Discoveries Archives - Page 12 of 142

Weekend Roundup, Part 1

In the 11th and final season at the Huqoq synagogue, Jodi Magness discovered additional sections of the Samson mosaic panels along with a new mosaic section with an enigmatic Hebrew inscription and an Aramaic inscription identifying the synagogue’s donors or artists. The site will now be developed into a tourist attraction.

“Skulls and lamps found in the Twins Cave in the Jerusalem Hills indicate that the cave was used for necromancy rituals” in Hellenistic and Roman times.

A new study has determined that Caesarea was destroyed by a giant tsunami in the aftermath of the AD 749 earthquake.

Tim Chaffey follows up his introductory article on the location of the temple with a more extended study, arguing that Ernest L. Martin and Robert Cornuke “are highly selective in their use of source material, even to the point where they remove the most relevant details from passages of Scripture.”

Nathan Steinmeyer describes how the Central Timna Valley Project conducts experiments to determine how people in the Chalcolithic period smelted copper.

Jamie Fraser has been appointed to be the new director of the Albright Institute in Jerusalem.

New release: The Excavations at Khirbet el-Maqatir: 1995–2001 and 2009–2016. Volume 2: The Late Hellenistic, Early Roman, and Byzantine Periods, edited by Scott Stripling and Mark A. Hassler (Archaeopress, £85; free download)

Chandler Collins writes about the “Russian Compound Plateau” in Jerusalem, including the recent excavation of a portion of the Third Wall there.

Carl Rasmussen has posted a new photo of the Methuselah date palm tree.

Ferrell Jenkins shares a new photo he took of the village of Nain, where Jesus raised a dead boy back to life.

Abigail Leavitt writes about her visits to the excavations at Tel Burna.

Israel’s Good Name provides a well-illustrated report on his visit to Ein Harod.

Your humble roundup writer teaches a Bible chapter a week nearly every Sunday morning (with photos), but he generally stays away from the pulpit. With the pastor on sabbatical and the situation desperate, my church lowered the standard. There’s not much geography or archaeology in a sermon on “Jesus the Servant,” but it is a subject I love very much.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Explorator

These men are hard at work restoring an ancient mosaic in the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fish at Tabgha.

Tagged Discoveries, Galilee, Jerusalem, Jezreel Valley, Judah, Negev, Resources, Samaria, Temple Mount, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 1

Recent excavations in front of the edicule in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher revealed the 4th century arrangement of the rotunda.

Chris McKinny gives an overview of the results from Week 2 of excavations at Tel Burna.

Aren Maeir notes that excavations are also currently underway at Tell el-Hesi and Khirbet Summeily.

Archaeologists have invited the local community to help conserve the Middle Bronze gate at Gezer after last year’s fire.

William Hild, a participant in this summer’s excavation at Hyrcania, is guest on The Book and the Spade discussing the project.

Ruth Schuster writes about the treasures that were returned when the Israel Antiquities Authority announced an amnesty campaign. Enjoy the many photos, for you’ll never see these objects again as the IAA protects them in a vast storage center.

Ariel David reports on Garfinkel’s latest claim of Judah’s importance in the 10th century, including criticism from other archaeologists. Melanie Lidman has a similar story.

Tim Chaffey explains how Ernest Martin and Robert Cornuke “avoid key passages of Scripture, distort Josephus’ words, and ignore the findings of archaeologists” in their relocation of Solomon’s temple.

New release: Ancient Synagogues Revealed 1981-2022, edited by Lee I. Levine, Zeev Weiss, and Uzi Leibner (Israel Exploration Society, 300 NIS). You can see all the volumes in the long-running series on the IES website.

Hybrid conference on July 10-13 in Jerusalem: “Jerusalem: From Umbilicus Mundi to the Four Corners of the Earth and Back.” The conference brochure is here. The live broadcast will be here.

Zoom lecture on July 25: “Jesus in Galilee: An Archaeological Perspective,” by Eric Meyers

BBC Reel has released “Armageddon: The ancient city behind the biblical story.”

Chandler Collins considers what may be learned from 19th century travelers’ writings about their first views of Jerusalem.

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Joseph Lauer, Explorator

The latest big hole in the ground opened to visitors is the Gezer water system. The descent gives you a new appreciation for the value of a secure source of water.

