I'M IN BOWLER NOW and back online. More presently.

THE MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE has reportedly received support from the IAA to be built on the site of that Muslim cemetery:

IAA set to okay museum on site of Muslim cemetery
By Meron Rapoport

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) told the High Court of Justice that it was prepared to allow construction of the Museum of Tolerance on the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem's Mamila area, although an enormous archaeologist had determined that the excavation was far from complete.

In the opinion, to be submitted to the court today, Dr. Raphael Greenberg of Tel Aviv University states that the IAA archaeologist excavating the area wrote in his concluding report that there were at least 800 graves still left in the area and that he unequivocably recommended prohibiting construction there.

[...]

Presumably "enormous" is a mistranslation of "prominent" or some such in the original Hebrew. For more, see here and follow the links back. See also here.

I'm back in the public library, but we're headed off now to go hiking.

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Yet another Waqf excavation project has started:

Photos: Unsupervised Islamic Digging on Temple Mount

by Ezra HaLevi

(IsraelNN.com) The Islamic Wakf is digging large ditches on the Temple Mount without archaeological supervision to protect antiquities at Judaism’s holiest site.

Photos of the construction were publicized earlier this week. Investigation revealed that the dig had been approved by the police, though not coordinated with any archeological authorities. The ditch is being dug in the direction of the Dome of the Rock, the site of the Holy Temple, according to most opinions.

[...]

The article includes lots of photos. The story is also covered in Haaretz here

PHILOLOGOS ON BEING "IN SEVENTH HEAVEN":

This concept we find only in rabbinic literature [i.e., not in the Bible], where it plays an important role, especially in the early form of Jewish mystical thought known as “Hechalot” or “Palace” mysticism. In the Hechalot tradition, it is the task of the mystical initiate to ascend by meditative techniques through the seven heavens one after another, overcoming angelic challenges in each, and then to pass safely through the seven “palaces” of the seventh heaven in order to reach the base of God’s throne. Similar beliefs, each with a complex angelology, existed among various Gnostic sects in the Roman Empire and had some currency in early Christianity, too, at least to judge by Paul’s remark in Corinthians II that “I knew a man in Christ… [who was] caught up to the third heaven.” From Judaism and/or Christianity the idea also spread to Islam, so that we read in Sura 71 of the Quran, “See you not how Allah has created the seven heavens one above another, and made the moon a light in their midst and made the sun a lamp?”

To be in “seventh heaven” is thus to reach the pinnacle of bliss. The expression has been around in English for a long time, although whether it got there from indigenous Christian sources, Jewish ones or Muslim ones, I don’t know. It almost certainly doesn’t come from in zibnten himl, since it’s older than the late 19th-century Yiddish-speaking immigration to the United States. Yet neither does in zibnten himl, which derives from internal Jewish traditions, come from it. Both go back to ancient beliefs that are thousands of years old.

A BABYLONIAN OFFICIAL hitherto known only from a mention in the book of Jeremiah, has turned up in a cuneiform tablet from the time of Nebuchadnezzar:

Museum’s tablet lends new weight to Biblical truth
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent

The British Museum yesterday hailed a discovery within a modest clay tablet in its collection as a breakthrough for biblical archaeology – dramatic proof of the accuracy of the Old Testament.

The cuneiform inscription in a tablet dating from 595BC has been deciphered for the first time – revealing a reference to an official at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that proves the historical existence of a figure mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.

This is rare evidence in a nonbiblical source of a real person, other than kings, featured in the Bible.

The tablet names a Babylonian officer called Nebo-Sarsekim, who according to Jeremiah xxxix was present in 587BC when Nebuchadnezzar “marched against Jerusalem with his whole army and laid siege to it”.

[...]

UPDATE (20 July): More here.

UPDATE (21 July): More here, with photo.

THE SAN DIEGO DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBIT is covered yet again in the Union-Tribune:

Exhibit illuminates Dead Sea Scrolls

By Robert L. Pincus
UNION-TRIBUNE ART CRITIC

July 8, 2007

It's dumbfounding to think, standing in front of this or that example of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that these humble pieces of ancient paper, so small in size and covered with diminutive lines of text, were the archaeological find of the 20th century.

