2,400-Year-Old Goddess Statues Found Dumped in Ancient City on Lebanon’s Coast
Polish archaeologists studying the ancient city of Porphyreon in Lebanon have pieced together the broken parts of ceramic heads to remake what they think are statues of goddesses. One of the 2,400-year-old statues is about 24 cm (9 inches) tall and 15 cm (6 inches) wide.
While the broken pieces of the statues date from a time of Persian control, the women depicted are wearing a stephane or a type of ancient Greek headdress, says Mariusz Gwiazda of the Polish Center of Mediterranean Archaeology in a story about the news .
He said he believes all four of the statues depict deities, but he can’t prove this because they don’t bear inscriptions, he . Two of the statues are nearly whole but the two others are quite incomplete. In all, the team found a dozen pieces of the statues.
Dumped Deities
The archaeologists found the ceramic shards in 2013 in what they believe was an ancient waste dump that had other pottery pieces, burnt animal bones and remnants of chickpeas, grapes and olives. Porphyreon is on the Mediterranean Sea in modern Jiyeh, 25 km (15.5 miles) south of Beirut.
This second-best ceramic statue has the image of a wadjet amulet or Egyptian eye on its chest. The wadjet, which was absorbed into other religions and cultures, was thought to ward off evil.
The two ceramic heads that survived most-intact have red paint on their faces. Both had similar dimensions of 9 inches by 6 inches. Mere traces of two more ceramic heads survived the centuries.
It’s interesting to note that there are fingerprints on top of the head of the best statue, probably pressed there by the artist who made it when the clay was still wet.
That statue has three small holes on top from which it probably hung from a wall, Professor Gwiazda said.
A wadjet amulet of ancient Egypt
Traits of the ceramic heads include a mix of Greek, Egyptian and Phoenician. The Egyptian influence includes a wadjet or a stylized eye on the chest of one of the female figurines.
Egyptians wore wadjets to ward off evil or illness, though other cultures absorbed them into their own cultures and religions.
The pottery specialist for the Polish Center of Mediterranean Archaeology, Urszula Wicenciak, determined the clay used to fashion the ceramic figurines originated around Tyre, another ancient city of Lebanon. That said, they can’t be sure where the four heads were made.
Pottery Production Area
Ms. Wicenciak was studying to complete her PhD several years ago when the team identified a major pottery production center from the late Greek and Early Roman period.
A type of Terracotta oil lamp found at Porphyreon typical of the region
The team found fine ware in a cistern, including local ceramics of glass lamp fragments and terracotta oil lamps.
A report on the 2009 season here says the terracotta lamps are particularly interesting because 197 fragments represent one type of lamp of a type found between Beirut and the ancient city of Caesarea Maritima. The report states:
‘Laboratory studies of the lamps recovered from the cistern should provide interesting data on clay sources, potentially leading to a discerning of groups or, better still, workshops producing this extremely popular form of lamp. Comparisons with the coarse ware characteristic of the regions should demonstrate how local indeed this type was.’
Ancient Egyptian High Priest of THOTH Found Drenched in Bizarre Figurines
THOTH! Archaeologists in Egypt are busy with a new cycle of excavation missions in the Egyptian deserts. Each month comes with a bunch of new announcements and new finds.
A sarcophagus that was discovered is displayed at the site of an ancient Egyptian cemetery, in Minya province, 245 km south of Cairo, Egypt, 24 February 2018.
The latest in the series of discoveries features a newly found ancient necropolis from where at least 40 sarcophagi containing mummies have been located.
The most striking of all are the remains and funerary decorations believed to have belonged to a high priest of the Egyptian deity Thoth, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced on February 24th.
The network of tombs was discovered some 150 miles south of the country’s capital, Cairo, close to the Nile and the city of Minya, roughly four miles north of the site known as Tuna Al-Gabal.
Archaeologists have dated the tombs to being about 2,300 years old, associating them with the late Pharaonic days and the early Ptolemaic era, according to a statement shared by the Ministry of Antiquities.
