I have a research project on the antiquities market in Jerusalem in the late 19th century and am now seriously regretting not starting in the mid-20th century instead.
Amazing thread (& folder posted by the IAA), may be of interest @arsteinjustnes
Anyone know what happened to the Zion Research Library ("a nonsectarian Protestant library for the study of the Bible and the history of the Christian Church") of Brookline Massachusetts & its Dead Sea Scroll jar? @MaterializingB
Also thanks to @DrTermagant for pointing out how the Order of St. John in Belfast wanted a copy of Godfrey of Bouillon's sword from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And that they got it.
They probably wanted it because it was sword that Mark Twain used to slice a Muslim in half "like a doughnut" (not)
Thanks to @Ludvik_A_K's database I learn that the Zion Research Library held the first exhibition of 1Q20 (the Genesis Apocryphon) in January 1950 -- whose contents were unknown b/c it was still rolled up k-- as it was helping fund its unrolling. dssexhibitions.wordpress.com/exhibitions/19…
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"After seeing the pyramid, all other architecture seems but pastry."
Herman Melville at Giza (Journal Of A Visit To Europe And The Levant 1856-1857)
"The tearing away of the casing, though it removed enough stone to build a walled-town, has not subtracted from its apparent magnitude. It has had the contrary effect."
In January 1857 Melville makes it to Palestine.
"A delightful ride across Plain of Sharon [really plain of Philistia] to Jaffa. Quantities of red poppies."
An interesting article on a 14th-century waqf oath by the heads of the village of Zakariyya (in the foothills southwest of Jerusalem), and the fate of the village.
As the article notes, there is an apparent connection with the site of Azekah.
Near Zakariya is the mound of Tell Zakariya, identified by scholars since the 19th century as biblical Azekah.
Not sure the world needs yet another rehash of the debate about David and Solomon in Israeli archaeology, but if you're interested this one is well-written at least.
David may be an important figure, but for what religious or cultural group is he "the most central thing in the Bible"? (maybe for earlier Zionists?)
Moses, Jesus, clearly not important.
We literally have better evidence (from Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions) for the existence of a dozen kings of Israel and Judah, so I'm not sure where this comes from.
(Not to mention the switching between "Bible" and "Old Testament" without comment.)
We love to share these striking painted portraits from Roman Egypt, but we usually don't pay attention to some really important things about them -- like how museums got hold of them (the Louvre doesn't either!)
A thread on the darker side of these Egyptian painted portraits.
These are often called "Faiyum portraits", because many of them come from the area of the Faiyum oasis south of the Delta.
But they've been also found at other sites throughout Egypt. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Faiy…
Times of Israel reports (as do Haaretz & NatGeo) on a new genetic study of dozens of individuals from the Bronze Age Levant.
Some initial observations . . . timesofisrael.com/study-shows-ca…
The study, published today in the journal Cell, is by a team of scholars including groups from Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University and David Reich's lab at Harvard cell.com/cell/fulltext/…
The study includes DNA from 93 individuals: 73 newly extracted by the authors of the study (71 Bronze Age, 2 Iron Age) and 20 previously published (13 Bronze Age, 7 Iron Age).
Stanhope was the granddaughter of William Pitt the Elder (niece of Pitt the Younger). But while she may have abandoned the familiarity of England, she hardly abandoned the privileged life of the aristocracy . . . npg.org.uk/collections/se…
The article itself undermines these sorts of claims.
We're told that she lived the last years of her life in her own private fortress.