QuoteReplyTopic: Archaeology news updates Posted: 13-Nov-2013 at 23:32
Two bracelets found in Leicestershire Roman coffin
Two bracelets, believed to be "at least" 1,600 years old have been found in a Roman coffin.
The jet bracelets were found on Monday buried in silt inside the coffin which was discovered in a field in Witherley, Leicestershire last month.
Archaeologists from Warwickshire who are studying the find said one bracelet is in good condition, while the other needs "immediate conservation".
They said they have not ruled out the possibility of further finds.
'Very small'
Stuart Palmer, business manager of Archaeology Warwickshire, said: "Both of the bracelets were in the bottom of the coffin. One of them has left its imprint on the coffin's leaden base.
"One of them is in quite good condition but the other has not been so well preserved. It was buried in a part of the coffin that had cracked and it has a number of cracks in it."
He said the bracelets were "very small" and "very cute".
"They were both found in positions in the coffin that could indicate they were on an arm but there's a possibility they could also have been worn as necklaces or even braded through hair," he added.
Archaeologists believe the coffin, measuring approximately 3ft (0.9m), belonged to the child of a wealthy family and represents an early example of Christian burial.
Mr Palmer described the coffin and its contents as "extremely significant".
He said his team was working with scientists from the University of York to sieve through the rest of the soil and said there was a chance there might be further finds.
He said there was very little left of the child's skeleton and what remained was in fragments.
The full programme of tests is expected to take approximately five months.
Treasure Chest Discovered By Indonesian Oyster Gatherer Is Chock-Full Of Gold Coins
Hundreds of people swarmed the swamps on the northern tip of Indonesia this week in search of buried booty after anoyster gatherer discovered a treasure chestin the village of Gampong Pande.
Found near an ancient cemetery, the treasure chest is believed to have surfaced during the 2004 tsunami that devastated the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh, where Gampong Pande is located.
On Thursday, authorities stepped in and closed the site where the coins where discovered, pending a decision by the provincial government. Though city administration is asking residents to turn in any gold coins found and offering compensation, many have already been sold outright.
Salt Lake museum unlocking the secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls
One of the miracles of the Dead Sea Scrolls — the earliest surviving texts preserving the Old Testament of the Bible — is that they survived at all.
"In ancient Israel, we have very few written documents that have ever been discovered," said Risa Levitt Kohn, co-curator of "Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times," a new exhibit opening to the public Friday at The Leonardo in downtown Salt Lake City.
The exhibit features 10 actual scrolls featuring not only Old Testament passages but other religious texts that go back two millennia. (Another 10 scrolls will be swapped in later in the exhibit’s run.) The exhibit also features artifacts of the period, "from mundane pottery to the monumental," Kohn said, including a four-ton piece of Jerusalem’s Western Wall, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The exhibit, said The Leonardo’s executive director, Alexandra Hesse, when the show was announced in April, is "the most significant exhibit The Leonardo has opened to date."
Bryton Sampson, The Leonardo’s communications manager, said this week that attendance for the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit is likely to top the 350,000 who attended the museum’s most-popular exhibit of all time, "Body Worlds III."
Texts from ancient Israel are so rare, compared to those of other civilizations, because of the material on which they were written, Kohn said in an interview this week.
Writings found from ancient Mesopotamia were on stone tablets, while ancient Egyptian documents were written on papyrus — materials that withstood the elements. In biblical-era Israel, documents were written on parchment.
"Stone survives very well; if there’s a fire, it just get harder," said Kohn, professor of Hebrew Bible and Judaism and director of the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University. "But writings on parchment — moisture destroys it, fire destroys it, bugs destroy it."
The 900-plus pieces of parchment that are commonly called the Dead Sea Scrolls, Kohn said, were found in caves about a mile off the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. Those caves were a perfect environment for preservation: dry, dark and largely left alone until their discovery in the late 1940s.
Though the Dead Sea Scrolls "revolutionized our understanding" of the Old Testament, Kohn said, the translated scrolls revealed surprisingly few variations from the Bible as it was handed down through the centuries.
"If you compare your standard version to these biblical scrolls, there are some spelling changes, some handwriting changes. There are small scribal errors," Kohn said. "But the big differences are few and far between."
Much of the research into the Dead Sea Scrolls has been done by scholars at Brigham Young University, said The Leonardo’s Sampson. Because of that, the Leonardo is mounting a companion exhibit, "Unlocking the Past," that covers the research done on the scrolls.
For museumgoers, Kohn said, seeing the actual scrolls — as well as artifacts from ancient Israel — is a moving experience.
"As a historian, I always think it’s very, very powerful to come into contact with the real thing," Kohn said. "Being in the presence of things that are 2,000 to 3,000 years old is at once very humbling and very powerful."
It’s easy to walk past the gray-brown slab of basalt in the Israel Museum’s archaeology wing and pay it no heed. (I confess to have done so numerous times; the silver amulets bearing ancient renditions of the priestly blessing garner far more attention.) But etched into the monumental stele’s pocked surface is a mysterious figure central to understanding the significance of the lunar god in ancient Canaan and the origins of the Jewish veneration of the new moon.