The finds from the underground tombs include at least 40 sarcophagi and other valuable relics–more than 1,000 ushabti funerary figurines, jewelry, and pottery among others
The ushabti figurines have frequently been retrieved from other burial sites in Egypt in the past, and they are thought to have been laid next to the dead to offer assistance in the afterlife.
Thoth’s book. Image by Thothsbook
What has excited everyone the most was the mummy adorned with a bronze collar, showing the deity Nut, protector of the dead in the Ancient Egyptian belief system.
Other artifacts collected from the resting place of this mummy reportedly include colorful beads with semiprecious stones, four amulets, and alabaster jars created to preserve the insides of the departed.
The mummy is considered to be that of a high priest of Thoth, a god that was worshiped in Ancient Egypt for its wisdom and was also associated with the Moon.
Ramses III. in front of god Thoth in the tomb of Khaemwaset
More remains seem to be associated with Thoth, and while the identities are not all confirmed, some remains could have belonged to family members of the high priest buried with the bronze collar.
Everyone must have been dazzled when deciphering the hieroglyphics inscribed on one of the four amulets collected from the high priest’s tomb. One of them intriguingly translated to “Happy New Year.”
THOTH!
Among ancient Egyptians, Thoth was connected to the invention of writing, a patron of books and libraries. Perhaps that is why he was still worshiped even in the Ptolemaic era, the last dynastic period of Egyptian history (305 BC until 30 BC), marked by its prominent scholarship center, the Library of Alexandria.
The common portrayal of this deity included an ibis-shaped head, and its worship commenced in Lower Egypt probably in the pre-Dynastic period, in between the 6th and 3rd millennia BC. Since the worship of Thoth lasted for such an extended period of time, some sources suggest that Thoth has been among the longest-worshiped deity figures in Egypt (and potential record-breaker at world level).
For many decades now, archaeologists and scholars have been able to study different sites discovered in the region of Tuna Al-Gabal. Apparently, the realm is rich with ruins and relics, since new findings continue to emerge even now in 2018. Archaeologists and restorers are to take five more years to study and recover all artifacts retrieved from the newly found tombs.
The latest round of excavations in Egypt began in 2017 and are led by Mostafa Waziri, who is the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Another necropolis, again in the Tuna Al-Gabal region, has been identified only last year, and it concealed 17 mummies.
Earlier in February of this year, Egyptian authorities also announced the discovery of a tomb that was built for an ancient priestess who served Hathor, one more important Egyptian deity associated with motherhood and fertility.
The find, very close to Cairo, was significant as it offered an authentic look back into the life of an ancient Egyptian woman of higher rank, some 4,000 years ago. Her mummy has not been found so far, only the tomb.
2,000-year-old burial complex discovered in Tiberias
A magnificent Roman-era burial cave was fortuitously found in the northern Israeli city of Tiberias when a contractor clearing ground for a new neighborhood realized the significance of the void his bulldozer almost fell into, and immediately called in the Israel Antiquities Authority.
“A good citizen,” observes archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre of the IAA. The underground mausoleum unearthed this month is between 1,900 to 2,000 years old, judging by the architectural style, she told Haaretz.
The main central chamber has several burial niches – shelves carved into the cave walls, and a small inner chamber. The archaeologists also found ossuaries, which are boxes used for the secondary burial of bones.
And there it was: The entrance to the Roman-era Jewish catacomb found in Tiberias.
That means the bereaved would lay the dead on niches carved into the cave walls, and wait for the bodies to decompose. Then the bones would be reburied in boxes typically made of stone or clay that were only as long as the longest bone, Alexandre says.
The ossuaries, which were made of stone and pottery, are the tell-tale artifact marking the catacomb as belonging to Jews. Nobody else is known to have practiced secondary burial in the Roman era – with one exception.
Aerial view of the modern city of Tiberias, built on the ruins of the polis founded in 18 C.E. by Herod Antipas on the shores of the Sea of Galilee
“One single case is known in Israel of a non-Jewish secondary burial in an ossuary – a Nabatean. Maybe it was a Nabatean who was influenced by the Jews,” remarks archaeologist Dr. Mordechai Aviam of Kinneret College.
