Rediscovering Hezekiah's tunnel

I once had a date, sort of, in Hezekiah's tunnel in Jerusalem. My friends started calling it "Hezekiah's Tunnel of Love" in honor of that event. Seems like a long time ago :)

This month's Biblical Archaeology Review has an excellent article on the expanding discoveries at the tunnel. It's an underground water way, over 1700 feet long, dug by the Judahite king Hezekiah (II Kings 18-20) in the late eighth century BCE. The tunnel traverses a winding course from the Gihon Spring (Jeruslem's only natural water source) to the Pool of Siloam (Shiloach). Hezekiah's engineers dug it in anticipation of a siege by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, because the spring was outside biblical Jerusalem's walls. The article discusses some recent finds and conclusions that illuminate how such engineering was done in the early Iron Age. From Assyrian records, the siege is most likely to be dated to 701 BCE.

In 1880, an inscription in paleo-Hebrew (not the post-Babylonian script used today) was discovered in the tunnel. It commemorates the completion of the tunnel and describes in vivid terms how the water started to flow when the two teams of workmen, converging from the two ends, met up. The inscription was taken to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, where it still sits today.

In the late 1990s, a particularly foolish group of "biblical minimalists" asserted that the Tunnel inscription dated from Hellenistic times (third century BCE, after Alexander the Great). The hard scientists struck back, and the minimalists had to beat an embarrassing retreat. The most recent work on Hezekiah's Tunnel demonstrated the antiquity of the tunnel anew, with radiocarbon dating of twigs and leaves left in the tunnel by the engineers. The date: eighth century BCE.

Although they rarely say it, the minimalists frequently insinuate that their claims are modern, skeptical, and "scientific." Their frequent target is an invented straw man ("biblical maximalists"). This dispute is sometimes echoed in the popular media, with the same insinuation intact. The minimalists have even, on occasion, attempted to attack Jewish presence in Palestine as late as the Dead Sea Scrolls era (second and first centuries BCE).

The truth is very different. While scarcely fundamentalists, the "hard" scientists know that the northern Israelite and southern Judahite kingdoms were real and were destroyed by the Assyrians in 721 and the Babylonians in the 586 BCE, respectively. Post-exilic Jewish presence in the land in the Persian (539-332 BCE), Hellenistic (332-37 BCE), and Roman eras (after 37 BCE) is massively attested and beyond question. The minimalists are made up of historians and literary critics, coming into frequent conflict with the "hard" sciences of archeology, epigraphy, and linguistics. It's the minimalists who are anti-science, not their opponents.

POSTSCRIPT: The complete body of Dead Sea Scrolls texts is about to be published online by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Shake it up

So here's an interesting twist on the old "challenge-and-response" theory of civilization. It seems most of the world's civilizations, at least in ancient times, were built near tectonic plate boundaries and fault lines. Why the connection? Such regions have more underground water supplies and richer soil (from volcanoes). But maybe a shake-up now and then isn't a bad thing either.

Meantime, the Shroud of Turin is being tested again for authenticity. It's doubtful anyone will ever prove that is was Jesus' burial shroud. But "authenticity" here just means, is it from the first century? Earlier radiocarbon tests in 1988 indicated that the Shroud came from the 13th century. But such test results can be distorted by contaminants, and there's a lot of scientific skepticism about the 1988 tests. So more tests are coming ....

Thank god for evolution

As a proponent of the "new" atheism, Richard Dawkins is, like Christopher Hitchens and others, sometimes annoying. But when it comes to explaining the nuts and bolts of evolution, few do it better.

Next year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection. To mark those dates, the BBC has started an evolution series on Channel 4 with Dawkins, also available from Dawkins' Web site.

For another look at the exciting and controversial world of biblical archeology, television viewers will be able to take in the two-hour Nova special on PBS this coming November (trailer here). From the previews, it seems the content should be taken with a grain of salt: it's unlikely the Bible was written by hundreds of authors, and archeological remains and linguistics tell us that the ancient Israelites were definitely not Canaanites. But this is journalism, after all -- it's not supposed to be accurate, just ... umm ... "provocative" :)

(Hat tip to Adam.)

Does cultural property make sense?

The postwar concept of "cultural property" is increasingly intruding on museums and their ability to offer a cornucopia of the world's material culture. It sounds like a good, liberal idea: returning things to their countries of origin. The classic case is apparently the Elgin Marbles, parts of the Parthenon and other classical Greek ruins removed by Lord Elgin (the British ambassador to the Ottoman empire) in the early 19th century and placed in the British Museum. But even though Elgin was criticized at the time, it's hard to see how he did anything but good.

