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Aerial View of 2,200-Year-Old Idumean Structure, Photo, IAA
Drone Flight Reveals 2,200 Year Old Idumean Structure in Central Israel
CBN News 12-01-2017
JERUSALEM, Israel – Israeli archaeology's newest tool, the drone, revealed an intriguing find during a pass over the Lachish region during the recent Sukkot holiday.
The compact aircraft discovered what excavation directors – Dr. Oren Gutfeld of the Hebrew University, and Pablo Betzer and Michal Haber of the Israel Antiquities Authority – called "a rare and exciting find."
The structure, in what was the town of Horvat Amuda, is one of only a handful of its kind in Israel. Archaeologists said that it is most likely a 2,200-year-old Idumean palace or temple, the IAA said in a press release.
Two stone incense altars were discovered at the site. One of them bore the engraved image of a bull standing in what appears to be a columned temple. According to the archaeologists, the bull was one of the deities worshipped by the Idumeans.
In addition to the altar, archaeologists also uncovered fragile pottery vessels, including painted bowls, juglets and oil lamps.
In the Hellenistic period, Horvat Amuda was one of the agricultural resource villages for the neighboring Idumean capital of Maresha. The Idumeans, originally a Semitic people hailing from what is now southern Jordan, settled in the Judean hills and created Maresha as a center for their religion and commerce.
Archaeologists believe the structure was intentionally dismantled around 112 BCE when Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus I sacked Maresha. The residents later converted to Judaism and assimilated into the Judean population. (The most famous Idumean is probably King Herod from the Bible.)
Also discovered at the site were numerous underground passages cut by residents of nearby Beit Guvrin for escaping from the Romans during the time of the second Jewish Revolts in 132–135 CE.
The dig is sponsored by the IAA and Beit Lehi, a U.S.-based Mormon non-profit organization, which sponsors excavations in the Land of Israel. Archaeology students from the Hebrew University, Bar-Ilan University and a group of U.S. volunteers helped in the excavations the Times of Israel reported.
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Israeli archaeologists are calling the excavation of a 12th cave that housed Dead Sea Scrolls one of the most exciting discoveries of the past 60 years. (Photo, Casey L. Olson and Oren Gutfeld)
Israeli Archaeologists Call This the Most Exciting Discovery in a Half-Century
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Israeli archaeologists are calling the excavation of a 12th cave that housed Dead Sea Scrolls one of the most exciting discoveries of the past 60 years.
Archaeologists Dr. Oren Gutfield and Ahiad Ovadia, with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Archaeology, aided by Dr. Randall Price and students from Liberty University in Virginia, discovered and excavated the cave.
"This exciting excavation is the closest we've come to discovering new Dead Sea Scrolls in 60 years," said Dr. Gutfeld, who directed the excavation. "Until now, it was accepted that Dead Sea Scrolls were found only in 11 caves at Qumran, but now there is no doubt that this is the 12th cave."
Archaeologists found ample evidence to support their conclusions.
"Although at the end of the day, no scroll was found, and instead we 'only' found a piece of parchment rolled up in a jug that was being processed for writing, the findings indicate beyond any doubt that the cave contained [additional Dead Sea] scrolls that were stolen."
A little over a year ago, Israel launched a three-year expedition to explore hundreds of caves in the Judean Desert where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947.
For years, Israel has battled thieves attempting to sell ancient manuscripts and other priceless antiquities that affirm its biblical heritage to the highest bidder.
"The findings include the jars in which the scrolls and their covering were hidden; a leather strap for binding the scroll; a cloth that wrapped the scrolls, tendons and pieces of skin connecting the fragments; and more," Gutman explained.
Israel Antiquities Authority Director General Israel Hasson said the discovery affirms that there's a lot more work ahead of them.
"The important discovery of another scroll cave attests to the fact that a lot of work remains to be done in the Judean Desert and finds of huge importance are still waiting to be discovered," Hasson said.
"We are in a race against time as antiquities thieves steal heritage assets worldwide for financial gain," he continued. "The State of Israel needs to mobilize and allocate the necessary resources in order to launch an historic operation, together with the public, to carry out a systematic excavation of all the caves in the Judean Desert."