It is true that there is much older evidence of secondary burial in pottery ossuaries, but that’s from the Chalcolithic period – also known as the Copper Age, which is before Judaism existed. For some reason the practice arose anew thousands of years later, in the 1st century B.C.E., and vanished once and for all in the early 3rd century.
The underground mausoleum in Tiberias’ north had been skillfully carved out of the yielding limestone, possibly starting from a convenient rain-carved depression in the bedrock. Its walls were decorated with colored plaster, as was the custom at the time.
Ossuary in the 2,000-year old burial cave, Tiberias
More information will have to await proper excavation, which has not begun yet, Alexandre stresses. But meanwhile it can be said that the archaeologists also found the names of the dead, carved onto the ossuaries in Greek.
The multicultural Jews of Tiberias
Jewish names in Greek on graves in the Holy Land? Absolutely. It was very much the practice. Half the graves in ancient Jerusalem from the same era are also inscribed in Greek, Aviam says. Other inscriptions found in Tiberias itself, linked to Jews from the 3rd century, were in Greek too.
“It just means that the people buried in the cave had been people who knew Greek. It doesn’t speak to their Judaism but to their internationality, their multiculturalism,” Aviam explains. “They would have had cultural ties with Greek-speaking people. Jews could keep their mitzvot and write on their graves in Greek.”
Greek inscriptions also decorate ancient synagogues found across the Holy Land, including one found in Tiberias. The sage Abbahu who lived in Israel from 279 to 320 and who had studied in Tiberias famously spoke Greek as well as Hebrew. “It’s just like Jews in Brooklyn today pray in English,” Aviam points out.
But if the Jewish burial cave in Tiberias dates to the 1st or even the early 2nd century, there’s a snag. At least according to the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus, Tiberias wasn’t supposed to have Jews yet.
Josephus waxes imaginative
Tiberias was founded in the year 18 by the Jewish vassal king Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. Herod Antipas build it as his capital and named it as a submissive gesture to the irritable incumbent Roman emperor Tiberius.
As said, Herod Antipas built Tiberias from scratch as an entirely new Roman city-state, which has led to an intriguing conflict of opinion between Josephus and contemporary researchers.
Josephus, who was originally named Joseph ben Mattathias and who wrote quite a bit about Tiberias and nearby Sepphoris (Tzipori), says that Jews were squeamish about moving to newly-established town because it had been built partly over ancient graves. (And maybe it was; Jewish tradition says Tiberias was built in part on an even older village.) Because of the tombs, the land was unclean, says Josephus, and Jews shunned the city until purification rituals had been performed.
First of all, Herod Antipas may have been a toy-royal of the Roman emperor but he was also the Jewish king of the Galilee, a predominantly Jewish area. So if he built a city in the Galilee, Jews would have moved in too, Aviam argues.
Secondly, the issue of the ancient graves is circumventable, in his opinion. “Today the state simply pours money onto the problem,” says Aviam: if it wants to build a new neighborhood or highway and graves pop up, so to speak, it builds tunnels or bridges or just builds anyway.
Inside the 2,000-year-old Jewish burial cave found in Tiberias: Exquisitely carved walls attest to the wealth of the family.
Back then, in the 2nd century, the answer lay in rituals – possibly devised by the 2nd century sage Simeon Bar Yochai, who counseled the Jews after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 C.E., Aviam says. The rituals were supposed to either cause the ancient graves to sink deeper into the ground, preventing contamination of the living, or rise higher so the dead could be reburied elsewhere.
In any case, Aviam points out, at some point the Jews clearly circumvented the problem of living atop the dead because in the 2nd century, Tiberias greatly expanded, and yet again the issue of building on graves would have arisen. Since the city became central to Jewish life of the time, evidently the Jews were solving this conundrum.
Aviam further speculates that the deceased dwellers of the burial cave weren’t among the very first Tiberians. Most likely Herod Antipas peopled the city with low-status workers at first, and elite classes would have come later, possibly from the second half of the 1st century onwards. Among them would have been multicultural Jews speaking Greek.