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Discoveries, Galilee, Jerusalem, Jezreel Valley, Judah, Lectures, Resources, Shephelah, Temple Mount, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

“Israeli archaeologists have been left scratching their heads over the discovery of a large tomb containing dozens of skeletons, many of them women, who were buried more than 2,500 years ago in the midst of the Negev desert, at an ancient crossroad far from any known settlements at the time.”

According to Yosef Garfinkel, five sites in Judah indicate that Judah was expanding into the Shephelah already in the 10th century. The underlying journal article is here.

Chris McKinny provides an overview of all of the excavation areas at Tel Burna after their first week of their 13th season.

The Greek Reporter has a well-illustrated story on the Bird Mosaic and the sigma-shaped glass-gold table found in Caesarea.

Martine van den Berg reports on the first-ever “Friends of ASOR Tour to Israel and the Palestinian Territories.” They had quite a few experiences that the average tourist doesn’t get.

After a three-year renovation, Solomon’s Quarries/Zedekiah’s Cave has reopened to visitors. It now includes a multimedia show. The article includes a video report by i24 News.

Ron Simkins discusses “Creation and Ecology in Ancient Israel” on the Biblical World podcast.

Lisa LaGeorge gives a good answer to the question, “What difference does it make if I go to Israel?”

Ferrell Jenkins shares a photo of a beautiful view that he took in the Judean hill country between Bethlehem and Hebron.

Zoom lecture on July 12: “The King is Dead, Long Live the King: Murder, Poetry, and Scribal Culture in Ancient Egypt,” by Margaret Geoga ($7)

The NY Times reports on Christian tourism to Saudi Arabia, though the reporting seems limited to a single tour group.

A large Roman-period mosaic discovered near Homs, Syria, depicts Greek soldiers in the Trojan War as well as the god Neptune and forty of his mistresses.

A conference will be held at Oxford on July 5 entitled “The Aramaeans B.C.: History, Literature, and Archaeology”

The oldest completely hand-sewn boat in the Mediterranean dates to the Iron Age I and is remarkably well-preserved.

A fresco newly discovered at Pompeii looks like a pizza but is more likely a focaccia covered with fruit.

Bryan Windle reports on the top three stories in biblical archaeology for the month of June.

What do real archaeologists think of Indiana Jones?

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Ted Weis

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Israel's Coast, Italy, Jerusalem, Lectures, Negev, Shephelah, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

Scholars at UNI Graz claim that a 3rd century BC papyrus has evidence of a binding, making it the oldest book in the world discovered. The press release is in German, but the video of the press conference is partly in English. Brent Nongbri offers some thoughts.

A network of stone walls along the Nile River provide evidence of ancient hydraulic engineering.

“A team of computer scientists and archaeologists from the University of Bologna in Italy has developed a new tool for identifying archaeological sites using artificial intelligence … [which] reached a predictive accuracy of over 80 percent.”

“A team of archaeologists and computer scientists from Israel has created an AI-powered translation program for ancient Akkadian cuneiform, allowing tens of thousands of already digitized tablets to be translated into English instantaneously.”

The square in Rome where Julius Caesar was assassinated has been opened to the public.

Renovations of the Carthage Museum will begin in 2025 and expand the exhibition space to three times the current size.

The book of Esther’s independence from classical sources makes it “more important as a historical source for Achaemenian history than has traditionally been assumed.”

“An ancient Hebrew Bible and more than 100 Roman coins were recovered by Turkish military police.” The photo with the article is not the seized manuscript.

New release: A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse: Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean, by Yaron Z. Eliav (Princeton University Press, $45; save 30% with code P321).

New release: Wounded Tigris: A River Journey Through the Cradle of Civilization, by Leon McCarron (Simon & Schuster, $29)

New release: Famine and Feast in Ancient Egypt, by Ellen Morris (75 pages, Cambridge University Press, $22; free download until July 3).

In the latest episode of Thin End of the Wedge, Agnès Garcia-Ventura discusses the historiography of Assyriology.

Mark Janzen is guest on The Book and the Spade discussing the historicity of Moses.

Now that the Plutonium at Hierapolis (aka the gate to Hades) is open, Carl Rasmussen shares photos and explains what you are looking at and how the ancient rites were carried out.

HT: Agade, Alexander Schick

The worst experience in Jerusalem is walking through the drainage channel under the Siloam street. Unless you’re under 5 feet tall.

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Discoveries, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Museums, Resources, Technology, Tourism, Turkey, 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