The nearly four-foot-tall volcanic stone is marked with a striking bull-headed figure whose powerful gaze bores through the viewer. Its horns bend inward like the sliver of a day-old moon. Beneath its massive skull stands a vertical line transected by two downward facing curves which appear to be limbs. Girt at its midsection is a sword of a style typical of the period (examples of which are found in display cases just feet away). At its right hip sits a tiny rosette believed to represent the four phases of the moon.
What deity it represents, or in fact what the figure is at all, remains the subject of scholarly debate.
Discovery
The bull stele once stood atop an altar situated at the entrance to the ancient city of Geshur, the capital of an eponymous kingdom. It was one of several Aramaean kingdoms that ruled southern Syria and bordered the Israelites. Like the Israelites to the south, the Geshurites spoke a Semitic tongue, likely a blend of Aramaic and Hebrew.
The Iron Age city, which sits on a slight rise a mile north of the Sea of Galilee at a site called Bethsaida, was excavated by archaeologists in 1996. Rami Arav of University of Nebraska Omaha, who headed the dig, explained that the stele was found buried beneath more than 12 feet of debris — the remains of a three-story-high gatehouse that dominated the entry to the capital. The ruined gatehouse was the largest and best preserved of its kind, and within its courtyard were two altars and five steles. Scholars postulate that the altars were akin to those referred to as ”high places of the gates” in II Kings 23.
“The two high places were situated in niches made in the two towers that flanked the entrance,” Arav said. One of the high places had two steps leading onto a raised platform. The bull stele was found at its base, broken to bits and overturned.
Though almost postmodern in style, the stele found at Bethsaida dates back to the 8th century BCE, the end of an era in which the Levant was ruled by a constellation of minor kingdoms including Judea, Israel, the Philistine cities and the trans-Jordanian kingdoms of Ammon and Moab. At the time of the stele’s creation, Geshur was one of several satellite states of the Syrian kingdom of Aram. During the kingdom’s heyday in the ninth and eighth centuries it was a key player in the Canaanite balance of power and controlled the eastern banks of the Sea of Galilee and a key east-west trade route. According to the biblical account, King David married Maachah, the daughter of King Talmai of Geshur, forging a political alliance between Israel and its stronger neighbor. In 732 BCE, Assyrian King Tiglath-Pileser III embarked on a campaign of conquest and destruction in Canaan. Bethsaida, like many cities in the southern Levant, was put to the sword. The stele was smashed and cast down in ruin.
“The feeling that we all had at the time is that we [were] kind of flying in a time capsule to that year [732 BCE] and witnessing the destruction and the result of the war,” Arav said of his team’s discovery of the stele during the ’96 expedition. “It was a thrilling moment to everyone in the expedition.”
Bull and moon
Strolling through the Israel Museum’s Iron Age gallery, Eran Arie, the newly instated curator of Iron Age and Persian Period Archaeology, discourses on the bull’s prominence in the ancient Near East. Until the invention of the steam engine, the bull was the most powerful force man could harness and was integral to prosperity in agrarian society, he explained.
In much of the ancient Levant, the bull was associated with storm deities, like the Canaanite Baal, or his Syrian cognate Hadad. A 15th century stele from Ugarit, in northwestern Syria, for example, shows a thunderbolt-wielding Baal adorned with bull horns.
Arie points out a veritable herd of terra cotta and metal bovines inhabiting the hall’s vitrines. One enchanting artifact just across the gallery from the Bethsaida stele, a seven-inch-long bronze bull statue, attests to the religious significance of the animal to the Canaanites and Israelites. Found at Dothan in northern Samaria, it dates from the 13th century and represents the fecundity brought by the seasonal rains.
“It is a symbol both of power and fertility,” wrote Israeli archaeologist Amihai Mazar in an article describing the piece. “Sometimes the bull appears as a cult object itself, for example, as a young striding god to be worshipped as the symbol of the deity.”
Stylized horns also protrude from the corners of hewn stone altars commonplace throughout Canaan and Israel during this period. The horns “may symbolize strength, as of a bull, understood as political or religious authority,” posits Dr. Elizabeth Bloch-Smith of St. Joseph’s University, an archaeologist involved in the excavations at the coastal site of Dor. As with the Bethsaida stele, horned altars were desecrated by smashing the horn — as is the case with the majority found in excavations.
So the god depicted on the stele was an incarnation of Baal? It’s not as clearcut as that, Arie admits. The bull’s head on the Bethsaida stele is surmounted by horns forming a clearly defined crescent moon, suggesting it may represent a lunar deity.
Although the storm god reigned supreme among the Arameans, as the Syrian kingdom fell under Assyrian influence, the moon god — particularly the new moon — found increased significance in the Aramean and Israelite pantheons, Swiss Near East expert Othmar Keel said.
