Museums Archives - Page 8 of 94

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

Ruins of Nero’s theater have been discovered in Rome.

“An iconic bronze statue of the Roman emperor Hadrian, which is one of three found worldwide and dates back some 2,000 years, was turned into an active honeycomb as 50,000 bees produced their wax onto 3D-printed grid replicas of the original.”

“Archaeologists have recovered thousands of pieces of glassware—many of them ‘perfectly preserved’—from a 2,000-year-old shipwreck in the waters between Italy and France.”

Impressed by costly Persian metal vessels, Athenian craftsmen created imitations in clay.

Local women are helping to renovate the mosaic floor of the ancient synagogue of Sardis.

Kim Lawton recently visited important, but less-visited, sites in Turkey related to Paul’s ministry, including Pisidian Antioch, Lystra, and Tarsus. The well-illustrated article includes a couple of quotes from an interview with me.

Leon McCarron spent ten weeks traveling the length of the Tigris, from its source in Turkey to its mouth at the Persian Gulf.

“Gems have unique elemental compositions that can be used to identify their location of origin.”

Mark Hoffman writes of his discovery of the Gardens of the Roman Empire website.

Steven Anderson’s book on Darius the Mede has been translated into Persian Farsi and published by Qoqnoos Press in Iran (ISBN: 9786220404651). It can be purchased from Agah Bookshop.

Howard Golden is donating his collection of hundreds of European maps dating to the 15th to 18th centuries to the National Library of Israel.

Don’t delay: “The permanent galleries in the Pergamon Museum will close on October 22, 2023 and will remain closed for renovations until 2037 (estimated).” Photos of many of their artifacts are available online.

The James Ossuary will go on display in Dallas beginning on August 25. This is the first time it has been displayed in the US. The price should keep the crowds down.

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Explorator

The experience at Nazareth Village, with the increased number of exhibits and actors, has never been better. One caveat: it doesn’t work so well with large groups.

Tagged Discoveries, Italy, Mesopotamia, Museums, New Exhibits, Persia, Technology, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 1

“Experts from Rome have wrapped up weeks of careful archaeological work in one of the most sensitive parts of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” the area in front of the Edicule.

“A 1,500-year-old “magic mirror” from the Byzantine period was discovered by a 17-year-old Israeli taking part in a Young Leaders’ Survival Course at the Usha archaeological site in northern Israel.”

“A rare 2,500-year-old marble disc designed to protect ancient ships and ward off the evil eye was discovered by a lifeguard” near Palmachim Beach.

“Archaeologists excavating the site of Legio—the legionary camp of Rome’s Sixth Legion located at the foot of Tel Megiddo in northern Israel—have unearthed the remains of a small amphitheater used not for performances but rather for brutal combat training exercises.”

Aren Maeir mentions four sites in the Jezreel Valley that are being excavated this summer. Of Tel Shimron, he writes that they have discovered “some of the nicest and most important finds ever found in Israel!”

A rare half-shekel coin dug up in the Ein Gedi nature reserve was inscribed with the words ‘The Holy Jerusalem’ in Hebrew.”

Scott Stripling discusses the latest results from the excavations at Shiloh on CBN News. Or listen to the two recent episodes of The Bible and the Spade.

UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee will be voting soon on whether to include Jericho on its list.

Aviv and Shmuel Bar-Am have written an informative article about the best viewpoints in Jerusalem (though I think they left one of the best out).

A fox was spotted along the wall of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

Jonathan Klawans recommends a visit to the Benedictine Monastery of the Resurrection in the village of Abu Ghosh.

“The director of the Israel Museum, Denis Weil, has resigned just a year and a half after taking up the position.”

New release: The Two Houses of Israel: State Formation and the Origins of Pan-Israelite Identity, by Omer Sergi (SBL Press, $55)

Walking The Text’s recommended resource of the month is Experiencing the Land of the Book, by Charles H. Dyer.

Israeli authorities have taken actions to protect Tel Aroma in Area B from destruction by vandals.

