Sad News Archives - Page 15 of 15

Weekend Roundup, Part 1

Archaeologists have uncovered a monumental entrance to the Herodium that was apparently buried by King Herod. The short video is more informative than the article.

Russian archaeologists have discovered portions of the walls of Memphis, capital of ancient Egypt.

The US has returned 123 artifacts smuggled out of Egypt.

Mathematicians at Tel Aviv University are developing algorithms to recognize ancient Hebrew letters inscribed on potsherds (or here).

The Temple Mount Sifting Project has a brief report about and many photos from the carpet job in the Dome of the Rock.

The Shrine of the Book opened 50 years ago this week.

The Plains of Moab remind us to remember what God has done in our lives.

Besides a Beretta, what else is in Aren Maeir’s dig bag?

Menahem Haran died recently at the age of 91.

HT: Ted Weis, Agade

The Plains of Moab from Mount Nebo

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Discoveries, Egypt, Excavations, Jerusalem, Jordan Rift, Judah, Museums, Sad News, Temple Mount, Weekend Roundup

A large bronze mask depicting the god Pan was excavated at Hippos (Sussita). A video shows the discovery with the use of a metal detector. A press release from the University of Haifa has more details.

Members of the Israeli Caving Club discovered a cache of rare coins and other artifacts from the
Hellenistic period in northern Israel. That find is one of seven exciting discoveries made around the world this month.

An orange gem depicting the goddess Artemis has been discovered at the Herodium.

Luke Chandler reports that inscriptions from Khirbet Qeiyafa and Tel Lachish will be published soon.

A man walking on the beach at Ashkelon found some archaeological pieces.

Leen and Kathleen Ritmeyer’s guide to the Temple Mount has been published. Copies may be purchased from their website.

Clint Gilbert has recorded a Bible Lands Song which can help you or your students learn basic Bible geography.

Studies suggest that ancient people didn’t perceive the color blue because they didn’t have a word for it.

AWOL’s List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies now includes 1481 titles.

Sad news: Harry A. Hoffner passed away suddenly on Tuesday, March 10. Hoffner was a long-time professor of Hittitology at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. I am told that his two-volume commentary on 1-2 Samuel for the Evangelical Exegetical Commentary was recently submitted to the editor.

More sad news: “Hans G. Goedicke, a renowned Egyptologist who had been chairman of the Johns
Hopkins University’s department of Near Eastern studies, died of cancer Feb. 24.”

We’ll have more links tomorrow.

HT: Agade, Charles Savelle, Bill Schlegel, Joseph Lauer

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Galilee, Israel's Coast, Jerusalem, Judah, Resources, Sad News, Shephelah, Temple Mount, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

The Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem is hosting a special exhibition entitled By the Rivers of Babylon beginning next month. An international conference on Jerusalem in Babylonia will be held on February 2-3.

Now online: the Fall 2014 issue of DigSight, published by Southern Adventist University’s Institute of Archaeology.

See the Holy Land has published new articles on Kathisma and the Church of St Alexander Nevsky (the Russian excavations), and an updated article on Magdala.

Free video lecture online: Doctors, Diseases and Deities: Epidemic Crises and Medicine in Ancient Rome, by Sarah Yeomans of the Biblical Archaeology Society.

Matthew Karsten hiked portions of the Israel National Trail and has some spectacular photos to show for it.

Aren Maeir will be giving a lecture on the latest work at Gath at the Albright Institute on January 15.

Registration for MEMRA’s ancient language courses ends soon.

G. M. Grena shares some personal thoughts and more from his time at the ASOR 2014 conference.

The British Museum explains why it was so pleased to be involved in the latest Night at the Museum movie.

The new Exodus movie is “an unimaginative, mind-numbing bore,” according to Michael Heiser.

Egypt has banned the movie “Exodus: Gods and Kings” for being historically inaccurate.

ISIS is threatening to blow up the walls of ancient Nineveh.

Vassilios Tzaferis has died in Athens. Among Tzaferis’s excavations was the tomb of the crucified
man.

HT: Agade, Exploring Bible Lands

Tagged Lectures, Museums, New Exhibits, Philistines, Sad News, Tourism, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

A Roman game board from the first or second century AD has been discovered in southern Turkey.

Some extremely well-preserved mosaics have been discovered near the Syria-Turkey border.

France is returning 300 artifacts stolen from Egypt.

Why did the Egyptians use scarabs? Michael Wall’s recent lecture on the role of insects in religion explains.

“What can we learn about the time of Abraham from simple stone beads?” Geoffrey Ludvik explains on this week’s interview on The Book and the Spade.

The Pompeii Bibliography and Mapping Resource (PBMR) is “working to map the landscape of publications about Pompeii onto the space of the ancient city itself, creating a unified, bi-directional interface to both resources.”

A “small underwater Pompeii” has been discovered off the shore of the Greek island of Delos.

Climate change apparently did not cause the end of the Bronze Age.

James Cuno, the President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, makes the case against repatriating museum artifacts in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.

The Biblical Archaeology Society is running a Thanksgiving sale through Thursday.

Sharon Zuckerman, co-director of the Tel Hazor Excavations and senior lecturer at the Institute of
Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, died on Friday. She was 49.

HT: Agade, Charles Savelle, Chris McKinny

Tagged Discoveries, Greece, Museums, Resources, Sad News, Turkey

Yuval Peleg Killed in Archaeology Accident

Very sad news out of Israel today. Archaeologist Yuval Peleg was conducting a salvage excavation ahead of the construction of a road in the West Bank when he was killed by falling rocks.

From The Jerusalem Post:

A 46-year-old man was killed in an accident at an archaeological dig site between Homesh and Karnei Shomron in the West Bank on Thursday. He was later identified as Yuval Pelleg.
An initial investigation into the incident found that an Israeli and several Palestinian workers were digging at the entrance to a cave when rocks began falling down the mountain, trapping the man.
People on the scene succeeded in removing some of the rocks from on top of the man. A military medical crew attempted to resuscitate him while his lower half remained trapped under the rocks, but were forced to pronounce him dead on the scene.

From Jerusalem Online:

Gershon Mesika, the head of the Shomron Regional Council, stated, “In the framework of building a new road, a new cave was discovered. According to the procedure, an archaeologist was sent to survey the cave and to study it. Then, there was the disaster. We are sorry for the loss of the senior level archeologist doing research in Samaria.”

The Times of Israel has a map of the area in which was working. Jerusalem Online has a photo of the accident scene. Arutz-7 has another here. Robert Cargill has a photo of Yuval here. A lecture that he gave in 2012 about recent excavations at Qumran is online here. The preliminary report that he wrote with Yitzhak Magen of Qumran excavations from 1993 to 2004 is online here. Jim West notes that Yuval had a wife and two small children.

HT: Joseph Lauer

Tagged Sad News