And it's startling to realize that without their initial discovery by Bedouin shepherd Muhammed edh-Dhib, they might still be lingering in their long-standing home, in caves near the site of the ancient settlement of Qumran.

[...]

MORE ON THE MASADA MUSEUM:

A new museum confronts an old mystery at Masada

By Danny Rubinstein (Haaretz)

The exhibit at the end of the tour of the new museum at Masada consists of 11 tiny sherds bearing intriguing names.

Hundreds of inscriptions on sherds were found at Masada, including some on earthenware jugs. Some are only a single letters, others contain names and numbers from the days of the rebellion and the Roman siege. The archaeologists, in particular Yigael Yadin, were reasonably good at decipher the inscriptions on the various sherds, but the inscription on these 11 sherds was unusual.

They were all found in the same place, next to the network of internal gates that controlled the passage to the foodstores, and were not scattered over a wide area like the other sherds. They were all written in the same handwriting, and each sherd contained only one name.

Most important, the names were not regular names but rather nicknames, such as Ben Hanahatam (or Ben Hanahtum), Tzayda (or Hatzayad, "the hunter"), Ha'amaki (someone from a village in the Acre area). Among them was one well-known name - Ben-Yair, the name of the leader of the Masada rebellion, Elazar Ben-Yair.

[...]

I'M IN HAYWARD, WISCONSIN, blogging from the public library. Their wireless connection is down, so I'm on a cluncky desktop machine with a time-limited access. Blogging will be brief. I hope to have regular Internet access again by Saturday. Meanwhile, I'll have to continue to make do with fishing, rowboating, walking, swimming, etc. Not to mention DVDs and, of course, eating. Hope you're having a nice week too.

WE'RE HEADED NORTH to stay in a cabin that I'm told will not have Internet access. I'll try to get into town and find a coffee place or something that does, but this is likely to be sporadic. Otherwise, we expect to be back here a week from tomorrow. Have a good week.

A NEW MUSEUM AT MASADA:

Masada complex

A new museum at Masada presents a selection of the archaeological discoveries that were found at the site, including a pay stub of a Roman soldier and 2,000 year old date and olive pits. However, today’s Masada belongs to the people of Israel, some of whom take home souvenirs, and some of whom choose to get married there

FIRST THE GILGAMESH AND NOW HANNIBAL'S:

Pack your trunks and march to Hannibal's

Scott Joseph | [Orlando] Sentinel Restaurant Critic
June 29, 2007

Winter Park has a stylish new lounge for cool drinks and light nibbles. But if you're on Park Avenue, you're going to have to cross the railroad tracks to get to it.

Hannibal's on the Square is, it shouldn't be a surprise to learn, on Hannibal Square. What might be a surprise to learn is that Hannibal Square is more of a street than a square. I had always assumed it was the name of the park that sits catty-corner to Dexter's, but that's called Shady Park. It has been my observation that if you're opening a business, you don't want the word shady in your name.

And as long as we're digressing here, let's go a little further afield. Did you know that Hannibal Square is named for that famed Carthaginian military commander known for crossing the Pyrenees and Alps on elephants to start the Second Punic War? The Second Punic War was also known by the Romans as the War Against Hannibal, which shows you what kind of grudge the Romans could hold. This all happened around 218 B.C., so my memory is a little fuzzy. As far as I know, Hannibal never visited the Winter Park location that is named for him. Neither did his elephants.

[...]

The food sounds okay too.

ARAMAIC WATCH: A new book coming soon from Brill, via Jack Sasson's Agade list:

Les manuscripts araméens du Wadi Daliyeh et la Samarie vers 450-332 av. J.-C.
Jan Dušek

Books
Forthcoming
Expected: August 2007

ISBN-13 (i)The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) has been changed from 10 to 13 digits on 1 January 2007: 978 90 04 16178 8

Cover: Hardback
Number of pages: xvi, 682 pp. (French)

List price: € 190.00 / US$ 257.00

Readership
All those interesed in the Old Testament, the history of Palestine and the ancient Near East, Hebrew and Aramaic philology and epigraphy, theology, papyrology, and history of law.

