A new section of Jerusalem's Lower Aqueduct uncovered

ANCIENT INFRASTRUCTURE: 300-meter stretch of ancient aqueduct uncovered during planning for new Jerusalem neighborhood. (Zev Stub, Times of Israel).

Archaeologists have uncovered a 300-meter (1,000-foot) stretch of a 2,000-year-old aqueduct that carried water from springs south of Bethlehem to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, shedding new light on one of the ancient city’s most ambitious engineering projects.

The discovery was made ahead of plans to build a new neighborhood in southern Jerusalem, where archaeologists and planners hope to incorporate the remains into the future development, according to an announcement Sunday by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

[...]

This section is more of the earlier "Lower Aqueduct." For PaleoJudaica posts on Jerusalem's ancient water supply, substantial parts of which have been rediscovered only in this century, start here (cf. here) and follow the links.

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Israel Museum: “Tiny Footprints: Childhood in the Ancient Land of Israel”

EXHIBITION: From birth to play, new exhibition explores childhood in ancient Israel. Israel Museum traces the lives of children through 500,000 years of artifacts: ‘What’s amazing about these toys is how similar they are to today’ (Zev Stub, Times of Israel).

The exhibition brings together hundreds of artifacts from 11 institutions, tracing the lives of children in the Land of Israel and neighboring cultures from prehistory through the end of the first millennium CE. It draws on artifacts from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Greece and Rome as well as Israel.

“Overall, we see a lot of things that are really similar to how things are today, even if there are plenty of shocking differences,” [exhibition curator Tali] Sharvit said. “We can see the roots of modern institutions like schools and marriage, and observe similarities in the relationships between mothers and their children. At the same time, though, many of our ideas about children’s roles in the family structure have completely changed.”

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Review of Raja & Seland (eds.), Palmyra, the Roman empire, and the third century crisis

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Palmyra, the Roman empire, and the third century crisis: zooming in and scaling up from the evidence.

Rubina Raja, Eivind Heldaas Seland, Palmyra, the Roman empire, and the third century crisis: zooming in and scaling up from the evidence. Oriens et occidens, 46. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2025. Pp. 323. ISBN 9783515140218.

Review by
Marco Ferrario, University College London. m.ferrario@ucl.ac.uk

... Perhaps the most famous—although, in many respects, quite peculiar—case of a community that turned the more general “crisis” into an opportunity is that of Palmyra. Its power and wealth rose to unprecedented heights precisely during the “crisis”, with its fortunes declining right when the imperial center under Aurelian got a stronger foothold for the first time in decades and decidedly reasserted itself throughout the provinces.

The contributions collected in Palmyra, the Roman Empire, and the Third Century Crisis approach the period innovatively in their attempt to make sense of this and similar (apparently paradoxical) discrepancies. ...

I noted the publication of the book here. Cross-file under Palmyra Watch.

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Olanrewaju, The Compositional History of the Book of Kings (Mohr Siebeck)

NEW BOOK FROM MOHR SIEBECK:

Samson Olanrewaju

The Compositional History of the Book of Kings

An Analysis of the Evaluative Frameworks in 1 Kings 14–2 Kings 25

2026. 286 pages.
Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe (FAT II) 177

€89.00
including VAT

sewn paper
available
978-3-16-200567-0

Also Available As:
eBook PDF

Summary

Samson Olanrewaju investigates the composition of the book of Kings through an analysis of the formal regnal evaluations of Israelite and Judean kings found in 1 Kgs 14-2 Kgs 25*. Using source- and redaction-critical approaches, he postulates that the earliest edition of the book of Kings (Kings Edition0), commissioned by Amaziah's court in early eighth-century Judah, documents the reigns of Judean kings from Rehoboam through Jehoash ben Ahaziah. Kings Edition0 was subsequently updated with the accounts and evaluations of Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, resulting in Kings Edition1.
Kings Edition1, a document produced by pro-Assyrian groups operating within Manasseh's court in seventh-century Judah, retained the Judah-centric orientation of its predecessor (Kings Edition0), concentrating on the reigns of Jehoash ben Ahaziah's successors rather than on synchronized lists of Judean and Israelite rulers. Such synchronizations were introduced in Kings Edition2, a sixth-century Deuteronomistic edition of the book of Kings produced by an exilic editor who was also responsible for the regnal evaluations of Manasseh, Amon, Josiah, Jehoahaz, and Jehoiakim as well as the northern entries of Nadab, Baasha, Omri, and Ahaziah.
Furthermore, the polemical references to idolatrous Judean bamot found in the regnal evaluations of »good« Judean kings are attributable to the Deuteronomistic editor of Kings Edition2. This early exilic edition of Kings subsequently evolved into Kings Edition3 through revisions and expansions undertaken by late/post-exilic redactors, who incorporated the northern entries of Jehoash, Jeroboam II, Zechariah, Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah as well as the southern entries of Abijam, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah.

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