Like many such ideas, it's actually more politically correct than liberal. It's based on a weird inversion of liberal values -- the value of diffusing knowledge, especially to the general public that goes to and supports museums -- mixed with bogus history. Ben McIntyre of the London Times has a look over here and finds the whole movement questionable at best.

The Elgin Marbles themselves, once their full history is understood, are a perfect example. When Elgin removed the marbles from the Parthenon, there was no modern Greek state to claim them. In fact, at the time, few Greeks knew or cared about the leftovers of classical antiquity. Athens was controlled by the Ottoman Turks, and the Parthenon was a military fort. The Greeks were fighting a war of independence, heavily supported by the British, and eventually won in 1833. Elgin spent about £75,000 (about a couple million dollars today), part of it to pay the Ottoman government, the only government there at the time. And it's clear that the friezes would have been even more damaged than they are already were at the time, if they had been left on the Parthenon, exposed as it was to rifle and artillery fire. The Parthenon had already been badly damaged in previous wars.

There are many other examples of the same mix of selective and garbled history and chauvinism, like Kennewick Man. Discovered in 1990 in the Pacific Northwest, this skeleton, wrongly claimed by certain American Indian tribes as a ancestor, is of unknown origin. Fortunately, it's still open to scientific study. Only through the willful PC ignorance of history and acceptance of cultural chauvinism by whoever's anointed and designated as "oppressed," while rejecting the cultural chauvinism of "white Europeans" or whoever's the latest designated "oppressor," can bad ideas like this get a foothold. But wait! Aren't the Greeks white Europeans?

Anyway, as McIntyre argues correctly, the material culture of the past deserves to be shared more, not to be monopolized.* This is another example of our "post-liberal" culture: Enlightenment ideas (here, a shared past "owned" by no one) opposed by superficially "progressive," but in reality, parochial and narrow, agendas.
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* Meaning that the British Museum, say, should be sharing more and not itself act as a monopolist. In some cases, works could be moved permanently elsewhere, if there is a museum that can care for the objects in the same way. What's bogus are the legal and historical arguments often given and used in court cases.

The Royal Game of Ur, plus: Mice on drugs

Board games seem simple and obvious enough that you might think people have been playing them for a long time. And you'd be right. The oldest known is the Royal Game of Ur, one of the capitals of Sumer, in ancient Mesopotamia, starting from about 2600 BCE. The paraphernalia of the game were discovered decades before the rules were reconstructed. But they have been, and you can even play it online. (Warning: this site requires the Shockwave plug-in.) The British Museum sells a real-space version of the game as well (click on picture).

The weird thing is that the last known living variant of this game was played until recently by the Cochin Jews, of Cochin, India. They mostly live in Israel now. Evidently, they brought it with them when they moved from Mesopotamia (the Babylonian exile) to India. Some came with Alexander the Great (around 330 BCE); others later with the Muslims around the year 1000, or with the British, in the 19th century.

Meantime, in Israel, another ancient phenomenon, frankincense, has been investigated, not only as a spice and incense, but as a drug. Inhale enough of it, or drink the resin, and you get very calm and a little confused, but happy-confused. Now mice at the Hebrew University are testing and apparently liking it.

Frankincense might even be used some day as an antidepressant. It was once used as an incense in many ancient and not-so-ancient temples, evidently for good reason.

The wages of sin

A Sumerian clay tablet describing an asteroid impact, inferred by constellation positions to June 29, 3123 BC, has been deciphered and somehow connected to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which I had always thought was something from about a millennium later. I'm not sure how this connection was made, but you can read the London Times article here. The tablet was discovered in the 19th century in the ruins of the royal Assyrian library at Nineveh, itself dating from much later, to around 700 BC.

Amusingly, the clay tablet itself is misidentified in the headline as the asteroid: "Clay tablet identified as asteroid that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah"! :) But the story's first paragraph sets it straight:

A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness’s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

In good newspaper style, the unnamed asteroid is identified only as "suspected." The asteroid has actually been held for questioning and could not be reached for comment.

A shaggy Ark story? Plus: some Mamet

Tudor Parfitt, professor at University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, might have discovered, not the Ark (aron ha-qodesh), but a copy built about 700-800 years ago by a south-central African people called the Lemba, who claim to be one of the Ten Lost Tribes. I know, I know: they're everywhere: the Pashtuns, the North American Indians, etc. But follow Parfitt's story and see for yourself.