About the author(s)
Jan Dušek, Ph.D. (2005) in History and Archaeology of Ancient Worlds, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris/France, works as a researcher in the Centre for Biblical Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Charles University in Prague.

This book deals with the manuscripts from the Wadi Daliyeh (Samaria Papyri) written in Aramaic in the 4th century BCE in the city of Samaria, in the last decades of the Persian Period. The book contains a complete edition of the Wadi Daliyeh manuscripts, their new historical interpretation and an analysis of their legal aspects. The historical interpretation shed new light on the history of Samaria and its institutions in the Persian period, as well as on the history of the Persian province of Judaea. The book is particulary useful for historians of Palestine in the Second Temple Period, for biblical scholars as well as for scholars dealing with Near Eastern legal texts.

UNSETTLING THOUGHTS about the San Diego Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition:

To beef up security before the scrolls' arrival, the museum was awarded roughly $80,000 by the Department of Homeland Security's Urban Area Security Initiative for nonprofit institutions considered to be at "high risk" for a terrorist attack. Of the seven San Diego nonprofits awarded a grant in 2006, six were Jewish organizations, the seventh being the museum, which spent the money on security cameras and door locks.

Dave Dalton, head of security for the museum, said that although it's been busy ("busier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs," as he put it), there've been no threats.

"I keep my ear to the drums pretty closely," Dalton said. "I check with organizations on a regular basis to see if there's been any intelligence that would suggest there's any known threats or risk, and [there are] none that I'm aware of."

But the story about the mouse is amusing.

ARAMAIC WATCH:

Cox Communications to Launch Middle Eastern Broadcasting Network of America
Network Joins Cox's Free International Programming Tier
By PR Newswire

HERNDON, Va., July 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Cox Communications Northern Virginia has announced the launch of the Middle Eastern Broadcasting Network of America (MBN TV), which will be offered to Cox Digital Cable customers throughout Fairfax County and the Fredericksburg region starting August 1, 2007. The new channel joins Cox's free International Tier of programming, which currently features 14 channels.

"We're pleased to offer yet another international programming choice to our diverse customer base," said Janet Barnard, vice president and region manager for Cox Northern Virginia. "MBN TV features a variety of compelling content, and is the perfect complement to our existing international lineup."

MBN TV is a 24-hour Middle Eastern network broadcasting from the United States, with coverage reaching the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The network has developed a unique programming structure in Arabic, Aramaic and English languages with widespread appeal. MBN TV airs a variety of content including: movies, soap operas, documentaries, music concerts, music videos, talk shows, sporting events, educational series, international and local news, and children's shows.

[...]

My emphasis.

THE "QUEEN OF SHEBA" TEMPLE in Yemen has been suicide bombed:

Bomb at Yemen temple kills 9
Reuters, The Associated Press
Published: July 2, 2007

SANA, Yemen: A suicide bomber killed nine people including six Spanish tourists Monday when he drove his car into the site of an ancient temple, police officials said.

In addition to the Spanish tourists, three Yemenis, including the suicide bomber, died, said the police officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Witnesses said a car drove through a gate and then exploded at the Queen of Sheba temple in northeastern Yemen, which was built about 3,000 years ago.

[...]

Barbaric. The speculation is that Al Qaeda is responsible.

(Via Francis Deblauwe on the Iraq Crisis list.)

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Israel scraps Mughrabi bridge plan
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS (Jerusalem Post)

In a dramatic about-face, controversial plans to construct a major new bridge to the Mughrabi Gate adjacent to Jerusalem's Western Wall directly through an archeological garden abutting the Temple Mount have been nixed amid concern about possible damage to artifacts, officials said Monday.