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THIS SCALE WEIGHT BELONGED TO A PRIEST IN ISRAEL'S SECOND TEMPLE
by Eli Mandelbaum
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
JERUSALEM JOURNAL
"I went pale and ...felt a small tremble to see the name of the high priest."
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Nearly 2,000 years after the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, archaeologist Dr. Oren Gutfeld of Jerusalem's Hebrew University has found a scale weight from that period. Apparently, it belonged to the family of the high priest—and which has his name carved on it.
The weight was found as part of the excavation carried out at the Tiferet Israel Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. The Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out the dig together with Hebrew University, and it is being funded by the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, Ltd.
This is the second time that such a weight has been uncovered. Excavations at the nearby Burnt House found a similar weight.
Gutfeld explained that he himself unearthed the weight, which has two lines of Aramaic text and a lyre between them. This was initially obscured by a burnt layer, which is presumably from the burning of Jerusalem. While the first line of text has not been fully deciphered, the family name of the high priest was discernible.
"It doesn't happen very much that I get emotional when I find artifacts. But here, I went pale and even felt a small tremble to see the name of the high priest."
The Tiferet Israel Synagogue was built in the 19th century, but when the Jordanians seized the area, it was destroyed. In 2014, a cornerstone was laid for its rebuilding, but an excavation of the site has since expanded. Artifacts have been uncovered from the Ottoman, the Mamluk, the Byzantine, the Second Temple and the First Temple periods.
Gutfeld expanded, "New mikvehs (ritual baths) that we didn't know about and their heating system have been uncovered."
The findings from the Second Temple period were about a meter beneath the building's floor. They also include stone and glass tools, rings, pottery and candles that were put there for storage.
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This is a lightly edited version of the original article published by YNet News at http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4854160,00.html
Archaeologists believe they have found evidence of King David's footprints in a mysterious two-gated city from 3,000 years ago, mentioned in the Bible's story of David and Goliath.
The site is known by its modern name, Khirbet Qeiyafa, in Israel's Elah Valley.
After nearly seven years of excavations, the public can now explore the archaeological findings of Qeiyafa through "In the Valley of David and Goliath," a new Bible Lands Museum exhibition that opened earlier this week in Jerusalem. The Qeiyafa findings have sparked debate and intrigued historians and archaeologists since they were first revealed.
The city was discovered between Sokho and Azekah, on the border between the Philistines and the Judeans, in the place where David and Goliath battled. It's mentioned in the Torah in 1 Samuel 17:1-2.
Carbon-14 dating of some 28 charred olive pits found during excavations date the city as existing around the end of the 11th century BCE, until the early 10th century, in the days of Saul and David.
"No one can argue with this data," said Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, Yigal Yadin Chair of Archeology at the Institute of Archeology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He, along with Sa'ar Ganor from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Prof. Michal Hazel of Southern Adventist University of Tennessee, led the excavations.
Among the site's highlights are its two gates: the western gate, which faced Philistia, and the southern gate, which faced Judah. Having two gates for a relatively small city of 5.7 acres is unusual, according to Bible Lands curator Yehuda Kaplan. Gates are the weakest part of any city. The two gates are what led excavators to identify the site with Sha'arayim (Hebrew for "two gates"), a city mentioned in the David and Goliath story in the Book of Samuel, which reads, "...And the slain Philistines lay along the way of Sha'arayim, as far as Gath and Ekron" (1 Sam. 17:52). It's also in Judges 16:5 and in Jeremiah 17:19-20.
The gates were corroborated by additional evidence of Jewish activity at Qeiyafa, including thousands of sheep, goat, cow and fish bones, and the absence of non-kosher pig bones, Kaplan said.
Evidence of cultic activity throughout the city was also unearthed, as well as two inscriptions written in the Canaanite script. One was incised on a jar and contains the Hebrew name Eshbaal, son of Beda. The second was inscribed on a pottery shard with only a few identifiable words, including "king" and "judge." Many of the letters seem to reflect Hebraic writing. Garfinkel suggests this is the earliest writing documentation of the Hebrew language discovered to date.
Among the pottery on the site, less than 2 percent was typical Philistine pottery. Kaplan said if the community had been Philistine, a minimum of 20 percent of Philistine design should have been found. Of the 24 weapons and tools discovered, 67 percent were made from iron and 33 percent from bronze. Use of iron during this period by other sites in Judah, such as Arad and Beersheva, helped archeologists identify Qeiyafa as a Judean site.