Keel enumerated over 100 depictions of the Near Eastern god represented by the crescent moon affixed atop a pole in his exhaustive work “Goddesses and Trees, New Moon and Yahweh.” Nearly exact copies of the Bethsaida stele have been found at sites in Syria and southern Turkey — a staff topped by a bull’s head whose horns form the crescent moon.
Scholars point to a lengthy tradition of theriomorphic — generally bovine — depictions of the moon god Sin-Nanna in Mesopotamian cultures. To the ancient Mesopotamians, the “horns of a bull or cow were seen to match the pointed curve of the waxing and waning crescents so exactly that the powers of the one were attributed to the other, each gaining the other’s potency as well as their own,” writes Jules Cashford in her book “The Moon: Myth and Image.”
Tallay Ornan of the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations argues that Bethsaida stele intentionally conflates the bull and moon imagery in order to symbolize both deities.
“These deities share not only the image of the bull, but also roles associated with fertility and regeneration,” she writes, citing millennia of precedence in Mesopotamian and Levantine art.
As for the Israelites and Judeans, she wrote in an email, seals unearthed at Jerusalem’s City of David indicate that moon god worship intensified in Israel and Judea under Assyrian domination during the period of the Bethsaida stele and after its destruction. It is precisely during this time period — the late First Temple Era — under Aramean and Assyrian influence, that Israel and Judah began venerating the new moon, Keel said in an email, a fairly extra-biblical tradition that was bestowed with quasi-holiness in an otherwise season-driven calendar.
The Jewish lunar month — Rosh Hodesh – traditionally begins with the sighting of the first sliver of the waxing moon and religious time governed ritual observance of Judaism’s many holidays. The book of Numbers instructs the Israelites to celebrate the new moon with the sacrifice of “two young bullocks, and one ram, seven he-lambs of the first year without blemish.”
“Stimulated by the Assyro-Aramaean influence, the cult of the new moon received its theological dignity partly from the growing importance of the moon-related calendar,” Keel wrote in “Goddesses and Trees.”
The Talmud, codified centuries later, discusses in exhaustive detail the byzantine process of verifying eyewitness sighting of the new moon and the consequent declaration of the commencement of the new month. So much importance was attached to the new moon’s sighting that, as Tractate Rosh Hashanah details: “The rabbis taught [if the witnesses say], ‘We have seen the reflection [of the moon] in the water, or through a metal mirror, or in the clouds,’ their testimony is not to be accepted.”
The significance of the cryptic bull-headed moon god looming in Israel Museum’s galleries remains a subject of heated scholarly debate — not everyone is convinced of Keel’s thesis — but vestiges of its worship may persevere in modern Judaism. Whether true or not, the lunar calendar and celebration of the new moon in today’s liturgy harks back to the age preserved in the Bethsaida stele.
Pyramid-Age Love Revealed in Vivid Color in Egyptian Tomb
She was a priestess named Meretites, and he was a singer named Kahai, who performed at the pharaoh's palace. They lived about 4,400 years ago in an age when pyramids were being built in Egypt, and their love is reflected in a highly unusual scene in their tomb — an image that has now been published in all its surviving color.
The tomb at Saqqara — which held this couple, their children and possibly their grandchildren — has now been studied and described by researchers at Macquarie University's Australian Center for Egyptology. Among the scenes depicted is a relief painting showing the couple gazing into each other's eyes, with Meretites placing her right hand over Kahai's right shoulder.
Such a display of affection was extraordinary for Egypt during the Pyramid Age. Only a few examples of a face-to-face embrace survive from the Old Kingdom (2649 B.C. to 2150 B.C.), the time period when the couple lived and pyramid building thrived, said Miral Lashien, a researcher at Macquarie University. "I think that this indicates very special closeness," Lashien told LiveScience in an email.
This scene, along with other works of art recorded in the tomb, suggest that women in Pyramid Age Egypt enjoyed a greater level of equality than some scholars believe. "The tomb of Kahai is an example of the importance of women," wrote Lashien in the email. "The frequency of their representations and the equal size to their husbands or brothers suggest equal status." [See Photos of the Pyramid Age Tomb & Artwork]
In the scene, Kahai is wearing a wig, a collar over his shoulders, kilt, bracelets and leopard's skin. He also is holding a staff and scepter, which serve as symbols of authority and responsibility probably related to his rise to the position of singing director, Lashien said. Meretites' wardrobe includes a long wig, choker and broad collar, bracelets and a long, tight dress with shoulder straps that appear to leave a breast exposed. (The display of bare breasts was not unusual among ancient Egyptian women.)
This kind of embrace was not limited to romantic love; one of the few other similar embraces known from Pyramid Age Egypt shows two men who were likely twin brothers, Lashien noted.
Pyramid Age Color
The tomb itself was discovered in 1966 and published in a book in 1971 mainly in black-and-white images. Scientists returnedto the tomb in January and February of 2010 to study and document its artwork in full color. "This tomb is one of the most colourful examples of Old Kingdom art and certainly deserves a full-color publication," Lashien writes in her recently published book, "The Chapel of Kahai and his Family" (The Australian Centre for Egyptology: Reports 33, 2013).
