Technology Archives - Page 12 of 33

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

The Atlantic sews together the story of the “first-century Mark,” Hobby Lobby, and Dirk Obbink.

Stephen Oryszczuk takes a tour of the only accelerator mass spectrometry lab in the Middle East, and its contribution to ongoing archaeological excavations.

Scholars are studying erasures and corrections in the Leningrad Codex.

Ruth Schuster considers what caused the collapse of Byzantine farming in the Negev highlands.

Ianir Milevski and Liora Kolska Horwitz investigate the domestication of donkeys in the ancient Near East.

The summer issue of Biblical Archaeology Review includes articles on forced resettlement at Tel Hadid, old Christian manuscripts, and the scarab. (BAR appears to have quietly cut its number of issues each year from 6 to 4.)

The British Museum has created historical city travel guides to Nineveh in the 7th century BC and to Rome in the 1st century AD.

Pompeii Live, “the British Museum’s most popular exhibition of the last decade is set to return, in the form of an online broadcast” that will premiere on May 20.

Lachish is the subject of a 7-minute video, the latest in the Life Lessons from Israel series.

The Ancient World Online (AWOL) has now surpassed ten million page views.

Satire: Stanford will be offering a new course entitled “How to be a Gladiator,” and signed waivers will be required to enroll.

A NPR piece looks at what has happened with tourism at Petra, going from 8,000 people a day to zero. Now the place is being taken over by cats, sparrows, and wolves.

Assassin’s Creed Discovery Tours of Ptolemaic Egypt and Classical Greece are free through May 20. Explore those worlds in a “living museum.”

Accordance has photo resources related to biblical archaeology on sale.

There is no shortage of material for an archaeological biography of King Ahab.

Israel’s Good Name describes his university field trip to Tel Arad and Tel Beersheba.

To celebrate his birthday, Shmuel Browns drove up to Sussita and took some beautiful photos.

All locked up: The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, May 12, 2020

HT: Agade, Ted Weis, Keith Keyser, Joseph Lauer, Explorator, Brian Johnson

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Galilee, Italy, Jordan, Mesopotamia, Museums, Negev, Photo Resources, Shephelah, Technology, Tourism

Weekend Roundup, Part 2

“Scientists at the University of Chicago are developing a machine learning system that can automatically transcribe text found on ancient clay tablets.”

The Unionville Times offers a guide to virtual tours of museums in Europe and the US.

Colette J. Loll led the investigation into the forged Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible and she offers her assessment of the story.

Erin L. Thompson, a professor of art crime, discusses the cost of forgeries donated to museums.

Appian Media has begun a new podcast entitled “Digging Deeper” and hosted by Barry Britnell and Dan Kingsley. You can check out the trailer here.

“Organising an Empire: The Assyrian Way” is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) taught by Karen Radner in six teaching units that take about 19 hours to complete. Began yesterday.

The current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review has been opened up for all to read.

Ferrell Jenkins shares “then and now” photos of the “Tomb of the Kings” in Jerusalem. See also Tom Powers’s extended comment about the date of the Pool of Hezekiah.

Israel’s Good Name went for a hike to Khirbet Luza, near Moza, and saw a striped hyena in the wild.

This year’s Infusion Bible Conference has been postponed. “Paul in His Roman World” will be the subject of the conference in June 2021.

Forthcoming: Has Archaeology Buried the Bible?, by William G. Dever

HT: Agade, Ted Weis

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Jerusalem, Lectures, Mesopotamia, Museums, Resources, Technology, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

Coronavirus fears have led to a number of restrictions in Israel and the West Bank, including the closure of the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, the banning of all foreign tourists from hotels in the West Bank, and the quarantining of travelers arriving from certain European countries. Now Israel is talking about forbidding entrance to Americans.

The Step Pyramid, Egypt’s oldest, is open again to tourists after a long renovation. As of this writing, the homepage of ArtDaily has a number of photos from the interior (or here).

A new geochemistry analysis indicates that the “Nazareth Inscription” apparently came from the island of Kos, and not from Nazareth. The underlying study is here.

