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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Assyrian seal: time travel not required

HAARETZ: Archaeologists baffled by 8th century BCE seal found in Galilee How the seal from Assyrian King Sargon II’s rule came to be found where it is remains unclear; ancient ring made of carnelian also found (Eli Ashkenazi).
Two archaeological finds at the Omrit site in the northern Galilee have baffled Israeli archaeologists. The first is a seal dating back to the eighth century B.C.E., which was found in the "wrong" place. The second is an orange carnelian ring of uncertain origin, that apparently dates from the Middle Ages.

[...]
The site includes the ruins of three concentric temples:
The innermost part contains the most ancient temple, dated to the year 40 BCE. In the middle is a shrine dated to the time of Herod, around 20 BCE. Some believe that it is one of three temples Herod built in honor of Emperor Augustus, along with two others in Caesarea and Tiberias.

The third, later, temple dates back to the first century CE.

The seal, the older of the two artifacts, was found behind the wall of the earliest shrine, within a layer of filler between an internal and external wall.

Archaeologists don't understand how the seal ended up there, as the temple was built roughly 700 years before the seal was created. The layer of filler also contained small glass tools and other objects which were apparently taken out of the temple during construction.

[...]
The last paragraph baffled me for a while, since it's a bit difficult to explain an artifact excavated in the fill of a wall that was built seven hundred years before the artifact was made. A careless time traveler, perhaps? But as Joseph Lauer already independently worked out, this is just a typo. Read "after" rather than "before." It is unusual to find a prime artifact in a wall that is seven centuries younger, but time travel is not required.