For many PaleoJudaica posts on Hannibal Barca and the Second Punic War, see here and links.
Cross-file under Punic Watch.
This seems like a good time to link to this post, which explains why PaleoJudaica pays attention to the Phoenicians, the Phoenician language, the Carthaginians, and Punic and Neo-Punic
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Kiersten Neumann, Allison Thomason, The Routledge handbook of the senses in the ancient Near East. Routledge handbooks. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2022. Pp. xxix, 739. ISBN 9780367235284The volume gives some attention to the Hebrew Bible and ancient Judaism.Review by
Nassos Papalexandrou, University of Texas. papalex@austin.utexas.edu (with Amir Abou-Jaoude and Marina Schneider)
I noted its publication here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
It's true! This is a good, accessible (if you know some Hebrew) account of comparative Semitic phonology in relation to biblical Hebrew. It solves a good many mysteries.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
JERUSALEM, March 9 (Xinhua) -- Israeli archaeologists uncovered an ancient Persian city from 2,500 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said Thursday.I can't find the IAA announcement anywhere, but Xinhua sometimes does come up with the first English annoucement about archaeology stories in Israel.The ruins, situated in today's Mediterranean city of Nahariya in northern Israel, include residential areas with buildings and streets, a commercial and industrial area, worship buildings, and a large storage area, said the IAA.
[...]
For another ancient city recently unveiled by archaeologists (this one in Egypt), see here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
I have always acknowledged that the Dead Sea Scrolls have been very good to me. I was very fortunate, as a young graduate student, to have the opportunity to work on the Scrolls at the moment when scrolls scholarship was breaking open. I was also fortunate to work with a close circle of fine colleagues, who freely shared ideas and supported each other’s work.[14] The Dead Sea Scrolls captured my intellectual interest very early in my development as a scholar, and they have held it ever since.Professor Crawford and I were PhD students of Frank Moore Cross at the same time in the 1980s.
I noted a review of her 2019 book, Scribes and Scrolls at Qumran, here. Last year she published another book, The Text of the Pentateuch, with De Gruyter, noted here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Pirelli HangarBicocca is a not-for-profit foundation set up in Milan in 2004, when a disused industrial plant was converted into the home of an organisation that produces and promotes contemporary art. Kiefer’s ‘The Seven Heavenly Palaces’ installation was conceived and presented for the opening of the Pirelli Hangar. It owes its name to the palaces described in the ancient Hebrew treatise ‘Sefer Hekhalot’ (the book of palaces), dating back to the 4th-5th century AD. The installation’s seven towers are made of reinforced concrete. Each weighs 90 tons, and they vary in height from 14 to 18 metres.I have noted Kiefer's hekhalot installation previously here and his earlier, apparently related, painting here. See those posts for commentary on Sefer Hekhalot (3 Enoch).
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Such is Israel. Take a walk, find a lioness, or at least an ancient statue of one. Discovered by chance at Ein Nashut in the Golan Heights, the lady lion was depicted nursing cubs. The artifact is quite weathered after almost 2,000 years of exposure to the elements and much is missing but the identification is unmistakable, says Prof. Mordechai Aviam of Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee.Does this object count as a provenanced or unprovenanced artifact? Interesting question. It was not scientifically excavated. It was found by a group of archaeology students on the surface. It may already have been moved before they found it.[...]
It would be nice to hear more about the object's relationship to the synagogue. Evidently both were made of the same material. Are there other artistic representations in the ruins of the synagogue? Can we tell if the object was made with the same workmanship?
No one seems to doubt that it is an ancient artifact originating from the site. I am not suggesting otherwise. But surface surveys raise their own questions and we should still be asking them.
I noted the discovery of the other lioness statue at el-Araj in 2017 here.
Cross-file under Numismatics, with reference to the coin of the Roman Emperor Gallienus found by the same student group at Khirbet Majdukiya.