When the tomb was discovered in 1966, mummified remains were found in it, but it is not certain if they belonged to the family members. Egyptians in later periods often reused the tombs of those who had lived before them. [Image Gallery: The Faces of Egyptian Mummies Revealed]
Archaeological and artistic evidence indicates the tomb was built during or shortly after the rule of King Niuserre (2420 B.C. - 2389 B.C.), who constructed his own pyramid just to the southeast of the Giza pyramids at a site now referred to as Abusir.
A family of singers
Kahai and his sons bear titles that indicate they worked as singers, with Kahai becoming the "overseer of singers of the two houses." That title meant "the family was employed in the palace," Lashien said in the email. "Probably, as a result, their tomb is particularly beautiful, being perhaps decorated by the royal artists," she said.
Indeed, the tomb art includes a colorful scene showing two people singing and musicians playing harps and flutes. Whether the musicians shown are family members or other individuals is unknown.
Despite his lofty title, Kahai would probably have kept on singing in addition to performing administrative duties, Lashien said. Looking at representations of musicians from the time period in which they lived, she said that, "We have no evidence of large music/singing groups which required a full-time director. The representations show small groups of two to five men and/or women playing string and wind instruments, with one or two singers."
While the tomb itself doesn't reveal the specific songs Kahai sang forthe pharaoh's family, the subject matter would, at least in some cases, have been cheerful. From other inscriptions, researchers know, for example, that the songs speak of the "pleasures of life, not different from today," Lashien said in the email, noting that one song encourages people to "eat, drink and be merry."
A father burying his adult son
Though Kahai was apparently successful at his job, his life was not devoid of tragedy. When the team studied the tomb's inscriptions they discovered that Kahai had to bury one of his adult sons, named Nefer. The tomb decorations include depictions of the young children whom Nefer left behind, and an inscription suggests that Nefer's wife was pregnant at the time of his death.
But even when family members died, their survivors could take comfort in the belief that the tomb provided them with a way to keep in some form of contact. The tomb includes five "false doors" with images of the deceased that acted as a conduit of sorts between the world of the living and that of the dead.
"Food was placed in front of the false door, and the Ka (life force) of the deceased was able to come out through the false door to receive the offerings and to enjoy the day," Lashien said.
More Than 600 Ancient Seals and Amulets Found in Turkey
Archeologists have discovered more than 600 stamp seals and cylinder seals at the sacred site of the storm and weather god Jupiter Dolichenus.
Classical scholars from the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics" made an unusually large find of seals in an ancient sanctuary in Turkey. They discovered more than 600 stamp seals and cylinder seals at the sacred site of the storm and weather god Jupiter Dolichenus, 100 of which in the current year alone. "Such large amounts of seal consecrations are unheard-of in any comparable sanctuary," said excavation director Prof. Dr. Engelbert Winter and archaeologist Dr. Michael Blömer at the end of the excavation season. In this respect, the finding of numerous pieces from the 7th to the 4th centuries B.C. close to the ancient city of Doliche is unparalleled.
"The amazingly large number proves how important seals and amulets were for the worshipping of the god to whom they were consecrated as votive offerings," according to Classical scholar Prof. Winter. Many pieces show scenes of adoration. "Thus, they provide a surprisingly vivid and detailed insight into the faith of the time." The stamp seals and cylinder seals as well as scarabs, made of glass, stone and quartz ceramics, were mostly crafted in a high-quality manner. Following the restoration work, the finds were handed over to the relevant museum in Gaziantep in Turkey.
Different themes can be found on the seals and amulets: the spectrum ranges from geometric ornaments and astral symbols to elaborate depictions of animals and people. This includes, for example, praying men in front of divine symbols. Another popular theme was a royal hero fighting animals and hybrid creatures. "Even those images that do not depict a deity express strong personal piety: with their seals, people consecrated an object to their god which was closely associated with their own identity," said Blömer. People wore the amulets found with the seals in everyday life. "Strung on chains, they were supposed to fend off bad luck," explained the archaeologist.
From the Iron Age until the Roman Empire
Up to now, the researchers were able to identify late Babylonian, local Syrian Achaemenid and Levantine seals. "The large find provides new impetus for research to answer unsolved questions of cult practices, cult continuity and cult extension -- above all, these are important for the understanding of the early history of the sanctuary in the 1st millennium B.C., which had been unknown until recently," according to Prof. Winter. Later, in the 2nd century A.D., Jupiter Dolichenus turned into one of the most important deities of the Roman Empire.
During this year's excavations at the Turkish mountain Dülük Baba Tepesi, Prof. Winter's team worked in an area of over 500 square metres. "The results are already extending our knowledge of all periods in this holy place's long history. It covers the time span from the early place of worship of the Iron Age and the sacred site of the Roman era, famous throughout the empire, to the long phase of utilisation as a Christian monastery, which existed until well into the time of the crusaders," explained Prof. Winter. The two-month excavation campaign has been particularly fruitful as regards the sanctuary's early years. "At the peak's central plateau, in addition to a well-preserved section of the thick Iron Age enclosing wall, parts of structures from the 7th to 4th centuries before Christ were excavated within the enclosure for the first time." Due to new finds such as columns or capitals dating back to the Roman era, the main temple of the empire's sanctuary can now be reconstructed. According to the scholars, the location of the temple, on the other hand, is still posing riddles.