Or, the cave might not have belonged to Tiberians at all. Aviam notes that it is nowhere near ancient Tiberias, so either the Jewish family in question had quite a trek to the site, or they didn’t live in the city itself but in a nearby village.
If human remains are found, more can be said. The cave has yet to be excavated, Alexandre stresses, so we do not know at this time whether anybody is there. Also, it is very likely the cave has been robbed of any valuables long ago.
Carved stone doors stood at the entrances into the rooms, which nobody can see because the authorities lost zero time in blocking the cave off to protect it from future grave robbers and vandals.
Dirty Secrets: Sediment DNA Reveals a 300,000-Year Timeline of Ancient and Modern Humans Living in Siberia
Science Magazine reports that analysis of more than 700 soil samples from Siberia’s Denisova Cave has detected traces of modern human DNA, which suggests that modern humans may have occupied the cave alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals.
The group was named “Denisovans” in its honour. Now, an extensive analysis of DNA in the cave’s soils reveals it also hosted modern humans—who arrived early enough that they may have once lived there alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals.
The new study “gives [researchers] unprecedented insight into the past,” says Mikkel Winther Pedersen, a molecular paleoecologist at the University of Copenhagen who was not involved with the work. “It literally shows what [before] they have only been able to hypothesize.”
Humans—including Neanderthals and Denisovans—are known to have occupied Denisova Cave for at least 300,000 years.
In Siberia, researchers lay out a grid in Denisova Cave to systematically sample soil layers for DNA.
Among the eight human fossils unearthed, there are the pinkie, three bones from Neanderthals, and even one from a child with one Neanderthal and one Denisovan parent.
The cave also contains sophisticated stone tools and jewellery at higher, later levels. But no modern human fossils have been found there.
Those artefacts, extensive studies of DNA from these bones, and even one early study of DNA from soils have cemented the cave’s importance for piecing together human evolution.
But eight fossils are not much to go on, so Elena Zavala, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and colleagues teamed up with Russian researchers to see what kind of DNA was present in the soils of the three-chamber cave (see the video, below).
Researchers have been studying DNA isolated from soils for more than 40 years, including sequencing DNA from permafrost, but only in the past 4 years has anyone found DNA from extinct humans in ancient soils.
Working with another team of experts who had previously dated the layers of the cave, the researchers dug out 728 soil samples. After 2 years of analysis, in which they isolated and sequenced the samples, the researchers found human DNA in 175 of them. That makes the study “the largest and most systematic of its kind,” says Katerina Douka, an archaeological scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was not involved in the work.
Selection of stone tools and personal ornaments made from bone, tooth and ivory recovered from the same sediment layers as modern human ancient DNA.
The data reveal a complex history of human and animal habitation, with different groups moving in and out of the cave over time, Zavala and her colleagues report today in Nature. Their work confirms that Denisovans were the cave’s first human inhabitants, about 300,000 years ago.
They disappeared 130,000 years ago, only to be followed by a different group of Denisovans, who likely made many of the stone tools, some 30,000 years later. Neanderthals appeared on the scene about 170,000 years ago, with different groups using the cave at various points in time, some overlapping with the Denisovans.
The last to arrive were modern humans, who showed up about 45,000 years ago. The soil layer that corresponds with that period contained DNA from all three human groups, the researchers report.
“The time periods [of each layer] are quite large, so we can’t concretely say if they overlapped or not,” Zavala says. But, Douka adds, “I cannot think of another site where three human species lived through time.”
Given the jewellery and sophisticated artefacts in later layers, some researchers suspected moderns had been there. But no one knew they had arrived as early as 45,000 years ago—and overlapped with both of our archaic cousins.
“It suggests a more complicated interplay between archaic and modern humans,” says Ron Pinhasi, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Vienna who was not involved with the work.
The soil samples also yielded DNA from many species of animals. About 170,000 years ago, the climate went from warmer to colder, and Neanderthals moved in, so did different species of hyenas and bears.
It’s the combination of genomic data from both the fossils and the soil samples that really makes the new work stand out, Pinhasi says. “It’s a super promising direction [for future work].” Douka agrees, and says the new study should help ancient soil DNA become “a mainstream archaeological tool.”