His two-hour program aired on the History Channel on March 2 and will re-air later this month. The Lemba do share a genetic marker distinctive to the Israelite priestly clan, the kohanim, descendants of Aaron, Moses' older bro.

And here's a political thought or two from playwright David Mamet at - oy! - the Village Voice. It's stirred up eye-rubbing across the blogosphere and conventional media. Thus Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal provides commentary upon Mamet - yea, verily.

Reading and digging

Occasionally serious investigation of the Bible, archeology, and the ancient world get some serious attention from the world of journalism. Who knew? :)

David Plotz of Slate has spent much of the last two years reading, digging, and blogging the Bible. Check out his blogging, both the reading and the digging (archeology in Israel and Jordan), over at Slate. The archeology postings feature some nice picture shows too.

He bills himself as an ignoramus, which is a little misleading - Plotz seems to know his way around. But he's friendly and wears his learning lightly, which is the only way to dress.

And happy Groundhog Day!

Rock the casbah

This posting isn't really about that venerable song by the Clash ... but it sounded cool :)

This weekend's Wall Street Journal had a very interesting article on the possibility of an independent and critical scholarship of the Qu'ran, similar to the sort of thing that Christian and, later, Jewish scholars achieved in the last 300 years with regards to the Hebrew and Greek scriptures that make up the Bible. German scholars at the forefront of "Oriental" research made a start from the end of the nineteenth century, until the rise of the Nazi regime. The project was suspended and much of its materials (photos of old Quranic texts taken in the 1920s and 30s) apparently lost during the war. The subject is also, of course, one of extreme sensitivity in the Muslim world. Nine years ago, the Atlantic Monthly published a prescient article on the subject, and the politico-religious minefield around it, available if you can find a print or online database copy of their January 1999 issue. (It's available on the Atlantic site only to their subscribers.)

The Journal article announces a stunning discovery: the photo archive was not actually lost. It survives and has been made publicly available. See here and here for more.

POSTSCRIPT: Here we go again with the mindcrime of publishing the Danish-Muhammad cartoons, accompanied by the same weird mixture of the medieval and the postmodern (charges of blasphemy mixed with bogus charges of victimhood). See the brilliant videos from the ludicrously misnamed Ontario "Human Rights" Commission here.

No Danes or Canadians have committed violence against Muslims because of the cartoons.

The age of babble

For an example of what once-respected institutions - in this case, National Geographic - have twisted themselves into so they can play media whores, read this about the Gospel of Judas.

This non-canonical gospel was made famous in last year's media-sensational, PC-tinged, and seriously flawed mistranslation of the original Coptic/Greek text from the 3rd century Gnostics of Egypt.

Official science: A study

Outside the world of archeology, it's almost unknown, but the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is poised to wreck archeology in and around the Holy Land with its recent vendettas against archeologists and forgery-accusation craze. The result is a growing, yet artificial, crisis, one completely manufactured by the IAA's eminently qualified director, Shuka Dorfman, a former general who knows nothing about archeology. It's an interesting and revealing case of "official science" and how it rides roughshod over the real thing. The basic crisis is a wave of mostly bogus claims of forgery against some well-known antiquities, like the "James ossuary" (with its "James, bother of Jesus" carving) and the First Temple ivory pomegranate. These items are almost certainly authentic, yet the IAA, determined to declare them forgeries, has gotten enmeshed in harassing and persecuting archeologists for doing their job.*

You can read about the surreal situation at the Biblical Archaeology Review web site. You can also read about the IAA's refusal to apply existing laws to the Muslim Waqf (religious endowment) that controls the Temple Mount compound and stop the destructive new trench-digging that the Waqf launched this past summer.

Part of the problem is a misguided international campaign against looted antiquities that the IAA has now signed on to. This campaign sounds like a good idea, but like most such crusades, is full of paradoxes and hypocrisy. Many of the most prominent campaigners own private collections that include such antiquities. While antiquities that appear on the market without provenance (that is, without scientific control as to their place and circumstances of discovery) have less-than-ideal scientific value, it doesn't make them worthless. They sometimes have artistic value as well, which is why they end up in private collections. Anti-looting laws should be enforced - when looters are caught in the act - but enforcement is nowhere close to being able catch all looters. Persecuting and prosecuting people who openly attempt to rescue such items on the lucrative antiquities market is completely counterproductive and, actually, outrageous: it ensures that looted antiquities are lost for good, into some private collection not accessible to scientists and the public, and that the entire flow of such items is driven underground.