The decision to abort the massive bridge, the construction of which had been deeply contested by leading Israeli archeologists, effectively means that a salvage excavation under way in the area, which has drawn the wrath of Islamic officials and led to low-level Arab violence in the region earlier this year, will be coming to a close shortly, the officials said.

The planned major bridge was meant to replace a temporary bridge that was constructed on the section of the Western Wall allocated for women's prayer. The temporary bridge was built more than a year ago, after the original stone ramp leading up to the Mughrabi Gate was removed, having been deemed unsafe by city engineers.

[...]

A UNESCO report on the dig concluded that the excavation is not damaging the holy site but called on Israel to stop the dig nonetheless to allow for international observation of the work.

[...]

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Well, nearly.

Restore and protect the Mount of Olives
(Jerusalem Post)

Without any fanfare, the Knesset last week passed in preliminary reading one of its most overdue bills ever - for the establishment of a single national authority charged with the preservation, restoration and protection of the Mount of Olives cemetery - the Jewish people's most ancient burial ground and final resting place to a veritable pantheon of religious, spiritual, cultural and national paragons, including the Biblical prophets Zechariah, Haggai and Malachi.

[...]

The Authority to be set up according to the new Knesset legislation is to manage the cemetery as "a national shrine for the Jewish people, resurrect it from ruin and protect it from desecration and defacement." We can only hope that real action does indeed finally follows all the words and lamentations.

[...]

YEMENI ANTIQUITIES ALTERED TO LOOK JEWISH? So says the Yemen Observer about a cache of antiquities seized from an accused antiquities trafficker:

Smuggled antiquities court session delayed

The trial of Samir Hamad Jad Allah, a Jordanian man accused of trafficking and smuggling Yemeni antiquities, was postponed yesterday by the Secretariat Appeals Court. It was rescheduled for July 3 of this year. “The accused did not respond to the new report made by the Antiquities Department in Sana’a University,” said Judge Hamood al-Herbi. That report, made by experts at Sana’a University, examined a kilogram of old Yemeni gold and a number of stone and bronze pieces seized with the accused.

The report showed that these parts were extracted from a Yemeni cemetery or temple during an archaeological excavation, and that these pieces were tampered with. These pieces may date back to between prehistoric times and the Islamic century. This is indicated by the Mosnad line, which is a Yemeni pen marking used on a large number of those pieces. In addition to the monetary significance of the archaeological pieces, the committee said in the examination report that the archaeological group seized in the case is of an important and great history. The tampering with these objects has caused the loss of much important information from the location of the original graves, said the report.

The added decorations are related to the Jewish religion, such as the Temple of Solomon and the Hebrew lines. “Such action leads to distortion of the Yemeni heritages and flinging graphics elements which has nothing to do with the Yemeni civilization,” said Hisham al-Thawr, the antiquities specialist. Experts also had to examine the antiquities seized with the accused, at his request. Jad Allah refused to accept a previous report prepared by the General Authority for Antiquities, because he didn’t feel it was created by experts in the field. He demanded that the court form of a neutral committee specialized in the examination of the antiquities pieces.

[...]

I don't recall hearing of this case before, although Jack Sasson's Agade list noted this general article on antiquities smuggling in Yemen last April. Does anyone out there have more information?

PAULA FREDRICKSEN speaks for Paganism and answers the question would she vote for a Pagan for public office. Excerpt:

My point, on the other hand, is different, though I have given you the data for it in the two preceding paragraphs. In antiquity – and all through the Middle Ages, when different pantheons from further North flourished – there never was such a thing as paganism. The essence of traditional polytheism is its multiplicity. To think of paganism as an “-ism,” as “church” with its own sets of creeds and standardized rituals and “chaplains,” is to betray a venerable ancient religious culture by remaking it in the image and likeness of the Church. Since my ancient pagans cannot speak for themselves, I must speak for them: Whatever the pagan equivalent of goyishe would be, that’s what they would call this initiative.

I quite agree with her answer to the question.

I"M HERE! In Evansville, that is. Uneventful trip apart from circling the Madison airport for awhile in the middle of a lightning storm last night. Happy Fourth of July!