She is already amazed at the progress that it, combined with other studies, has made possible. “Let’s not forget that as recently as in 2010 we had absolutely no evidence that Denisovans existed and that these various hominins ever met, let alone that they interbred repeatedly and co-existed for millennia,” she wrote in an email.
1,800-year-old Wooden Mask Likely Used in Farm Festivals Found in Japan
Archaeologists have unearthed an almost perfectly preserved wooden mask from the early third century at the Nishi-Iwata ruins in Osaka Prefecture, Japan.
The discovery was announced by the Osaka Cultural Heritage Center on April 24.
The discovery is the third example of a wooden mask from this period. Experts believe the artifact was important in influential agricultural festivals organized by powerful people at the time.
The wooden mask, hewn from a cedar tree, measures around 30cm in height by 18cm wide and features two eye holes, a mouth, and a perforated hole surviving on one side that probably held string for holding the mask on the wearer’s face.
The mask was found in flood sediment 2.9 meters below the surface of the ground. It was discovered next to a piece of a wooden water bucket and a wooden object in the shape of a hoe that had been burned. Experts believe the three items may well have featured in agricultural festivals.
According to the researchers, the mask may have been used in ceremonial rituals during significant agricultural festivals around 1800 years ago, during the Yayoi era.
During this time, Japan transitioned to a settled agricultural society, employing agricultural methods introduced from Korea in the Kyushu region.
The mask was probably displayed at festivals because it is too heavy to wear, according to Kaoru Terasawa, director of the Research Center for Makimukugaku, Sakurai City, in Nara Prefecture.
Kaoru Terasawa, said: “I believe the mask represented a ‘spirit of a head,’ which was believed to be a god in the shape of a human and represented the authority of Okimi.”
Okimi is the title given to the ruler of the Yamato Kingship, a political alliance of powerful families centered in modern-day Nara Prefecture that ruled from the third to the seventh centuries.
The mask will be on display at the Museum of Yayoi Culture in Izumi, Osaka Prefecture, from April 29 to May 7.
Viking Raids and Long-distance Oceanic Explorations Were All Enabled by Tar
What exactly inspired the 8th century Vikings of Scandinavia to sharpen their farming tools, to build ships and conquer Europe, has long been debated.
However, a new study all but closes the case book on this enduring mystery proving the industrial scale production of tar enabled the waterproofing of longships for long-distance raiding missions around Europe, across the Atlantic in North America and eastwards “Down the Russian rivers towards Islamic lands.”
Andreas Hennius of Uppsala University recently published his new findings in a paper titled Viking Age tar production and outland exploitation which can be read on Cambridge.org. He discovered “output from tar pits in Scandinavia increased dramatically just as Vikings began raiding other parts of Europe.”
The Viking Voyagers
Vikings were ruthless seafaring traders and fierce warriors who launched seaborne attacks on Europe from Scandinavia. By the mid-11th century the Viking’s Nordic empire expanded across vast territories in Britain, Iceland, Greenland and America, and as detailed in an article on History.com they also “raided Italian and Spanish ports and even attacked the walls of Constantinople.”
The Oseberg Ship, well-preserved historic ship exhibited in The Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway.
Hennius told reporters at The Guardian that his new research, which was funded by the Berit Wallenberg Foundation, reveals the tar pits “could produce 300 liters in one production cycle,” which would enable production of more than enough tar to waterproof a large fleet of ships.
“Tar production … developed from a small-scale activity … into large-scale production that relocated to forested outlands during the Viking period,” added Hennius.
Traditionally, archaeologists have proposed that changes in climate boosted agriculture, causing a sharp spike in population, which inspired the Vikings to look for new lands .
Others maintain local chieftains funded treasure hunting raids to further establish their wealth, dominance and power, but now, Hennius had proved that “tar has been used for millennia to waterproof boats. It was made in pits filled with pine wood, covered with turf and set on fire.
Small domestic tar kilns were found in Sweden in the early 2000s. These dated to between AD100 and 400. But much larger pits were found during road construction and dated to between 680 and 900, when the rise of the Vikings began.”