New technology is being used to determine the date and location of horse domestication in the ancient world.

The latest newsletter of the Oriental Institute is now online.

An exhibit on Tall Zirā‘a will run at the Museum of the Yarmouk University through the end of June.

King Omri is the latest subject of the archaeological biography series by Bryan Windle. In that, he links to a website for renewed excavations of Tirzah (Tell el-Farah North) that I was unaware of.

Ray Vander Laan is leading a free web-based video course beginning Monday on “The Path to the Cross.”

Carl Rasmussen visits the new museum at Troy and shares a photo of a human sacrifice depicted on a sarcophagus.

Phillip J. Long just began a “Missionary Journeys of Paul” trip through Turkey, and he is posting daily summaries (Day 1, Day 2).

The Greek City Times has a feature on Nashville’s replica of the Parthenon.

A call for papers for two sessions at SBL on the “Historical Geography of the Biblical World” ends on Wednesday.

New from Brill: The City Gate in Ancient Israel and Her Neighbors: The Form, Function, and Symbolism of the Civic Forum in the Southern Levant, by Daniel A. Frese.

William H. Shea died last month.

HT: Agade, Ted Weis, Explorator

Tagged Egypt, Museums, Resources, Sad News, Technology, Tourism, Turkey

Weekend Roundup

Happy Leap Day! See below for a photo taken on this day sixteen years ago.

Bryan Windle identifies and explains the “top three reports in biblical archaeology” for the month, including the royal estate of Horvat Tevet, the Moza temple, and the Lachish temple.

Ira Rabin believes that the ink used in writing the Dead Sea Scrolls will shed new light on these ancient manuscripts.

A historian has re-discovered a well-preserved 616-page codex of the “Writings” section of the Old Testament that dates to AD 1028. The more technical journal article is available here, and the 1905 article is available here.

Yinon Shivtiel has identified a number of the caves that Josephus fortified during the First Jewish Revolt.

The latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review features two articles making the case for competing sites for Bethsaida: et-Tell by Rami Arav and el-Araj by Steven Notley and Mordechai Aviam.

A 2,000-year-old silver dagger and its sheath has been restored to like new condition.

“Ancient Greeks had a great love and respect for their dogs, cherishing them as companions, protectors, and hunters, as evidenced by several dog tombstones discovered over the centuries.”

David Moster will be teaching a course in March on Ezra and Nehemiah for The Institute of Biblical Culture.

“Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins” is a new exhibition that opens at the Getty Villa on March 18 and runs to July 27.

New book: Digging Up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon, by Eric H. Cline

Scholars have digitized high-resolution photos taken by U-2 spy planes over the Middle East in the 1950s.

The Smithsonian has released 2.8 million images for free use, and Mark Hoffman briefly shares his experience in searching.

The icon collection for St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai is now available online.

Ferrell’s Favorite Foto #34 – “I will make your enemies your footstool”

Shmuel Brown shares a number of photos of the “lovely carpet of wildflowers in reds, yellows, purple and white along the shore of the Dead Sea.”

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer, Pat McCarthy, Keith Keyser, Ted Weis

A view of green grass below the Qumran cliffs where Cave 1 is located;
photographed on February 29, 2004

Tagged Galilee, Museums, New Exhibits, Photo Resources, Resources, Technology, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

The stories this week are about as random as I can remember, making it challenging to figure out a logical sequence. We’ll start with Jerusalem, and we’ll end with a photo that was popular this week on our Facebook/Twitter/Instagram stream.

Journalists were given a tour of the newly reopened Roman square underneath the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem.

With the water level up nearly 6 feet in the last month, Israeli authorities may have to open the dam of the Sea of Galilee for the first time since 1992. (There’s a beautiful sunrise photo at the end of this article.)

Nof Ginnosar and the Sea of Galilee are the focus of the latest in the “Life Lessons from Israel” video series.

“Russian Archaeology in the Holy Land,” by Yana Tchekhanovets and Leonid Belyaev, is the lead article in the latest issue of ANE Today.

Biblical Byways is offering a low-budget study tour of Israel for Spanish speakers in September.