Guiding tours of the Dead Sea on his boat, Noam Bedein is making new discoveries, including a bubbling brook and new rock formations.

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Explorator

The newest national park in Israel is Hippos. Now this Roman-Byzantine site in the Decapolis boasts paved paths, clean restrooms, and of course, a shop.

Tagged Dead Sea, Discoveries, Galilee, Jerusalem, Jezreel Valley, Jordan Rift, Judah, Museums, Resources, Samaria, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

If you want the non-Indiana-Jones explanation of the Antikythera Mechanism, check out NASA’s recent Astronomy Picture of the Day.

“For the first time, scientists have recently obtained genetic material and analyzed genome sequences from the ancient Minoans and Mycenaeans.”

Bleda Düring explains why the Assyrian empire was more resilient than those of the Hittites and Egyptians.

The size of the illegal antiquities market is much smaller than usually claimed.

Ruth Schuster considers how archaeological technology has changed how we see ourselves.

“The East Garage Necropolis Area, which was once a public market in the southern province of Antalya [in Turkey] and where archaeological excavations started after the discovery of rock tombs, has been opened as a museum.”

Leon Mauldin has just returned from a trip to Malta and shares a few photos of St. Paul’s Bay.

Andy Cook has just released “Discovering the Bible inside your Bible.” This is a 10-week Bible study of the Gospel of John that is filled with full-color photos. The study includes videos to go with each week’s study. This resource could be used individually or with a small-group Bible study. Only $20.

There will be no roundup next weekend.

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Alexander Schick, Explorator

A visit to el-Araj, possible site of Bethsaida, is most impressive with regard to seeing just how close this ancient fishing village was to the Sea of Galilee. The water almost touches the site itself (immediately behind the tree in the center of the photo).

Tagged Mediterranean Islands, Mesopotamia, Museums, Technology, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

“A team of Israeli physicists and archaeologists is now attempting to track the movement of subatomic particles called muons to map a complex array of ancient tunnels, cisterns and other underground voids beneath Jerusalem.”

Ancient rock engravings at Timna Park are now being studied using 3-D micromorphological characteristics of the incisions.

A new study questions the view that there were Jewish gladiators in the Roman empire. The underlying journal article is here.

Noam Aharon has created a map of the kingdom of Ugarit, c. 1300 BC. Bibliographic references are here. Permission is granted for non-commercial use.

“A bronze head of Emperor Septimius Severus on display at a Copenhagen museum has become a bone of contention between the Danish museum and Turkey, which claims it was looted during an archaeological dig in the 1960s and wants it back.”

Turkish Archaeological News rounds up the top stories for the month of June.

Ferrell Jenkins explains the possibility that Paul visited Adramyttium.

“A new virtual reality (VR) app which takes users on a journey back in time to Ancient Greece where they are able to experience first-hand what it was like to consult with the Greek god Zeus at the Oracle of Dodona has been developed by a team of academics led by the University of Bristol.”

Timothy P. Harrison has been appointed director of the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa (ISAC; formerly Oriental Institute).

Open access from Brill: Ancient Egypt, New Technology: The Present and Future of Computer Visualization, Virtual Reality and Other Digital Humanities in Egyptology, edited by Rita Lucarelli, Joshua A. Roberson, and Steve Vinson (free pdf; hardback $174)

Free download on Academia: Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia, by Michael Roaf

Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn, one of the first to engage with the archaeological research of Bethsaida, died last week.

Aren Maeir is guest on the What Matters Now podcast, discussing archaeology in the shadow of Indiana Jones. The link includes a transcript.

Nathan Steinmeyer explains why archaeologists love Indiana Jones.

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Joseph Lauer, Explorator, Alexander Schick

I’m thankful that the Tabernacle Model in Timna Park is still going strong after nearly 25 years, though one could wish that the Park authorities could park their RVs somewhere else.

Tagged Jerusalem, Museums, Sad News, Syria, Technology, Turkey, 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 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