Funnel-shaped feature used for tar production in the Roman Iron Age (photograph courtesy of Upplandsmuseet) and a schematic reconstruction drawing (amended from Kurzweil & Todtenhaupt 1998).
Tar Trade
The pits were, up to now, thought to have been used for producing charcoal, but Hennius argues that, “These kilns are not associated with any inhabited settlements and were situated closer to forests of pine, which was their key ingredient.”
Vikings then sailed their tar enhanced longships on long distance raids. The research paper also noted that, “This development coincides with Scandinavian society’s intensified marine focus and the introduction of the sail.
This most probably drove the increase in tar production, which was used for protecting wood, impregnating and sealing sails, and as a trade product.”
Viking raiding and trading was not confined to precious objects , metals, stones… and tar. A New York Times article dissing the 2014 Vikings: Life and Legend , exhibition at the British Museum, said “A slave collar from Dublin and an ankle shackle from Mecklenburg in Germany remind us that Vikings were very active slave traders, capturing adults and children in raids, both to sell them or to keep as domestic servants and laborers.”
Reconstructed Viking longboat “Hugin”.
Driven to Explore and Exploit
What is more, the same article reports eyewitness accounts from Arab travelers that speak of “Vikings transporting slaves down the Russian rivers towards Islamic lands.
And DNA evidence from Iceland suggests that while the males are almost all of Scandinavian origin, there is a significant element of Irish and Scots DNA among the females, most of whom probably arrived as slaves.”
And earlier this year, The Independant published an article about the findings of scholar Birgitta Wallace , an award-winning specialist in Norse archaeology and Viking evidence in the West, who uncovered evidence of the “long lost Viking settlement that featured in sagas passed down over hundreds of year,” on the east coast of Canada.
If Wallace is proved correct, it would be the second Viking settlement to be discovered in North America.
What is special about Andreas Hennius’ ‘tar pit’ discovery is that it is the scaffolding which underpins all of these recent discoveries of Vikings in exotic lands; for the fact is clear, without tar the Vikings wouldn’t have left the coasts of Scandinavia.
4,000-Year-Old Hidden Tunnel Discovered in Ancient Castle in Turkey
In Turkey, Central Anatolia, a Hittite castle secret tunnel was excavated. The tunnel is about 4,000 years old and is part of the castle of Geval Castle. Nearly 150 meters of the tunnel were dug and investigated at this point; the rest is sealed off with a vault.
Geval Castle, where the Secret Tunnel of Hittite castle was found, is at the peak of Takkei Mountain, at 1,700 meters, some 7 kilometers west of the modern-day town of Konya, which is Turkey‘s 7th city in Turkey by population.
However, in ancient times, Konya had several civilizations, thanks to its strategic placement and a 360-degree view of the area around it.
Thanks to this, not only Hittites but also Ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks and the Ottoman Empire used Geval Castle as an important defensive structure.
The archaeological excavation in Geval Castle began in 2022 and has been supervised by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Seljuk, the University of Necmettin Erbakan and the General Directorate of the Konya Museum.
According to a prominent archeology site in Turkey, Arkeolo Jihaber, the team of excavators has managed to find numerous items from the Hittite era, including some ceramic pots and pans, several different metal objects and an assortment of different small hand goods. In 2022, archeologists unearthed a temple from this era and various rock-hewn cisterns.
The Hittite castle secret tunnel that the archeologists have found now dates back about four thousand years and was in all likelihood used extensively in the Seljuk era between the 11th and 12th century AD.
According to Çaycı, the team of archeologists will take a break from investigating the secret tunnel and the Geval Castle itself and will continue excavations in May next year.
This Hittite castle secret tunnel could be of great help to archeologists and historians in understanding the Hittites and their history a bit better.
The Hittites were an ancient people residing mostly in Anatolia, modern-day Turkey, who founded an empire at Hattusa (north-central Anatolia) around 18BC.
The Hittite empire reached its peak in the 14th century BC under the rule of Suppoluliuma First and Mursili Second, when it covered the majority of Asia Minor and parts of Upper Mesopotamia and the Levant.
