s permit to excavate Hattusa if Germany did not return the sphinx. Previous requests by Turkey had been rejected, but now it seems Germany is willing to discuss the return of the sphinx. You can read more here.

Iran has “cut ties” with the Louvre, according to this report. The Louvre did not meet a deadline to decide which Persian objects in its holdings it would loan to Iran for exhibition. The same article makes mention of the Cyrus Cylinder which the British Museum loaned to Iran. The Cylinder was supposed to be returned in January, but the British Museum has agreed to extend the loan for an additional three months (see here).

Saudi Arabia has been showing 300 objects, including pre-Islamic artifacts, from its cultural heritage in an international exhibition named “Roads of Arabia.” We made mention of the exhibition here. A lengthy article (for the web, at least) in Aramco World gives some historical background to the exhibition. “Roads of Arabia” has already shown at the Louvre and in Barcelona. According to the article, the exhibition “will visit St. Petersburg, Berlin and Chicago through 2013.” (The map which accompanies the article is interesting. I cannot determine what scheme was used for labeling countries. Some modern states are labeled, such as Yemen, Qatar, and Kuwait. Other countries are not labeled, such as Iran and Israel. Turkey is labeled “Minor Asia.”)

HT: Jack Sasson

Tagged Arabia, Museums, Turkey

Carchemish Excavations – Further Details

The site of Carchemish is located on the Euphrates River, straddling the Turkey-Syria border. The first excavations in 1878-1881 were conducted by the British consul in Aleppo, Patrick Henderson.

The main excavations at the site, however, took place in 1911-1914 and 1920. The first season was directed by D. G. Hogarth and R. Campbell Thompson. Subsequent seasons were directed by Sir C. Leonard Woolley with the assistance of T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) and, in the final year, with the assistance of P. L. O. Guy. The work was interrupted both by World War I (1914-1918) and by the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923). After the Turkish War of Independence, the modern borders were established, and it became impossible to excavate Carchemish any further.

Carchemish, orthostat in the British Museum with relief of the Storm-god.

Now, 91 years later, work is underway to resume excavations at the ancient site. We remarked on this before, but an online news article now gives additional details. According to a piece in Hurriyet Daily News, the renewed excavations will be conducted by Italian and Japanese archaeologists and are set to begin sometime this year. In preparation for excavations, a contractor had to clear 1,200 landmines from the site. During the mine-clearing, some coins and other objects were retrieved from the site and turned over to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Tagged Excavations, Turkey

Jordan Lead Codices: Evidence of Forgery

A good bit has been written about the lead codices since my last serious post here on Thursday.

Some channels in the media continue to develop the story, though they generally ignore what scholars are writing on their blogs.

The Daily Mail is claiming that one of the codices has the earliest depiction of Jesus. You can take a look for yourself and see if you can make better sense of it than I can.

The article also reports that the owner of the 70 tablets is a Bedouin trucker named Hassan Saida who lives in the Israeli Arab village of Umm al-Ghanim near Mount Tabor. You can see a photo of his smiling mug in the article. That an allegedly illiterate man is the owner of these artifacts is certainly a surprise. If these items are forgeries (see below), one would expect that the owner is the forger looking to make a profit, but that seems very unlikely given Saida’s limited knowledge. If these are forgeries, they were made with sufficient skill to fool (at least briefly) several scholars. But then why would the forger sell them to Saida instead of wealthy international antiquities collectors? If Saida is trying to make a profit, why did he not (allegedly) accept tens of millions of dollars for a few of the codices? The story reports that Saida is the owner of a truck business and a relatively wealthy man in his village. His belief that the books had magical powers led him to purchase a few of the books at a time with the financial help of several partners.

Perhaps the claim of ownership is false and Saida is not the owner. Perhaps he is only playing this role on behalf of the true owner/forger in an attempt to remove doubts. At this point, Saida’s role may point to artifacts’ authenticity (but keep reading).