Work at the archaeological park is proceeding
After this year's excavation season had ended, work at the touristic development continued. "We were able to complete a visitors' path leading to central areas within the excavation site, with signposts in three languages." Furthermore, according to the researchers, numerous protective and precautionary measures are required in order to secure the remains of the sanctuary permanently. An initial large protective shelter has already been erected this year.
In 2012, the research team announced an archaeological park which is to make the outstanding temple complex and the local medieval monastery ruins of Mar Solomon accessible to the public at large. For that purpose, the ruins had already been preserved and encased with a special fleece material, according to the scholars. The implementation of the complex and costly protection measures was made possible by cooperation with the Turkish University of Gaziantep, which provided about 200,000 Euros for three years, as Prof. Winter said. As regards the digital documentation of the area, the team was supported by the Institute for Geoinformatics of the University of Münster, where a quadrocopter -- a remotely piloted vehicle -- with a 3-D camera was developed.
"...PAMUKKALE, TURKEY—Two marble statues, one depicting the three-headed watchdog Cerberus, and the other a snake rolled onto itself, have been discovered by a team led by Francesco D’Andria of the University of Salento. These guardians of the underworld were found in the thermal springs at the site of the Plutonium, or Pluto’s Gate, in the Phrygian city of Hierapolis. The Plutonium and the city’s warm waters were popular pilgrimage sites until the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Then, sometime between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D., the two statues were damaged, probably by Christian pilgrims to the tomb of Saint Philip, which was discovered in the ancient city last year. “These details show the growing conflict between the new and old cults, and the resulting marginalization of the traditional pagan religion,” explained Alister Filippini of the University of Palermo and the University of Cologne...."
Mythological Creatures Unearthed at Pluto’s Gate
Ancient city discovered by treasure hunters in central Anatolia
The ancient city came to light in Büyük Teflek village when historical artifacts smugglers excavated the area.
An ancient city has been uncovered in a Kırşehir village after historical artifact smugglers excavated the area. The city dates back to the Roman era in the second century and home to important artifacts
A bath, which was turned into a church, is being revealed during excavations in a 2,200-year-old ancient city, which was discovered by treasure hunters in the central Anatolian province of Kırşehir’s Çiçekdağı district.
The ancient city came to light in Büyük Teflek village when historical artifacts smugglers excavated the area. Dating back to the second century B.C., the ancient city has a bath as well as other artifacts.
Kırşehir Museum, Director Adnan Güçlü said that they had revealed a significant historic heritage during the excavations. He said that excavations started last year in April, adding that they would continue the excavations for two more months this year.
Speaking about how the ancient city was unearthed, Güçlü said, “With the notification of law-enforcement officers and the village headman Eyüb Baran, we came to the village and made examinations. We entered the hole opened by treasure hunters and obtained information about the size of the ancient city. Then we discovered that this place was a significant place of settlement and a bath from the Roman era. The furnace of the bath was the first place we examined. It was still strong. These works took six months and during this process we unearthed an 800-square-meter area, a big part of the structure. This is a small bath and we think that it was a business place.”
Excavations start
Güçlü said that following the excavations, the lost Roman city, which is estimated to date back to the second century B.C., was registered as a first degree archaeological site. He said that they also thought that the bath had been turned into a church.
“Those who donated to his church were buried underground of the church. We found 21 male graves in this place and worked there, too. In Orthodox Christianity, there was a tradition that the men, who donate to a church, were buried there,” he said.
Güçlü said that works had still been continuing and it was not possible to excavate and unearth the complex structures within a short time. “It will take too much to reveal the whole ancient city,” he said.
The headman of Büyük Teflek village, Baran, said that they notified the commandership, district governorate and he Kırşehir Museum Directorate about the illegal excavations. “Museum officials came to the village and launched this area as an archaeological site,” he said, adding that they asked to open up the area to tourism.
He noted that excavations also provided employment for villagers. “This year 17 people from the village are working in the excavations.”
Rome ancient frescoes reignite debate over women priests
One of the contested images showing a woman with outstretched hands
The reopening of a labyrinth of catacombs in Rome has reignited a debate over women priests in early Christianity.
Women's groups say frescoes on the walls at the Catacombs of Priscilla are evidence that women occupied the role of priests in ancient times.
A major clean-up operation that took five years has revealed the images in greater clarity.
But the Vatican has dismissed them as pure "fable, a legend".
The catacombs - discovered in the 16th Century - are famous for housing the oldest known image of the Madonna and Child dating from around AD230-240.
They were originally built as Christian burial sites between the Second and Fifth Centuries and stretch 13km (8 miles) over several levels.
But two rooms in particular have been a source of lively debate for years.
In one, known as the Cubiculum of the Veiled Woman, there is an image of a woman with arms outstretched as if saying Mass. She is wearing what some say are garments worn by priests.