Thanks to their use of iron, the Hittites were able to launch several very successful military campaigns in nearby regions. However, iron wasn’t the only reason for their success on the battlefield.
The Hittites also used the light chariot. These were powered by two horses and were narrower and faster than what the other nations had at the time.
The Hittite empire reached its peak in the 14th century BC under the rule of Suppoluliuma First and Mursili Second, when it covered the majority of Asia Minor and parts of Upper Mesopotamia and the Levant.
At one point, a few years after the battle at Kadesh (1275 BC), the daughter of the Hittite king Hattusilis the Third married the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses Second.
Following this, civil wars and rivaling claims to the throne weakened the Hittite Empire, until it finally collapsed around 1160 BC into several independent “Neo-Hittite” city-states, none of which lasted longer than the 8th century BC. Most of these city-states were later integrated into the Assyrian empire.
Neo or Syro-Hittite city-states were generally divided into two groups: northern, with a Hittite ruler still in power; and southern, which were ruled by Arameans since around 1000 BC.
1,600-Year-Old Pottery Workshop Has First Known Rock-Hewn Kiln in Israel
During the construction of a new residential quarter, north of the new Yaʽarit neighborhood, a team of archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered a Roman era pottery workshop, where jars were manufactured.
The kiln, used to fire the jars, is the only one known to date in the country to have been hewn entirely in bedrock.
“What makes the pottery works so special is its unique kiln, which was hewn in bedrock and is unlike most of the kilns known to us that were built of stone, earth and mud” said Joppe Gosker, head of the IAA excavations, in a press release.
Joppe Gosker, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, inside the pottery workshop’s water reservoir in Shlomi.
The 5 th century A.D. workshop included a system for storing water, storage compartments, a kiln, etc,
“The kiln was meticulously constructed. It consisted of two chambers – one a firebox in which branches were inserted for burning, and a second chamber where the pottery vessels were placed that were fired in the scorching heat that was generated” added Gosker.
Joppe Gosker, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, in the pottery workshop in Shlomi.
Stone kilns were used in ancient Palestine because of the abundance of bedrock. More recently in that land such kilns have been built on hillsides, the hill forming part of the rear wall.
The kilns have been constructed of rough stones without mortar, the spaces between the stones being filled with clay but with a large open flue at the top. After the interior was properly packed with crushed limestone, a hot fire made from brush would be started in the fireplace at the base of the kiln.
The strong draft entering through a tunnel in the bottom of the kiln would carry the flames up through the limestone, heating it until it was converted into lime. This process would normally continue for several days.
“We can explain the quarrying of this rare kiln right here because of the special geological conditions found in the area of Shlomi: here there is chalk bedrock, which on the one hand is soft and therefore easily quarried, and on the other is sufficiently strong to endure the intense heat”, said Anastasia Shapiro, a geologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority who is researching the production of pottery vessels.
From the ceramic debris that was piled up around the kiln the archaeologists surmised that two types of vessels were manufactured at the workshop: storage jars that could be transported overland, and jars with large handles ( amphorae) that were used to store wine or oil which were exported from Israel by sea.
Decorated amphoriform vessel made by the Iron Age inhabitants of what is modern-day Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Israel
Archaeological surveys performed in Shlomi have documented remains of a royal structure with a gate – probably from the Late Roman period, which coincides with the use of the pottery workshop.
In addition, remains of the walls of buildings were identified that probably date to the Byzantine period, and as in the case of the unique kiln their builders took advantage of the natural stone in order to hew high foundations in the bedrock.
Images of Jesus and Other Biblical Figures Found in a 1,000-Year-Old Bible Discovered in Turkey
The nearly thousand-year-old bible has been recently discovered by171 the Turkish Police when smugglers tried to sell the priceless book to undercover officers.
Police in the central Turkish city of Tokat seize the ancient Bible together with additional priceless artifacts after catching the smugglers red-handed.
The Turkish Police also confiscated a valuable collection of jewelry and 53 ancient coins as well as two parts of valuable rings and two arrowheads were also recovered from the crooks trying to gain a profit off of the immensely valuable artifacts.