Finally, casemate walls—two thinner, parallel walls with empty space in between and a belt of houses abutting the casemates, incorporating them as part of the construction—are reminiscent of the type of urban planning found only in Judah and Transjordan.
Garfinkel explained that before the period of King David, people lived in small farming communities. Around 11th BCE, these agrarian communities became urban societies.
"In this, the biblical tradition has historic memory," Garfinkel said. "If we ask, 'Where is archaeology starting to support biblical tradition, Khirbet Qeiyafa is the beginning."
There's only one other archaeological reference to King David found in Israel, the Aramaic inscription from the mid-9th century BCE found at Tel Dan. This inscription, on display as part of the new exhibit, is attributed to Hazel, king of Damascus, who boasts about killing a king of Israel and a king of Judah, the latter of which is referred to in the inscription as "King of the House of David."
While the site stirs the biblical imagination, it also serves a political role.
Biblical Minimalists, a band of biblical scholars and archaeologists trying to eradicate the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel by claiming there's not reliable evidence for what had happened in ancient Israel, can be negated by some of Qeiyafa's findings. Within 10 days of his publishing the first paper on Qeiyafa, another article claimed the site as Palestinian, Garfinkel said.
"This happens a lot," said Jacob L. Wright, associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Emory University in Atlanta. "In no other area of the world do you have such a connection to biblical imagination."
Wright said there's likely a middle ground. While he believes Garfinkel has placed Qeiyafa in the right time period and that it's likely a Judean community, experts aren't certain that King David had anything to do directly with the site.
"One has to separate the bible and archaeology," Wright said. "The minimalists want to deny the state of Judah and Israel; they are politically driven and have a loose agenda. ... But it does not help when the maximalists try to connect everything they find on the ground with Jesus or King David."
Bible Lands' Kaplan is confident in the exhibit and the story it's telling of Qeiyafa.
"Everything you touch at Khirbet Qeiyafa brings you to this biblical period," he said.
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“And the men of Israel and of Yehuda arose, and shouted, and pursued the Philistines, until thou comest to Gai, and to the gates of Ekron. And the wounded of the Philistines fell down by the way to Shaaraim, even unto Gath, and unto Ekron.” I Samuel 17:52 (The Israel Bible™)
By: Anna Rudnitsky
Biblical archaeology was revolutionized several years ago when evidence of the existence of the alleged kingdom of David was brought to light in the form of a fortified Iron Age town excavated in the Elah Valley by Hebrew University Professor Yosef Garfinkel and Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) archaeologist Saar Ganor. The place was described by the Bible as the location of the battle between David and Goliath. The highlights of the findings of the Elah Valley excavations will be presented to the public for the first time at an exhibition scheduled to open at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem on September 5.
“Archaeology cannot find a man and we did not find the remnants linked to King David himself,” Professor Garfinkel told Tazpit Press Service (TPS). “But what we did find is archaeological evidence of the social process of urbanization in Judea.”
According to Prof. Garfinkel, the evidence of urbanization fits in with what is described in the Bible as the establishment of the Kingdom of David, when small agrarian communities were replaced by fortified towns. “The chronology fits the Biblical narrative perfectly. Carbon tests performed on the olive pits found in Khirbet Qeiyafa show that the town was built at the end of the 11th century BCE,” Garfinkel explained to TPS.
Two phenomena particularly attracted the attention Garfinkel and Ganor of when they began excavations at the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa about ten years ago. Numerous iron stones were found and a wall of unusual form, with hollows in two places, enveloped the site.
The archaeologists only realized in the second year of their excavations that they had found a fortified town from the Iron Age that perfectly fit the description of the Biblical town of Shaarayim. The name in Hebrew means “two gates,” and the hollows in the modern wall, built on top of the ancient one, were precisely in the same place as the previous existence of two gates, which is quite a rarity for a relatively small town.
The geographical location of the town also fits right in line with the Biblical depiction of Shaarayim, mentioned in the context of the aftermath of the battle between David and Goliath when the Philistines “fell on the way to Shaarayim.” The town is also mentioned in the book of Joshua as being situated near Socho and Azeka, two archaeological sites surrounding Khirbet Qeiyafa.