The "James ossuary" was declared a forgery by an Israeli-only team that was handpicked by the IAA, then subject to serious arm-twisting. Scholars outside the handpicked team have all concluded it's authentic. Individual team members themselves could not find anything wrong with the ossuary, nor is there any evidence that its most recent private owner forged it. (It's highly unlikely he could have in any case.) Yet he was prosecuted by the IAA for this non-forgery. The entire affair was a Keystone Kops farce of scientists saying, "Well, I can't find anything wrong with it, but my colleagues ...."

That's how "official" science works. Someone political, usually a non-scientist or someone at the fringe of science, wants a result, then bullies an officially-convened body. Pseudoscientific ventriloquism results.

In the case of archeology and antiquities, amateurs and an educated public can make a real difference. Abuses like this are made possible, in part, by overspecialization and a loss of interest by outsiders. Specialization and technical mastery are crucial, but specialization can be carried too far, and modern academia has carried it too far.

BONUS TRACKS: They Might Be Giants, who covered that crucial lesson in astrophysics, "The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas," now give us "The Mesopotamians." It's the least we can get out of Iraq, now that cheap oil seems gone forever, and it beats limp pita and undercooked felafel.
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* By "authentic," I mean that the materials, figurative art, and inscriptions on these two items are ancient and actually are what they appear to be, from the Second and First Temple periods, respectively.

To clarify about the James ossuary: its Aramaic inscription reads Ya‘akov bar Yosef achui diYeshua, or "Jacob [James], son of Joseph, brother of Yeshua [Jesus]." ("James" and "Jesus" are Latin versions of Ya'akov and Yeshua, which itself is an Aramaic form of the Hebrew Yehoshua, Joshua.) Whether this ossuary (bone box for secondary reburial of bones) pertains to the Jesus and his brother, the James, of New Testament fame, is a different question and the subject of intense debate and research.

Another something very cool

That would be the Giza Archives Project, which is storing and making available tens of the thousands of documents from almost a century of archeology at the Giza Plateau, home of Egypt's pyramids. It's a joint project of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard University.

POSTSCRIPT: Are there too many amateur archeology crackpots out there? That's what Eric Cline of George Washington University thinks (requires registration). Amateurs can contribute a lot to archeology, as they still do to astronomy - it's not, and probably never will be, a fully professionalized subject. But there's no substitute for doing your homework - and eating your broccoli :)

The Archimedes palimpsest

Every thing old is eventually new again.

In the late 1990s, a lost Archimedes manuscript was recovered from a medieval Christian prayer book. It's now being deciphered at Stanford by Israeli scholar Reviel Netz. He has coauthored a book on the discovery.

G'mar chatimah tovah and tzom qal l'Yom ha-Kippurim!

Herod on the couch

More Herod the Great in the news: a new psychobiography makes full use of everything that has been learned in the last 50 years from archeology, medicine, study of ancient texts, and so on.

Herod, more than ever, fits into the picture of a semi-insane Hellenistic king with paranoid tendencies. Kings of that era often came from inbred families with strong tendencies towards mental illness - like the Seleucid Antiochus IV Epiphanes, made famous by Hannukah. In Herod's case, paranoia was the most obvious tendency. But so was megalomania, what with his massive building program, the largest in classical antiquity.

The new book is reviewed by Ha'aretz. The quote from Augustus is striking: Herod wouldn't have eaten or touched a pig, but he did kill his own sons.

More about Herod, the mad king

Another photo essay about Herod's tomb, this time from the German Der Spiegel.

More from the site of the Biblical Archaeology Society here as well.

King Herod and his tomb

Herod the Great (or the Wicked) was the last independent king of ancient Judea before that province was taken over by the Romans upon his death in 4 BCE. He was a megalomaniac who killed much of his own family out of paranoia and built or rebuilt huge structures that still survive: Masada, the Herodion, and the Second Temple in Jerusalem (parts of which survived its destruction by the Romans in 70). Each one topped the last as the largest public works project of classical antiquity.

Israeli archaeologist and Hebrew University professor Ehud Netzer has confirmed that the large structure on a hill near Bethlehem (part of the Herodion complex) that has been under excavation for decades is in fact Herod's tomb. You can view a public photo essay here.

Something very cool

Maps of War features a new "empires of the Middle East" dynamic map that covers 5,000 years of history in 90 seconds: very cool.