“They steal everything that they can sell, and what they can’t sell, they destroy,” Qais Hussein Rasheed, Iraq’s deputy minister for antiquities and heritage, said earlier this year of the Islamic State’s looting practices.
The researcher lists a 1,000-year-old Bible, written in the old Assyrian language and illustrated with religious motifs made of gold leafs, in a video posted on October 28, 2015.
“We have noticed that the smuggling of antiquities has greatly increased since last June,”
The origins of the bible are still unknown. The Bible is reportedly damaged, but the writings in the old Assyrian language can be still noticed on the crumbled pages.
The cover is completely ruined, but the remaining fifty-one pages have images and religious motifs in gold leaf.
Discoveries of biblical artifacts have made news a number of times this past year, with a team of scholars claiming to have discovered the world’s earliest-known version of the Gospel back in January.
A team of researchers headed by Craig Evans, a professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia, said that they found a sheet of papyrus used to make an ancient mummy’s mask in Egypt which contains a written portion of the Gospel of Mark and dates back to as early as 80 A.D.
“Where did we find it? We dug underneath somebody’s face and there it was,” Evans said. ” It was from one of these masks that we recovered a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that is dated to the 80s. We could have a first-century fragment of Mark for the first time ever.”
Holy book The Bible, written in the old Assyriac language, is estimated to be around 1,000 years old and is illustrated with religious motifs made of gold leafs.
The oldest surviving copies of the Scripture had been dated to the second century, between the years 101 to 200 A.D.
In July this year, Israeli archeologists announced that they had found a rare inscription of the name of an apparently influential person from the time of King David, which is also mentioned in the Bible.
The researchers found a 3,000-year-old large ceramic jar with the inscription of the name “Eshbaal Ben Beda,” which is mentioned in the Old Testament book of 1 Chronicles in 8:33 and 9:39.
Archaeologists Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor expressed doubts, however, that the jar belonged to the same Eshbaal that is mentioned in the Bible.
Archaeologists Uncover 3,000-Year-Old Gold Mask In China Belonging To A Mysterious Ancient Society
A 3,000-year-old ceremonial gold mask has become an unexpected social media sensation in China after its recent discovery in Sichuan province.
The artefact was one of 500 Bronze-Age relics found at the Sanxingdui archaeological site. Experts say the discovery could provide new insights into the ancient Shu state, which ruled the area before 316 BC.
But the mysterious half-faced mask has also spawned a popular meme and tribute videos on social media.
As soon as the latest batch of discoveries was announced on Saturday, users of the microblogging platform Weibo started making pictures superimposing the mask on the faces of pop culture figures.
The mask was one of hundreds of ancient objects uncovered at the site
The hashtag “Sanxingdui gold mask photo editing competition” has been viewed nearly 4 million times, and has spawned numerous posts as netizens praised the “stunning” and “beautiful” mask.
Officials at the Museum for Sanxingdui – one of the most important archaeological sites in China – soon joined in on the fun.
“Good morning, we’ve just woken up, apparently everyone’s been busy doing some Photoshopping?” the museum said in a recent Weibo post while sharing its own take on the meme.
The museum also released a promotional animated music video starring the mask and other artefacts, while a rap song created by a TV host praising the “intelligence” of the ancient civilisation has gone viral.
It is not the first time a Chinese artefact has attracted the attention of social media users – in August, another relic was found to resemble the pig characters in the popular video game Angry Birds.
In addition to the gold mask, archaeologists at Sanxingdui have found bronze pieces, gold foils as well as artefacts made from ivory, jade and silk.
Archaeologists unearthed bronze and ivory artefacts at the site as well.
The items were uncovered in six “sacrificial pits”, said the National Cultural Heritage Administration, which the Shu civilisation used to offer sacrifices in prayers for prosperity and peace.
The Sanxingdui ruins were discovered by accident by a farmer in 1929. To date, more than 50,000 relics have been unearthed at the site, which is around 60km (37 miles) from the city of Chengdu.
