Archaeology evening, Part 2

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Here is one of the guides who explained the Givati Parking Lot excavations on Thursday, as part of the 13th annual City of David conference.
He is showing the buried treasure that was found there in recent years.
Like the hoard of 264 gold coins, never used, in mint condition, dated to 613 CE, worth over half a million dollars today!

A British woman volunteer found the money in the wall of this Byzantine building.
This dig in the Arab village of Silwan, right next to the Old City, is the biggest on-going excavation in Israel.

The other items in the guide's photo are a tile with the stamp of the Roman Tenth Legion and a 2,000 year old earring of gold, pearl, and emerald.
Got $180 (less a holiday discount)? --You, too, can buy a pair of earrings, replicas of this beautiful Roman Period find.
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Last night's demonstration in Jerusalem

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The young woman with the bullhorn led the slogan-chanting of the demonstrators.
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I came up behind them, as I was just exiting the big Givati Parking Lot Dig where guided tours of the excavation were going on.

I had to cross the street to get to the annual City of David Archaeology conference.
I needed to squeeze between the many Border Police to get this photo.
The policemen outnumbered the demonstrators, it looked like.

The narrow street leads from the Arab Silwan up to the southern wall of the Old City.
To the left is the Dung Gate into the Old City.
The dome you see is El Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount.
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I'll tell you more about the conference itself in the coming posts.

If you want to try to understand the reason for yesterday's demonstration, please see my earlier post http://jerusalemhillsdailyphoto.blogspot.co.il/2010/09/trouble-in-jerusalem.html.
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Anthropoid coffins from Deir el-Balah

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The 13th century BC anthropoid coffins again, this time close up!

Last month I blogged about the ones standing in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

These two here are at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv.

Please click on the photo below to get a reminder of their history.


A post for Taphophile Tragics and Our World Tuesday.
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Oi what a schnoz!

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Here is a "cute" ossuary I saw at the Eretz Israel Museum near Tel Aviv.
It was discovered in Peki'in, in northern Israel.
The bone box is from the Late Chalcolithic period, i.e. about 4000 BCE.

The museum calls it a "double-faced ossuary, modeled and painted."


They write

The human figure is distinct for its head sculptured in the round with a marked mouth.
The exaggerated nose, typical of the selective facial features of the period, possible symbolized the breath of life.
In the ossuaries it may have been an expression for the dead person's revival in the afterlife.

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A post for Taphophile Tragics and Our World Tuesday.
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The stuff of archaeologists' dreams

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The "4th International Festival of Light in the Old City of Jerusalem" is in full swing.

This animated line of dig "volunteers" swinging buckets of excavated dirt from one to another was my favorite part!
It looked so life-like I wanted to join them!

Enlarge the photo and you can find the one guy down on the ladder, heaving the heavy buckets up over his head.

Meanwhile projectors went on and off, highlighting different areas of the big dig going on at the Givati Parking Lot.
It's just outside the Old City wall, next to the City of David.

Adding to the atmosphere was the background music--the clicking of many small pickaxes on ancient stones.
From time to time pictures of the discovered treasures lit up the back wall.
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These scenes in the quiet Jerusalem night were heartwarming; I felt proud and lucky to be an archaeology worker in Jerusalem.

This best part of the Light Festival could very well be an illustration of what archaeologists dream about at night.
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Putting a face on death

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Welcome to the archaeology wing of the newly re-done Israel Museum.
Behind the glass wall and reflected in the floor are six anthropoid clay coffins standing at the entrance to greet you.
(Enjoy the big version by clicking on the photo and then once again on the photo that opens. )

A 2005 Israel Museum publication explains these tall sarcophagi:

Late Canaanite period, 14th-13th century BCE

South of Gaza city, at Deir el-Balah, some fifty pottery sarcophagi were unearthed from a large, ancient cemetery.
Located near the sea, the site had been protected from plunder by massive sand dunes.
The sarcophagi were fashioned by hand, using the coil technique, the method employed for creating large vessels.
They were then fired with their lids in an open fire.
The lids were later refired in kilns located nearby, which accounts for their darker color.
Similar cemeteries have been discovered near the Nile Delta.

Several features of the Gaza sarcophagi shows clear signs of Egyptian influence.
At times the lids bear depictions of mummy-like figures, indicating the face, wig, arms, and hands of the deceased.
Many of the faces have small beards, perhaps symbolizing the beard of Osiris, the Egyptian god of death, into whose realm the deceased was about to enter.
The bodies of the dead, usually more than one, were laid unembalmed in the coffin, along with funerary gifts such as pottery food bowls.
If the deceased was wealthy, elaborate jewelry and vessels made of stone and bronze were also added.

You can see some of the jewelry masterpieces here.

Be sure to check this link to see the amazing faces of the sarcophagi.

The partial excavation at Deir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip was done in 1972 by Trude Dotan.
This review of her recent book, Deir el-Balah: Uncovering an Egyptian Outpost in Canaan from the Time of the Exodus, has some interesting gossip about the dig.

To discover Hershel Shanks' idea about Joseph being buried in such a coffin, see this blog.
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(A post for Taphophile Tragics and Weekend Reflections.)

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Mysterious Vs in the bedrock

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Photo from the City of David website

A week ago, just in time for ABC Wednesday's V-Day, mysterious V-shaped carvings in the limestone beneath present-day Jerusalem were discovered during excavations.
Archaeologists of the dig are puzzled by the cuts in the rock in the City of David.
They are around 3,000 years old.

The Washington Posts says,
"Israeli diggers who uncovered a complex of rooms carved into the bedrock in the oldest section of the city recently found the markings: Three "V'' shapes cut next to each other into the limestone floor of one of the rooms, about 2 inches (5 centimeters) deep and 50 centimeters long. There were no finds to offer any clues pointing to the identity of who made them or what purpose they served."

Now this is where YOU come in!
If you have seen anything similar anywhere in the world, the archaeologists ask you to contribute that knowledge and help solve the mystery.

Go to the City of David site here and click on the photo to leave your answer.

Or if we just want to have fun and think of funny uses, you can write them in my comments section.
Over 20,000 have replied (not to me!).
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For the full story and more photos see
AP article in Washington Post or the Jerusalem Post article.

See ideas about the Vs at Todd Bolen's BiblePlaces Blog, e.g. one of his readers, A.B. Crysler, suggested this:
"The grooves in the limestone were used by the fullers to whiten clothes. II Kings 18:17 - ...they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller's field. See also Isaiah 7:3 and 36:2."

I had to look up the word "fuller." It means a workman who fulls (cleans and thickens) freshly woven cloth.

OK, good luck!
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UPDATE: More speculation from Tom Powers here in Jerusalem
UPDATE 2: At the City of David archaeology conference last night, Sept. 7, 2012, they said that 75,000 answers or speculations were received from all over the world about the mysterious Vs.
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Exciting emergency excavation

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Just in time for ABC Wednesday E-day, an emergency (i.e. salvage) excavation in Emek Yizrael (the Jezreel Valley) has unearthed an exciting find!


Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority

A marble statue of Hercules from the 2nd century C.E.!
He is leaning on a club to his left, on the upper part of which hangs the skin of the Nemean lion which according to Greek mythology Hercules slew as the first of his twelve labors.
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As you can guess, it is from a Roman bathhouse.
Benches were found on two sides of the pool, which had a sophisticated pumping system to fill it with water.
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More details and a link to high resolution photos at the IAA press release.
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I hope they find his head.
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