The southern gate of the Khirbet Qeiyafa archaeological site. (Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem Spokesperson)
Other remarkable findings at the site include two inscriptions in the Canaanite script that are considered to be the earliest written attestation to date as to the use of the Hebrew language. A pottery shard contains the distinctly identifiable Hebrew words of “king,” “don’t do,” and “judge.”
The Bible Lands Museum exhibition, called “In the Valley of David and Goliath,” will feature the pottery shards as well as a clay model of a shrine found at the site and the huge stones used in the casemate wall around the town. “Although I led the excavations, I myself was amazed to see the different pieces brought together in a way that allows visitors to get a clear picture of how the town looked and that gives them an opportunity to go back in history to the times of the kingdom of David,” Professor Garfinkel said.
In light of what is happening to non-Muslim women in the Islamic State, where a single captive Yazidi or Christian woman often becomes the sex slave of an entire ISIS platoon, the absence of war-related rapes among IDF soldiers is a source of frustration for Palestinians and their supporters.
Two years ago, a young Israeli student at Hebrew University attempted to address this issue in her thesis.
The student's conclusion was that IDF soldiers don't rape because they are racists. "It is impossible to rape someone who is not human," she wrote. This young woman's perverted determination was that "just as Serbians formed their identity by publicly gang-banging Bosnian women, Jewish men define their unique identity as non-rapists … rape and non-rape are two sides of the same coin."
Confusing the issue, some take the opposite approach. In a lecture to students at Oranim College a month ago, Israeli Arab teacher Naila Awad, who runs the organization "Women Against Violence," claimed that Israeli soldiers are sexually abusing Palestinian women.
When asked where she had gotten this information, Awad insisted, without referring to any specific documentation, that "there are many studies that prove that IDF soldiers are sexually abusing and raping Palestinian women in the West Bank." In unprecedented disciplinary action, Awad was suspended following a loud student outcry.
Awad responded with a weird reference to the Bible. "During war," she said, "[Jewish] men can take women," implying that Jews are actually encouraged to rape the women of the enemy. This same argument surfaced about two weeks ago in "Days of Palestine," an online Palestine publication claiming to specialize in providing first-hand news.
The website regurgitated a 2012 article entitled "Israeli rabbi: Israeli soldiers can rape Palestinian women" by radical Israeli blogger Yossi Gurvitz, who himself had dug up some religious discussion that took place nine years earlier (so much for "first-hand news").
Days of Palestine then claimed that "Israeli Rabbi Col. Eyal Qarim of the Israeli Military Rabbinate had permitted Israeli Jewish soldiers to rape Palestinian women."
The obvious question that should follow is, why then, despite this permission, are Israeli soldiers not raping anyone? Like the deranged Hebrew U. "scholar," detractors would probably answer that Palestinian women disgust the racist Israeli soldiers. Bizarre as it is, in this argument Palestinians are actually taking offense at their women being undesirable to the enemy.
Either way, Israel is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn't.
Following Gurvitz's insidious allegations, a senior Military Rabbinate official issued a short response, which was promptly ignored by those perpetuating the notion that non-rape is rape. "Basic human morality," he said, to state the obvious, "as well as Torah, Halacha and army policy prohibit rape and denounce this vile phenomenon."
Awad's biblical reference deals with the rules of war concerning captive women (Deuteronomy 21:10-11). One does not have to be particularly bright to ascertain that the full passage, in complete contrast to the violence and degradation involved in rape, commands Israeli soldiers to show restraint and treat captive women with utter respect.
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A seven-year-old boy from Beit She’an in northern Israel discovered a small ancient figurine during a weekend family trip to the archeological excavations are nearby Tel Rehov.
The clay female figurine has been dated to the Canaanite period, roughly the 15th to 13th century BC.
Prof. Amichai Mazar of the Hebrew University suggested that the figurine is linked to the Canaanite goddess of fertility Astarte, who is mentioned in the Bible.
The boy’s family immediately reported the find to the Antiquities Authority, which in turn sent an official to the boy’s school to explain to the students the importance of such finds in order to understand the history of the country.
In fact, the boy’s teacher had recently taught on ancient idolatry in the land, so the timing of the find and the visit by the Antiquities Authority couldn’t have been better.
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