The Daily Mail also reports that analysis of the metal of several of the codices supports their antiquity. Yet the Israel Antiquities Authority allowed the items to be taken out of the country for analysis because they believed the items to be forgeries.

The role of the Elkingtons is described in a report in the Telegraph. A photograph shows these “archaeologists” in their “remote Gloucestershire hideaway,” and the story describes the threats on the couple’s lives, including guns fired at them near the scene of the discovery. If all of this sounds like a ready-made story for a book (with movie rights), then you won’t be surprised to learn that the Elkingtons’ literary agent is currently shopping their manuscript to publishers.

In order to determine the authenticity of the codices, the Elkingtons turned to Margaret Barker, a former president of the Society of Old Testament Study and an expert on early Christian studies.

While suspicious of forgeries, she recognized that counterfeits are usually based on something genuine, but these are unlike anything known today. Philip Davies, Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at Sheffield University, concluded that “if this is a hoax then it is incredibly elaborate.”

Yet it turns out that last year David Elkington had contacted Peter Thonemann, a lecturer on the Faculty of Classics at Oxford University. Thonemann analyzed photos of a bronze codex and determined that the writing was copied from a tombstone on display in the Archaeological Museum in Amman. The modern forger copied a line from the middle of the inscription that made no sense apart from the context. Thonemann concluded:

The only possible explanation is that the text on the bronze tablet was copied directly from the inscription in the museum at Amman by someone who did not understand the meaning of the text of the inscription, but was simply looking for a plausible-looking sequence of Greek letters to copy. He copied that sequence three times, in each case mixing up the letters alpha and lambda.
This particular bronze tablet is, therefore, a modern forgery, produced in Jordan within the last fifty years. I would stake my career on it.

If Elkington was interested in the truth, he would not have hidden this analysis when unveiling his grand discovery to the world last week. While it is possible that proving that one of the tablets is a forgery does not mean that they all are, it does not make sense that Elkington would send a known forgery to an expert for evaluation while holding back other authentic items. Nor does it seem likely that a smaller set of codices were discovered and then the finder decided to supplement them with a series of forgeries. While some bloggers are pointing to similarities in iconography, in my thinking this is less compelling evidence than the textual work of Thonemann because there are only so many ways that one can depict a palm tree and one would expect similar depictions from works composed about the same time.

Among the blog postings on the matter, in addition to those linked above, I would point you to Jim Davila’s “Random Thoughts,” Thomas Verenna’s “New Roundup,” Daniel McClellan’s photo comparisons, and Ferrell Jenkins’ observations on the Kinderhook Plates.

I also recommend Jim Davila’s observations on the mainstream media’s mode of operation, James McGrath’s recognition of the value of the biblioblogging community, and Michael Heiser’s warning to those who believe everything they read.

Tagged Pseudo-Archaeology

Video Lecture: Revealing Dead Sea Scrolls to the World

The Great Courses is offering a free lecture (until April 5) entitled “Revealing the Dead Sea Scrolls to the World.” The 30-minute lecture is given by Gary A. Rendsburg and is one of 24 lectures in the Dead Sea Scrolls course. The lecture is described as follows:

To follow the story of how the Dead Sea Scrolls were first translated and interpreted is to witness the great lengths to which scholars will go to learn new insights into the mysteries of the past. It’s a tale filled with controversial publications, scrolls squirreled away in shoeboxes, a revealing New Yorker essay, and a six-day-long war between Israel and its Arab neighbors. More important, it’s a tale whose conclusion revolutionized our understanding of ancient Jewish history. In Revealing the Dead Sea Scrolls to the World, you learn

how some of the original documents first came into the hands of scholars;

how the first series of scrolls were transcribed and translated; and

a few of the many insights learned from work done on the important Temple Scroll.

The lecture may be viewed here.