This seems to be lion statue week. Archaeologists have also excavated a Sphinx-like statue, perhaps representing the Emperor Claudius, in southern Egypt.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Last year's Purim post is here, with links. Another recent (indirectly) Purim-related post is here. The latter is now debunked.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Here are some follow-up articles:
The Darius Ostracon: From Real to Fake. How experts authenticated a modern forgery (Nathan Steinmeyer, Bible History Daily)
[Christopher Rollston] added that this lack of scrutiny could have had real implications for our understanding of the ancient past. “What if the archaeologist who made this piece had not come forward?” asked Rollston. “We could end up writing histories and citing inscriptions in those histories, and in part basing some of what we say on something that is a modern forgery.”It is possible that we already are. I flagged concerns about this almost twenty years ago .
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Christopher A. Faraone, Sofia Torallas Tovar, Greek and Egyptian magical formularies, vol. I: text and translation. California classical studies, 9. Berkeley: California Classical Studies, 2022. Pp. xxviii, 531. ISBN 9781939926166The book is open access.Review by
Sofia Bianchi Mancini, Max-Weber-Kolleg (Universität Erfurt). sofia.bianchi_mancini@uni-erfurt.de... After Karl Preisendanz’s influential first edition of the magical papyri––Papyri Graecae Magicae (PGM), completed between 1928 and 1931, and revised in 1974 by Albert Henrichs––and Hans Dieter Betz’s 1986 English translation of the Greek and Demotic magical papyri, Faraone and Torallas Tovar have created in Greek and Egyptian magical formularies (GEMF) an invaluable and much needed corpus. ...
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Egyptian officials have released photos of an ancient scroll, the 52-foot-long (16 meters) Book of the Dead papyrus recently discovered in Saqqara. The 10 images show ancient illustrations of gods and scenes from the afterlife, as well as text on the document, which is more than 2,000 years old.I made a big deal of the discovery of this scroll and its implications here. Now you can see more of it.[...]
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Conclusion: The subtitle “A New Translation” is misleading since the majority of this new edition of the Apocrypha is extracted from the Lexham English Septuagint. If you already own the Lexham English Septuagint, then there is little need to add the Lexham Old Testament Apocrypha to your Logos library since they are identical, except for 2 Esdras and deSilva’s introductions. However, the printed book is an inexpensive translation of the Apocrypha (plus) which will serve students of the Second Temple period.For more on the Lexham English Septuagint, see here and here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
It occurs to me that it would be useful to have (as complete as possible) a list of papyrus and parchment manuscripts that have been subjected to radiocarbon analysis. I have tried to arrange this list chronologically by the date when the analysis was carried out (which sometimes differs substantially from the date of publication). I would be grateful to be informed of omissions (especially Pharaonic-era papyri and medieval parchment manuscripts; I know that many have been analyzed, but I am not aware of the publication details). Thanks in advance. Links are provided for open access materials.Looks very useful. Thanks Brent.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
However, on Friday, the IAA said that following the publication of the find they were approached by an expert who participated in an excavation expedition last August, who informed the authority that she had created the inscription “while demonstrating to a group of students the manner in which sherds were inscribed in ancient times.”If we assume this update is correct – and I don't know what's real anymore – the key takeaway is this. When the original story broke, we were assured of the following:“She then left the sherd on the site, which led to the erroneous identification. She was questioned and said this was done unintentionally and without malice,” the statement said.
But a few weeks later, after the IAA had put the potsherd through multiple scans and laboratory tests, including at the Dead Sea Scrolls Lab, Ganor called Levy and told him the potsherd was believed to be authentic.What are all those scans and laboratory tests worth if they can't even identify a modern pedagogical showpiece that wasn't intended to fool anyone? This is a major hit to their credibility.
I said that this find seemed awfully lucky and that my instinct was that the object was a modern plant. Well, it wasn't planted deliberately. Otherwise my instinct was right.
But I trusted the authentication. Again, assuming this revised story bears up, from now on I am trusting my instincts.
Have a nice weekend.
UPDATE (4 March): Ruth Schuster provides additional details in an Haaretz article: Israel Antiquities Authority: ‘Ancient’ Darius Inscription Deemed Inauthentic in Mix-up. A world expert on Aramaic scripts on a foreign expedition in Tel Lachish had written on the shard of pottery as a demonstration to students illustrating how pottery was inscribed in ancient times.