In another room, known as the Greek Chapel, a group of women sit at a table with arms outstretched and celebrating a banquet.
Organisations promoting a female priesthood, such as the Women's Ordination Conference and the Association of Roman Catholic Woman Priests, say these scenes are evidence of a female priesthood in the early Church.
Fabrizio Bisconti of the Vatican's archaeology commission said the fresco of the woman was "a depiction of a deceased person now in paradise", and that the women sitting at the table were taking part in a "funeral banquet".
The Vatican has restricted the priesthood for men and teaches that women cannot become priests because Jesus willingly chose only men as his apostles.
Archaeologists Find Shiloh Altar Used During Temple Era
The stone altar above may have been used for sacrificial offerings in ancient Shiloh long after the time of the Tabernacle.
A dramatic discovery at the ancient site of Shiloh, located in Samaria, provides the first–ever evidence that it continued to be a religious center after it was destroyed by the Philistines and Jews returned to the city, home of the Tabernacle. The altar is thought to have been used to offer sacrifices even after the First Temple was built in Jerusalem. The stone from the Iron Age, coinciding with the period of the first kings of Israel, was found in a wall built later in the Byzantine period. Archaeologists think that Byzantines took the stone altar from its original site, which might have been in the same location as the Tabernacle. There are two conflicting theories on its location, one stating it is on the northern side of ancient Shiloh and the other placing it on the southern side. Avital Faleh, administrator of the Tel Shiloh site, told The Jewish Press Wednesday that the wall was on the southern side and that it is more reasonable that the Byzantines carried the altar from nearby rather than several hundred yards, which would be the case if the Tabernacle were located on the northern side. The stone was measured at two feet by two feet and almost 16 inches high. Other altars used for sacrificial worship during the First Temple era have been discovered in Be’er Sheva and near Arad in the south and in Tel Dan and near Shiloh in the north. Faleh explained that the stone altar is almost identical with others that have been discovered. The revelation on Tuesday of the discovery at Shiloh is the first evidence of post-Tabernacle sacrificial worship at the same site where the Bible states the first Tabernacle was erected after the Jews entered Israel following the Exodus from Egypt and the 40 years of living in the Sinai. Joshua 18:1 states, “The whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled together at Shiloh and erected there the Tent of Assembly, and the land was conquered before them.” The Tabernacle remained at Shiloh for 369 years, according to the Talmud. The Philistines went to war against the Jews, destroyed the city, and captured the Holy Ark. The Tabernacle probably had been removed before the end of the war but was not used when sacrificial offerings were later offered at two other places, Nov and Gideon, until King Solomon built the First Temple. However, it took years before Jewish communities, especially Shiloh that was the home of the first sacrifices Israel, adjusted to the cultural and religious change. In July, archaeologists said they believed they discovered the remains of the Biblical tabernacle site, after finding holes carved into the rock and which may have been used to hold beams for the Tabernacle. The Jewish Press reported here in January, that the discovery of an uncovered broken clay pitcher, embedded in a layer of reddish ashes, is from the time of the devastation of Shiloh, offering detailed evidence of the destruction. Shiloh was the most significant religious center for Israel before the Philistines destroyed it. The Jewish people offered mandatory sacrifices, and it was there that lots were cast for tribal areas and the cities of the Levites. Deuteronomy 12:4-7, states, “You should not do any [act of sacrificial worship] to God, your God, other than at the site which God, your God will choose, to place His Name there, from amongst all your tribes. You should seek out His dwelling [place in the Tabernacle at Shiloh] and come there. You should bring there your burnt offerings, and your [obligatory peace] offerings, your tithes, [first fruits] lifted from your hand [by the priests]—your vows, your pledges, and the firstborn of your cattle and of your sheep [which are to be given to the priests]. [It is] there that you should eat [your sacrifices] before God your God. Then you and your households will rejoice in all the work of your hands. [You should bring offerings according to the means with] which God, your God, blesses you.”
6,400 Year-Old Remains Found in ‘Death Shroud’ Inside Barcelona Cave
University of Barcelona archaeologists are reporting an exciting find in a cave near the city of Barcelona in Begues.
The archaeologists came upon four well-preserved skeletal remains thought to be nearly 6,400 years-old in a ‘shroud of death’ at the Can Sadurni cave. The find is exciting because the bodies, of one man, one adolescent and two children, are well preserved and found in a unique ritualistic form. A mild landside took place near the cave that unearthed the corpses.
The bodies were found in a fetal position bound together with rope, aligned in the “northern” wall of the cave and covered in a funeral shroud. Numerous household items were also found inside the cave including a vase and the remains of farm animals.
The presentation of the bodies is unique. According to Manual Edo, who is directing the excavations, “The funerary rites here are different to those (seen) elsewhere.” He believes the funerary ritual date back to the early Middle Neolithic period.
Excavations at the Can Sadurni cave have been underway for decades. Last year some prehistoric pottery was discovered thought to be from the Neolithic Age.