Tagged Dead Sea, Resources

Protests over the Aravah’s Last Sand Dunes

The area in question is about 30 miles (50 km) north of Eilat. From the Jerusalem Post:

Israel’s Green Movement held a demonstration Wednesday afternoon in front of the Knesset calling for the government to revoke plans to mine Samar sand dunes, the Arava Desert’s last remaining dunes, which host a variety of animal species unique to that “island” landscape, according to Prof. Alon Tal, head of the group. “It’s a biodiversity hotspot – because it’s a meeting of three continents,” said Tal, who is also a faculty member at Ben- Gurion University of the Negev’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research. Originally 11,000 dunams, the Samar dune area is already down to about 2,300 dunams due to previous work. The Green Movement, alongside other environmental activists, has been fighting the mining ever since a license was granted for it about a year-and-a-half ago by the Israel Lands Authority, Tal explained. Meanwhile, Tal added, the Samar dunes are a popular place for hikers and children who play in the sand. “Why prevent future generations of Israelis’ access to its one remaining sand dune, and destroy an internationally significant hotspot for biodiversity to reduce the travel time of sand by an hour and a half?” Tal asked. “It bears pointing out that the area of the dunes is five times bigger than the area slated to be mined, and it is situated just to the north of the Yotvata Nature Reserve, and the ILA intends to preserve the entire contiguous area.”

The full article is here.

Lead Books: A Personal Investigation

Some days you just wake up full of regrets. I think bloggers probably have more regrets. Pushing the “publish” button is oh-so-easy, and once it is on the internet, your word stands forever.

Such is the case with my analysis yesterday about the Early Christian lead books recently brought to light. If you read that post, you will recall that I expressed skepticism about the circumstances around this discovery. I questioned just how great it was. But in fact, I was completely wrong. It really does have the potential of being the greatest discovery of all time.

My change of heart began this morning when I received in the mail (registered) a small packet containing one of the codices. The owner’s representative wrote that his feelings were hurt by my comments yesterday and he wanted me to see one of the artifacts for myself. The letter was very warm and obviously written by a highly educated individual who desires only to see that the truth come out.

While I cannot attest to the authenticity of the 69 other books, this one is obviously very old. It even has the smell of an old book, despite being made of metal. The letters are very unusual, and that’s another indication of the document’s antiquity. I remember the shape of the letters in my grandparents’ old King James Bible and these letters have to be older than those.

Though I have little metallurgical training, it appeared to me that the codex was made of lead, and not copper, as some of them allegedly are. I verified this by using the edge of the codex to write a few words on a piece of paper and the results were remarkably similar to writing with a pencil. Just to make sure, I had my infant son lick the codex, knowing that real lead would cause his tongue to turn slightly green. The fact that this codex is made with lead provides clear evidence that it is ancient, as nobody makes books out of lead any more. I would post a photo of the codex here but the battery on my iPhone is dead and I don’t have another camera to use.

I have been fortunate to have several scholars stop by to offer their sage counsel. Rev. Stevie Blamer of the Dispensational School of Archaeology observed dirt on the edges of the codex, clear evidence that it was hidden away for thousands of years. Dr. Tim Sheriff of Salem University College School insisted that the writing in the codex may exactly match the biblical text, if only he could decipher the code. Prof. Eli Johns of the Unreformed Theological Seminary countered that the code didn’t need deciphering but should be interpreted according to its literal sense. Dr. Ricardo Tyler of St. Papa John’s College observed several grammatical errors on the first page and wondered from what school the author graduated.

I, of course, am doing all of this for the benefit of humankind, glad to give of my time and services so generously. And you’ll benefit even more when you BUY MY NEW BOOK, which is due out next week. You can look for it at Amazon under the title True Archaeologist Makes Greatest Discovery Ever!

I think my soul’s physical embodiment is finally in tune with the earth’s inner vibrations. There can be no other explanation for the gift of knowledge that I mysteriously possess. I would certainly warn you to disregard any cynical voices that claim that the planet’s dynamic equilibrium is upset each year on April 1.

Tagged April Fool's Joke