Dead Sea Archives - Page 12 of 30

Weekend Roundup

IAA excavations in the Schneller Compound in Jerusalem have revealed a Roman bathhouse and a Roman- or Byzantine-era winerpress. High-res photos and a video may be downloaded here.

Archaeologists have unearthed a cemetery in use from the Middle Bronze to the Iron Ages south of Bethlehem. Two journal articles on which the report was based can be read here and here.

A hidden camera reveals for the first time the condition of Palmyra after ISIS terrorists destroyed temples, arches, and tower tombs.

A missing letter in an inscription brings into question whether the Amphipolis tomb really belonged to Hephaestion, Alexander the Great’s beloved friend and general, and may instead belong to Alexander’s mother, Olympias.

The Bethsaida Excavation Project has posted their 2015 season report (73 pages with lots of photos).

Three looted Mesopotamian sculptures were found in a Slovenian refugee camp.

Haaretz runs a story on the mysterious 90-mile long wall in Jordan.

Two UCSD professors are working with the Israel Antiquities Authority to update the Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land.

An online Neo-Assyrian Bibliography compiled by Heather D. Baker and Melanie Groß is available.

Egypt is seeking to add four archaeological sites in Alexandria and Sinai to UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Jacob sheep being raised in Canada will be brought back to Israel.

The death of the Dead Sea has probably never been better illustrated than in this multi-media rich “article” at Haaretz. It includes the prediction that within 20 years there may be no access to the shoreline of the Dead Sea.

Clyde Billington and Gordon Govier discuss the latest discoveries on this week’s edition of The Book and the Spade.

Shmuel Browns visits the site of Lifta (biblical Nephtoah) on the edge of Jerusalem.

Minna Silver takes readers on a visit to biblical Haran, once home to the patriarch Abraham.

Eisenbrauns’s Deal of the Weekend: The Horsemen of Israel
Horses and Chariotry in Monarchic Israel, by Deborah Cantrell ($20).

Barry Britnell introduces a new video project entitled “Following the Messiah” and encourages everyone to support the project through their Kickstarter Campaign.

HT: Ted Weis, Gale, Joseph Lauer, Agade, Ferrell Jenkins

Tagged Dead Sea, Egypt, Excavations, Galilee, Jerusalem, Jordan, Resources, Syria, Technology, Turkey

Weekend Roundup

A seven-year-old boy found a 3,400-year-old figurine at Tel Rehov.

Archaeologists working at Timna in southern Israel found some remarkably well-preserved fabrics from the time of David. You may recall that for a long time scholars denied there was any activity at the site during the time of the United Monarchy.

A €1.6 million Israeli-German project will use digital tools to put the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls back together again.

A major renovation of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is underway.

Two artists covertly scanned the bust of Nefertiti and have now released a 3-D dataset.

Two guards at Dayr al-Barsha in Middle Egypt were killed by looters.

Adam Prins recently presented a seminar at the Albright Institute on “3D Models in Archaeological Excavation Recording: The JVRP Method.”

An exhibition of two recent treasure hoard discoveries provides insight into Roman life in England.

A series of lectures will be given at Tel Aviv University for the annual celebration of “Aharoni Day” this coming Thursday.

Project Mosul is a new website that “solicits photographs of antiquities and uses 3-D modeling software to create a virtual record of what was lost in the attack.”

Now online: Bryant Wood’s critique of Steven Collins’ northern location of Sodom.

Wayne Stiles explains five ways the Lord taught his people to walk by faith in the land of Israel.

The Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, Old Testament e-book volumes are on sale for $4.99, ending today.

HT: Ted Weis, Joseph Lauer, Agade

Tagged Dead Sea, Discoveries, Egypt, Jordan Rift, Judah, Lectures, Museums, Negev, New Exhibits, Resources, Technology

Weekend Roundup, Part 1

Have archaeologists identified some of the pilgrimage roads that led up to Jerusalem?