A replica of a 2,600-year-old Phoenician ship finished its five-month transatlantic voyage last week when it arrived in Miami.

Archaeologists have recovered 1,400 cuneiform tablets from the lost Sumerian city of Irisagrig, but they don’t know where that ancient city was located.

The traditional tomb of Ezekiel (in Iraq, not the one in Iran) is again becoming a place of pilgrimage.

Saudi Arabia plans to create the world’s largest living museum in Al Ula by 2035.

For more than a decade now, “Athens-based photographer and animator Dimitris Tsalkanis has cultivated a sort of unusual hobby: recreating ancient Athens via 3D modeling software.”

An archaeologist in Spain is on trial for forging a third-century depiction of Jesus’s crucifixion.

Salman Abu Sitta will be lecturing in London on February 28 on the subject of the “1871 Survey of Western Palestine Revisited: The Visible and The Hidden.”

New book: Roman-Period and Byzantine Nazareth and Its Hinterland, by Ken Dark

Cynthia Shafer-Elliott talks about her recent book Food in Ancient Judah on the OnScript podcast.

Ferrell Jenkins shares photos of the atad tree, the worthless bramble mentioned in Jotham’s parable in Judges 9.

The archaeological biography on King Ahaz features an altar, a seal, and a toilet.

The Global Smyrna Meeting on the Seven Churches of Revelation offers lectures and sites visits given a whole host of popular teachers, including Mark Wilson, Ben Witherington, Mark Fairchild, Carl Rasmussen, and Dana Harris.

HT: Agade, Joseph Lauer

This beautiful valley is located in the tribal inheritance of Ephraim, not far from Shiloh. Photo taken in 1966 by David Bivin.

Tagged Antiquities Trade, Galilee, Greece, Jerusalem, Lectures, Museums, Resources, Technology, Tourism

Weekend Roundup

Note: this blog moved to a new location a few days ago. The old address should forward to the new, but you can update your bookmark to https://www.bibleplaces.com/blog/. Email subscriptions should not be affected, but those using a feed reader will need to update to the new address.

Archaeologists have published a report that they have discovered a “massive Iron II temple complex” at Moza, in use from 900 to 600 BC.

An Egyptian anchor discovered off the coast near Haifa is now on display at the Israel Museum. The impressive artifact features hieroglyphics and images.

Excavations at Tel Tsaf in the Jordan Valley have uncovered homes and food silos made of mudbrick and preserved since the Neolithic period.

“Archaeologists on Thursday unveiled 16 ancient Egyptian tombs filled with sarcophagi and other artifacts from a vast burial ground” near Minya in central Egypt.

Israeli researchers have successfully grown six trees from seeds discovered at the sites of Masada, Qumran, and Wadi Makkuk. The seeds date to the 4th century BC to the 2nd century AD, and like their predecessor Methuselah, they have been given biblical names. Photos here.

Shlomit Bechar argues that the Hazor complexes with standing stones were part of a “ruin cult.”

A professor has found a technique to solve quadratic equations that the ancient Babylonians used.

Laerke Recht takes a look at human sacrifices in the ancient Near East.

War has devastated a museum in Maaret al-Numa, Syria known for its Roman and Byzantine-era mosaics.

A terrorist near St. Anne’s Church fired shots toward the Temple Mount, wounding a policeman.

USA Today is having a contest for the Best Religious Museum in the USA. Nominees include the Museum of the Bible, the Ark Encounter, and the Biblical History Center.

The latest video in the “Life Lessons from Israel” is a 6-minute devotional video on Megiddo.

Upcoming events at the Albright Institute include a lecture by Israel Finkelstein on the excavations at Kiriath Jearim.

After renovations to steps and railings, the Ramparts Walk from the Damascus Gate to the Lions Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem has re-opened.

Agrippa II is the subject of Bryan Windle’s latest archaeological biography.

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

Tagged Egypt, Excavations, Galilee, Jerusalem, Jezreel Valley, Jordan Rift, Lectures, Megiddo, Museums, Technology, Temple Mount, Tourism