The Can Sadurni cave is located on the southern slope of a low hill that overlooks the town of Begues. Over 20 layers of ancient remains and antiquities have been identified dating from 11,000 BC to the past century, inside the cave.
Archaeologists Discover Largest, Oldest Wine Cellar in Near East: 3,700 Year-Old Store Room Held 2,000 Liters of Strong, Sweet Wine
Would you drink wine flavored with mint, honey and a dash of psychotropic resins? Ancient Canaanites did more than 3,000 years ago.
Archaeologists have unearthed what may be the oldest -- and largest -- ancient wine cellar in the Near East, containing forty jars, each of which would have held fifty liters of strong, sweet wine. The cellar was discovered in the ruined palace of a sprawling Canaanite city in northern Israel, called Tel Kabri. The site dates to about 1,700 B.C. and isn't far from many of Israel's modern-day wineries.
"This is a hugely significant discovery -- it's a wine cellar that, to our knowledge, is largely unmatched in age and size," says Eric Cline chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of at The George Washington University. Cline and Assaf Yasur-Landau, chair of the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa, co-directed the excavation. Andrew Koh, assistant professor of classical studies at Brandeis University, was an associate director.
The team's findings will be presented this Friday in Baltimore at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research.
Koh, an archaeological scientist, analyzed the jar fragments using organic residue analysis. He found molecular traces of tartaric and syringic acid, both key components in wine, as well as compounds suggesting ingredients popular in ancient wine-making, including honey, mint, cinnamon bark, juniper berries and resins. The recipe is similar to medicinal wines used in ancient Egypt for two thousand years.
Koh also analyzed the proportions of each diagnostic compound and discovered remarkable consistency between jars.
"This wasn't moonshine that someone was brewing in their basement, eyeballing the measurements," Koh notes. "This wine's recipe was strictly followed in each and every jar."
Important guests drank this wine, notes Yasur-Landau.
"The wine cellar was located near a hall where banquets took place, a place where the Kabri elite and possibly foreign guests consumed goat meat and wine," he says.
At the end of the season, the team discovered two doors leading out of the wine cellar -- one to the south, and one to the west. Both probably lead to additional storage rooms. They'll have to wait until 2015 to find out for sure.
Gambling of high-living Anglo-Saxons revealed by archaeological find
It would have been a very expensive toy, expertly crafted and imported across the Channel – and archaeologists say it provides a glimpse of the luxurious life of Anglo-Saxon nobles in 7th-century Kent.
The little gaming piece is the only one discovered at an Anglo-Saxon habitation site, although many cruder examples have been found in graves. It is the first piece of such quality found since the excavation of a princely grave in Buckinghamshire in the 1880s.
"This piece comes from a high-end – Harrods – backgammon set," the Reading University archaeologist Gabor Thomas said. "Not only high-end but quite possibly Italian – Ferrari – high-end, as the best parallels outside England are from the 6th-century Lombard kingdom. If such pieces are indeed of Lombardic manufacture, then the implication is that the kings of Kent enjoyed the latest fashions in gaming culture, courtesy of their far-reaching continental contacts."
There must have been some cursing 1,300 years ago when the game was set out in the hall in Lyminge, and it was discovered one piece was missing.
Gaming pieces made from simple chunks of bone or wood were common, but this was a special toy, made from a hollow piece of bone closed with delicately turned wooden caps, held in place with a bronze pin.
"It is very probably a stray loss," Thomas said, "perhaps cast away in disgust by a king with a reputation for being a very bad loser."
The archaeologists found it in the remains of one of the wooden halls adjoining a great feasting hall, the largest known in the south-east, its foundations lying beneath the village green, yards from the Coach and Horses pub, in the Kent village. The site has already turned up quantities of pottery, animal bone, bronze objects including a horse harness and jewellery, and more glass – some of it recycled from Roman sites into pieces of jewellery – than any other Anglo-Saxon habitation site.
The side halls were the accommodation blocks for the great central hall, where, as in Heorot in the epic poem Beowulf, seasonal parties went on for days with drinking, presenting of gifts, gaming and story telling, as well as sumptuous meals.
The Anglo-Saxons were avid players of board and gambling games: tabula, an early form of backgammon, and latrunculi, a game similar to draughts, are both recorded. Many men were buried with their dice or gaming pieces.
The only other pieces as fine as the Lyminge one were found more than a century ago, in an aristocratic grave excavated at Taplow in Buckinghamshire. The 10 pieces, clearly a prized possession since they were found under the feet of the dead man, are now in the British Museum: they were so neatly laid out, it is believed they may originally have been placed on a board, ready to play.
At Lyminge, the foundations of the immense hall, 8.5 by 21 metres, large enough to hold at least 60 people, were uncovered in 2012, and this summer's excavations, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, found more of the associated buildings. The halls had doors flanked by massive timber posts, and floors made of crushed mortar and tile, a surface only previously found in the earliest Anglo-Saxon churches.
Gabor believes the halls and the pagan feasts were abandoned as the tribes adopted the powerful new Christian religion, and founded a new settlement on the nearby hill surrounding what is still the village church.
