John on July 12, 2010
From the Jerusalem Post: Hebrew University excavations recently unearthed a clay fragment dating back to the 14th century BCE, said to be the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem. The tiny fragment is only 2 cm. by 2.8 cm. in surface area and 1 cm. thick and appears to have once been part of a larger tablet. Researchers say the ancient fragment testifies to Jerusalem’s importance as a major [...]
John on June 10, 2010
From Live Science, the discovery of 3,000 year old beehives in Biblical Israel: Archaeologists identified the remains of honeybees — including workers, drones, pupae, and larvae — inside about 30 clay cylinders thought to have been used as beehives at the site of Tel Rehov in the Jordan valley in northern Israel. This is the first such discovery from ancient times. This is the most ancient archaeological evidence for bee [...]
John on March 2, 2010
From the Telegraph: The four-inch long nail is thought to be one of thousands used in crucifixions across the Roman empire. Archaeologists believe it dates from either the first or second century AD. The nail was found last summer in a decorated box in a fort on the tiny isle of Ilheu de Pontinha, just off the coast of Madeira. Pontinha was thought to have been held by the Knights [...]
John on February 28, 2010
Interesting story in Newsweek about a dig taking place in Turkey at the northern tip of the fertile crescent. The temple complex discovered there is the oldest known monumental architecture, dating to 11,500 BC: The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so [...]
John on February 14, 2010
Time had a long but interesting piece on the state of Biblical archaeology, i.e. how well supported are the stories in the Bible: Some of the Bible’s most familiar names, places and events, in fact — the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; King David, the slayer of Goliath; Moses and the Israelites’ flight from bondage in Egypt; Joshua’s conquest of the Promised Land and the gloomy prophecies of Jeremiah — [...]
John on January 8, 2010
Four years ago I wrote about a discovery which appeared to do damage to the minimalist school of Hebrew history. This week, a for more significant discovery was unveiled which solidifies the idea that there was indeed a literate Jewish kingdom in the 10th century BC: The inscription itself, which was written in ink on a 15 cm X 16.5 cm trapezoid pottery shard, was discovered a year and a [...]
John on December 22, 2009
USA Today reports: Christians and history buffs can thank archaeologists for a Christmas-week gift: more clues about life in the time of Jesus. Archaeologists said Monday that they unearthed remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that dates to Jesus’ era, a simple structure of two rooms and a courtyard, said Yardenna Alexandre, excavations director at the Israel Antiquities Authority. Based on clay and chalk shards, the dwelling appeared to [...]
John on June 28, 2009
From the London Times: Vatican archaeologists have uncovered what they say is the oldest known portrait of St Paul. The portrait, which was found two weeks ago but has been made public only after restoration, shows St Paul with a high domed forehead, deep-set eyes and a long pointed beard, confirming the image familiar from later depictions. L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, which devoted two pages to the discovery, said [...]
John on February 25, 2009
From Haaretz: The Israel Antiquities Authority on Monday announced the discovery of a large building dating to the time of the First and Second Temples during an excavation in the village of Umm Tuba in southern Jerusalem. The archaeological remains include several rooms arranged around a courtyard, in which researchers found a potter’s kiln and pottery vessels. The pottery remains seem to date from the eighth century B.C.E. (First Temple [...]
John on November 14, 2008
Twice as old as the great pyramids and stonehenge. From Fox News: The elaborate temple at Gobelki Tepe in southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, is staggeringly ancient: 11,500 years old, from a time just before humans learned to farm grains and domesticate animals. According to the German archaeologist in charge of excavations at the site, it might be the birthplace of agriculture, of organized religion — of civilization itself. [...]
John on November 14, 2008
From National Geographic. An independent researcher solves one of the great mysteries: Very cool stuff. Still hope I get to see these one day.
John on October 31, 2008
A big archaelogical discovery hit the papers this week: Archaeologists from the Hebrew University said they found five lines of text written in black ink on a shard of pottery dug up at a five-acre (two-hectare) site called Elah Fortress, or Khirbet Qeiyafa. Experts have not yet been able to decipher the text fully, but carbon dating of artifacts found at the site indicates the Hebrew inscription was written about [...]
John on October 28, 2008
That may be a bit too dramatic, but this is a significant story: King Solomon’s mines were made famous by the 19th century novel of the same name by H. Rider Haggard. Biblical scholars and archaeologists have long speculated about whether the legend was founded on real mines, and an American archaeologist named Nelson Glueck claimed in the 1930s to have discovered their site in Faynan, though this was dismissed [...]
John on June 10, 2008
They’re calling the “world’s first church” which sounds more like marketing than archeology to me. None of the many articles seem to give any details that justify that label. Still, the discovery of a cave beneath what was already considered one of the two or three oldest churches in the world means there may be something more to the hype: Rihab is in Northern Jordan. The cave is beneath the [...]
John on November 15, 2007
An American P-38 that has been buried under a British beach for 65 years was discovered this summer after a storm unburied it. Click the pic for the full story.
John on October 21, 2007
From the IHT: Israeli archaeologists overseeing a contested dig at Jerusalem’s holiest site for Muslims and Jews stumbled upon a sealed archaeological level dating back to the era of the first biblical Jewish temple, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Sunday. Islamic authorities responsible for the Old City compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, said the dig was part of infrastructure work [...]
John on October 5, 2007
The secret was adding vowels: Around the time of King David (roughly 1000 BCE), the Hebrews took the Phoenician consonantal system and made a seemingly minor improvement. They used the letter H (which we call a heh) not only as a consonant, but also to represent the vowel A. They used the letter Y (yud) to represent the vowels I and E, and W (now called vav, though back then [...]
John on August 30, 2007
It certainly sounds that way: Remains of the Jewish second temple may have been found during work to lay pipes at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem, Israeli television reported Thursday. Israeli television broadcast footage of a mechanical digger at the site which Israeli archaeologists visited on Thursday. Gaby Barkai, an archaeologist from Bar Ilan University, urged the Israeli government to stop the pipework after the discovery of what [...]
John on June 14, 2007
From my favorite Swedish paper, The Local: Swedish archaeologists have uncovered signs of a Viking precursor to Mickey Mouse. Among the objects found during excavations at Uppåkra in southern Sweden is an iron age figure bearing a strong resemblance to the classic cartoon character. But archaeologist Jerry Rosengren from Lund University is confident that the bronze brooch – used as a clasp to fasten women’s clothing – was in fact [...]
John on May 8, 2007
That’s the original Herod, aka Herod the Great. He was a brutal ruler, a friend of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony who had a taste for large building projects: Herod, whose father and grandfather converted to Judaism, was appointed governor of Galilee at the age of 25 and was made “King of the Jews” by the Roman senate in approximately 40 BCE. He remained king for around 34 years. Herod, [...]