The Dead Sea is a fascinating place, as Wayne Stiles shows from his research and with some good visual aids.

@PalExFund shares a great photo from 1903 of the “PEF Observation Rock” along the shore of the Dead Sea.

Though the winter season at Khirbet el-Maqatir was cancelled, Scott Stripling led a small group to Israel and he shares his diary of the places they saw and the friends they met.

You can listen to part 2 of my discussion with Gordon Govier of 2016 excavations as well as other recent programs at The Book and the Spade.

Shmuel Browns shares some beautiful photos from Makhtesh Gadol. And he is co-leading the Great Makhtesh Photograph Adventure next month.

ABR is introducing a new archaeology curriculum for children.

Test your knowledge of Jericho with a new quiz at the ASOR Blog.

Eisenbrauns has a sale on Israel Exploration Society publications for 30 to 50% off.

Ken Dark concludes that satellite imagery is less useful for discovering new features around the Sea of Galilee than fieldwalking and surface surveys.

Leen Ritmeyer notes that Jerusalem the IMAX movie is currently available for free on Youtube.

Threshing floor in Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah, with Ambassador Hotel, mat23102

Threshing floor in Jerusalem near the Ambassador Hotel, 1953
Source: Library of Congress, LC-matpc-23102/www.LifeintheHolyLand.com

Tagged Dead Sea, Excavations, Galilee, Jerusalem, Jordan Rift, Negev

Using a GPS in the Middle East

Earlier this year I made a seven-day trip to Jordan to take photos. For the first time in my travels in the Middle East, I used a GPS. It worked well. If you’re planning to rent a car and travel around on your own, you might consider it as an option. Here is what I did.

1. I bought a GPS. The one I purchased was not the cheapest, but I was very happy with it.

2. I bought a map set for Jordan (for Garmin). This set actually includes all of the Middle East except Israel. If you need Israel, there’s one here. (Beware the very cheap ones; they are illegal copies.)

3. The most important part of the process is to identify the sites you plan to visit ahead of time. This is particularly important if you are planning to see lots of random tells that aren’t on the maps and that the locals may not be able to help you with.

3a. First, locate the sites of interest on Google Earth. This can be challenging, depending upon how obscure your sites are. If you have a reference source with coordinates, see A.D.’s post on how to convert them to GE points. You may find the Site Index for the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands helpful for its list of coordinates as well. If you are looking for a GE file (kml) of lots of biblical sites in Israel and/or Jordan, search on the web (though reliability varies).

3b. Then, export your chosen sites to a kml file (simple instructions here). Convert that to a format your GPS can read. You can do this at kml2gpx.com or similar sites. Then copy the converted file to your GPS (video instructions here).

That’s it. I would recommend you bring a map or two, just in case your GPS fails on the trip. (I packed my GPS in my carry-on luggage so it wouldn’t be “borrowed” by luggage handlers.) You might even consider bringing a backup GPS if funds allow. (And part of that question is also, how much would it be worth to you in the middle of your trip if your other failed?)

One other step I took, not knowing how the GPS would work, was to use the (now free) Google Earth Pro to print off high-quality images of the sites and their surroundings. I figured this might help me when the GPS map data was wrong or incomplete. Several times these print-outs came in handy.

I didn’t find every site I was looking for, but that wasn’t the fault of the GPS. Sometimes I had limited information in originally locating the site in GE. At other times, the site just seemed to disappear (as did Beth-jesimoth, in the midst of a quarrying operation). I missed a few sites because of rental car troubles, but I saw far more than if I had been at the mercy of a bus schedule or even a taxi driver. I also preferred this method to using a guide because most guides don’t like to pull out at 6 am and return after dark.

A few additional notes:

1. There are no good detailed maps for Jordan.

2. Don’t trust the time estimates your GPS gives you. The program data may be limited and it may
assume that you can drive 90 km/h down that narrow alleyway.

3. Sometimes the GPS gets it wrong. Sometimes you think you know better and you get it wrong.
You learn as you go, and it helps to have a flexible schedule.