The newly discovered palace, estimated to have been built in 1500 B.C., has been classified as a protected site by local authorities in Sivas.
A grand piece of Hittite legacy has been uncovered in Sivas’ Yıldızeli district, with a palace being the latest discovery at the “Kayalıpınar Excavation Site”. The palace, estimated to have been built in 1500 B.C., has been classified as a protected site by local authorities. Archeologists will further excavate the site immediately where the palace was discovered to reveal detail that could further shed light on the palace. German-based Academic Vuslat Müller Karpe said this year the Kayalıpınar excavations ceased ended relatively quick as the team assigned to the excavation had completed all necessary excavation work.
Noting that Kayalıpınar was home to four different civilizations in the past, Karpe said the palace has unearthed many artifacts from the Hittite era, found from among the 40-plus room palace.
“We have unearthed more than 100 pieces of military equipment in the palace’s storage area,” she said.
Tablets with Hittite script were also part of the discovery, Karpe added, with the tablets depicting prophecies, religious festivals as well as bird fortune-telling, among other scenes.
Karpe advised that the palace had been completely burned down once only to be reconstructed again, with the Hittite empire, ruling over most of the Anatolian Peninsula, disintegrating in 1178 B.C.
Iron Age Siberian tats"
"...Some of the most spectacular tattoos in the ancient world have been found adorning Iron Age mummies unearthed in the Altay Mountains of Siberia. There, a series of tombs dug into permafrost preserved the remains of nobles from a nomadic people today known as the Pazyryk Culture. On the skins of these mummies were intricate tattoos, depicting both mythical and real animals in action: running, stalking victims, or twisting in an S-shape, which scholars call “the pose of agony.”..."
http://archaeology.org/issues/109-1311/features/tattoos/1381-pazyryk-mummies-altay-mountains-siberia
An ancient text pointed to the location of the gardens as being far from the site of Babylon, in modern-day Iraq.
A British academic believes she has identified from ancient texts the actual site of the elusive Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It's the only one of the Seven Wonders of the World whose location has remained undiscovered for centuries.
Dr Stephanie Dalley of Oxford University focused her search hundreds of kilometres from the site of ancient Babylon - now near Hillah in Iraq - to support her theory that the lush marvel was built near the city of Nineveh, in the north of the country.
She found evidence in early writings the gardens were built not by the Babylonians and their king Nebuchadnezzar, as previously thought, but by their neighbours and foes the Assyrians, under their monarch Sennacherib, about 2700 years ago.
Sennacherib's capital, Nineveh, is near modern-day Mosul, a part of Iraq still wracked by religious and ethnic violence. Although Dalley went to the region this autumn, it was too dangerous to visit the exact spot. However, using maps, she directed a local film crew with an armed escort to the area, next to the ruins of the king's palace, to survey it on her behalf. Their footage showed a vast mound of rubble, looking out on to modern housing and open countryside beyond. Dalley said: "That's the best place for it to be. It looks like a good place for a garden."
The film is the result of more than 20 years' research by Dalley, of Oxford's Oriental Institute, to prove the gardens' location. With no archaeological evidence ever found, many dismissed them as a myth. Knowledge of the gardens is based on a few accounts, written hundreds of years after they were said to have been built and by people who never saw them.
One account claims they were created by King Nebuchadnezzar, 600 years before the birth of Christ, at Babylon, as a paradise in the desert for his wife who missed the green mountains of her home. However, in the writings of the time, including Nebuchadnezzar's own texts, there is no mention of a garden and more than a century of digging has found nothing.
Dalley directed her own research north after decoding an ancient cuneiform text - the wedge-shaped script of the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires - that led her to believe the gardens had been attributed to the wrong location, the wrong man and wrong period.
The academic, one of a handful of people in the world who can read cuneiform, found a reference to the gardens on the Taylor Prism at the British Museum. It describes the life of Sennacherib, who lived 100 years before Nebuchadnezzar and ruled an empire stretching from southern Turkey to modern-day Israel. It also describes a palace and gardens the king built as a "wonder for all people".
Further support for the theory comes from a bas-relief from Nineveh, now in the British Museum, which shows his palace complex and a garden featuring trees on terraces and plants hanging from arches.
Because Nineveh is so far from Babylon, the evidence was overlooked. However, Dalley found that the Assyrians later conquered Babylon and their capital became known as "New Babylon", possibly accounting for the confusion over the names.
Odd, that over the years I never saw anything that held the location of the gardens in doubt. But then I only remember seeing speculation on what the Gardens were and how were they built and maintained.
"Arguing with someone who hates you or your ideas, is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what move you make, your opponent will walk all over the board and scramble the pieces".
Unknown.
"...Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority have uncovered evidence of a 10,000-year-old settlement in the Shfela region of the Judean Hills, where a dangerous road is being widened. The site had been occupied for thousands of years, and shows the transition from living in temporary structures and hunting and gathering to living in permanent dwellings and farming and domesticating animals...."
http://archaeology.org/news/1550-131125-israel-prehistory-settlement
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