Following the announcement, a world expert on Aramaic scripts who was participating in a foreign expedition to Lachish last August contacted the IAA and explained that she had demonstrated how sherds were inscribed in ancient times to students by scratching on an existing sherd at the site. She then left the ancient sherd with the modern addition on the site, the IAA stated.The potsherd itself was ancient, but the inscription was scratched onto it last year. I guess that is why it passed all the scans and tests as authentic.That is proper practice in the sense that removing any artifact from an archaeological site in Israel is prohibited, but in this case its subsequent discovery four months later led to confusion. “She was questioned and said this was done unintentionally and without malice,” the IAA said.
In this case the object was made with no intent to deceive. But it raises the question, how many other unprovenanced, but supposedly-genuine, inscribed (incised) ostraca are modern forgeries made in exactly the same way?
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Even in a country replete with antiquities, it’s rare to find such a magnificent, well-preserved edifice. The 1,600-year-old synagogue in the Bar'am National Park, near Israel's border with Lebanon, is one of the oldest, best-preserved ancient buildings in the country. The lintel stones are decorated with branches, vines and inscriptions in Aramaic, the language spoken by Galilean Jews during the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods.Previous posts on the Bar'am (Baram) Synagogue are here and links.[...]
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
For most Second Temple scribes, the Torah’s sanctity did not translate into a requirement to avoid the imprecisions common in all books. The Paleo-Hebrew and Proto-MT scribes were an exception, although the latter were committed to precise copying of all biblical scrolls. Only with the emergence of scrolls containing all five books (2nd cent. C.E.) did Torah scrolls take on their special level of sanctification.Drew Longacre has comments at the OTTC Blog.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
In recent years, the story of David Sassoon and his remarkable descendants has been a subject of interest to scholars, collectors and curators. Having succeeded in cracking the Baghdadi-Jewish dialect the family used in the correspondence preserved in the Jerusalem archives, business historian Joseph Sassoon has chronicled their success as global merchants. In December 2020 Sotheby’s New York presented ‘Sassoon: A Golden Legacy’, which fetched $5 million, far outstripping estimates and attracting bidders from all over the world. Sharon Mintz, Sotheby’s senior consultant for Judaica, attributed the result to the ‘dazzling quality of the objects together with the storied legacy of the family’. Now a major exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York, curated by Claudia Nahson and Esther da Costa Meyer and opening this month (3 March–13 August), digs into the stories and the objects that have made the family name into both a brand and a myth.The Codex Sassoon, reportedly the oldest complete copy of the Hebrew Bible, is going up for auction in May. It was part of the collection of of bibliophile and manuscript collector David Solomon Sassoon, although it now has another owner.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
This is a good, brief summary of the life of Mani and his influence. It concludes with some theological reflections. I leave you to evaluate those yourself.
If you would like a much deeper dive into Mani's life, including the question of the date of his death, see Werner Sundermann's article MANI in the online Encyclopaedia Iranica
One thing Revd. Ford's essay does not mention is that one of Mani's scriptures was a version of the Book of Giants. It was perhaps written in Syriac and seems to be based on the Jewish Aramaic Book of Giants, fragments of which survive in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Our surviving fragments of Mani's Book of Giants are written in Middle Persian (various languages) and Old Turkic translations.
For some PaleoJudaica posts on the Book of Giants, see here and here and links.
The second volume of the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project will include translations of all surviving fragments of the book.
For many posts on the prophet Mani, see here, here, here, and links.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
A hiker in Israel’s Judean lowlands region recently discovered a 2,500-year-old pottery shard inscribed with the name of the Persian king Darius the Great, the father of king Ahasuerus. It is the first discovery of an inscription bearing the name of Darius I anywhere in Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Wednesday.It seems awfully lucky to find an inscribed ostracon bearing a date and the name of a king mentioned in the Bible (e.g. Haggai 1:1; Zechariah 1:1; Ezra 6:1; Nehemeiah 12:22) just lying around. Like the finder, my first instinct was to think it might be a modern plant. But the IAA says they have run multiple tests on it and they think it is authentic. Sometimes you're just lucky.[...]
For the Canaanite sentence on a lice comb from Lachish, see here. For two early inscribed ostraca found at Lachish in recent years, see here and links. For the "Lachish letters" — inscribed ostraca excavated at Lachish about a century ago, see here and links. For more on the archaeology of Lachish in general, see here and here and links.
UPDATE (3 March): If it seems awfully lucky, that's almost certainly because it's not real.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.