4. Walking and taking a cab in downtown Amman (or Jerusalem or other major cities) beats driving.

5. Don’t be in such a rush that you don’t get to know the people. (Or, make sure the car breaks down in the right place.)

6. A newer book that is quite helpful in Jordan is Burton MacDonald’s Pilgrimage in Early Christian Jordan: A Literary and Archaeological Guide (Oxford: Oxbow, 2010).

7. Jordan is beautiful in March.

The Dead Sea from Macherus

Tagged Dead Sea, Jordan, Tourism, Travels

Weekend Roundup

This week’s sandstorm in Israel is the worst it has experienced since the nation was founded in 1948.

Air pollution in Jerusalem was 173 times higher than average. Carl Rasmussen shares a video showing how bad it was on the Mount of Olives.

What exactly is a 100-foot-deep shaft doing next to the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem?

Andrew Bernhard posts on the End of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Forgery Debate.

Thieves in Galilee were caught removing a sixth century mosaic church floor in Gush Tefen.

The cisterns at Arad are now open to visitors.

Muslim “sentinels” protecting the Temple Mount from “sacrilege” have now been outlawed by Israeli police.

If your interest is in exotic shofars and what Jewish halakah has to say about it, Zoo Torah has a free pdf on the subject.

The BBC reports on six “lesser-known wonders of the ancient world,” including the site of Baalbek in Lebanon.

The Jerusalem Post Magazine reports on sinkholes around the Dead Sea. (At the moment of posting this, the link is not working. Perhaps it will return.)

ISIS is destroying ancient buildings in order to conceal evidence that they are looting for profit.

The Institute for Digital Archaeology plans to distribute 10,000 3-D cameras in the coming year in
order to document archaeological sites and objects in West Asia before they are destroyed.

A luncheon will honor James F. Strange at this ASOR meeting in Atlanta.

Ferrell Jenkins illustrates what David meant when he wrote about “a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

Did you know that the Upper Room is located directly above David’s Tomb?

The Dead Sea Scrolls scam at the California Science Center closed this week.

“The Manar al-Athar open-access photo-archive (based at the University of Oxford) aims to provide high resolution, searchable images, freely-downloadable for teaching, research, heritage projects, and publication. It covers buildings and art in the areas of the former Roman empire which later came under Islamic rule (e.g. Syro-Palestine/the Levant, Arabia, Egypt, and North Africa), from ca. 300 BC to the present, but especially Roman, late antique, and early Islamic art, architecture, and sacred sites.”

HT: Charles Savelle, Ted Weis, Agade, Joseph Lauer, Jared Clark

Our Facebook photo with the most clicks in the past week was the final one in our “holy rocks” series.

Standing stones at Gezer

Tagged Dead Sea, Forgery, Galilee, Jerusalem, Judah, Lebanon, Museums, Negev, Temple Mount, Tourism, Weather, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

A feature story in the Worcester Magazine describes the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review is out and it includes a story on Kadesh Barnea.

A new exhibit at the Ismailia Museum in Egypt features discoveries made during recent expansion work on the Suez Canal. One of the artifacts on display is a gift from Ramses II to his father Seti I.

Cary Summers, President of the Museum of the Bible, gives a lecture on foods of the Bible.

Paleojudaica notes two top-ten lists of archaeological sites to see in Israel.

Marlena Whiting writes at the ASOR Blog on milestones in ancient Palestine and Arabia.

BibleX notes three dangers associated with studying Bible backgrounds.

Wayne Stiles provides 10 reasons a tour to Israel belongs on your bucket list. But let me add: the longer you wait, the less the trip will benefit you. Go now, or pay for your kid or grandkid to go.

(BTW, I know the best school in the world for college students to attend in Israel.)

HT: Joseph Lauer, Agade, G. M. Grena

Tagged Dead Sea, Egypt, Lectures, Museums, Tourism, Weekend Roundup