You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'summer 2007' category.
Yesterday, 3/3, I had a busy day. Later in the afternoon I participated in the ceremonial opening of the National Park at Tell es-Safi, and I’ll write about this (and show some pictures) in another post.
Earlier that day, we had a visit to the lab by Prof. Trude Dothan, the grand madam of Philistine studies, and co-director of the Tel Miqne-Ekron excavation project, and Prof. Ephraim Stern, the former director of the excavations of Dor. They came to the lab to see the finds from the recent season, and in particular, the finds from the cultic corner in Area A which we discovered in the previous season.
As some of you may recall, we have a couple of short-toed eagles (Circaetus gallicus) that hang around the site. In particular, there is one eagle that seems to like the view of Area E, on the eastern side of the tell, and during the summer, we regularly met him perched on a tree, just to the north of Area E. In fact, I blogged about this during the season with a very dramatic shot.
Last month, Rona Avissar, long-time member of our team, and Area Supervisor of Area P, was on a tour of the site. When she arrived to Area E, she saw one of the eagles sitting in Area E. As they got closer and it did not move away, they managed to take several excellent closeup shots of the beautiful creature. The bird was apparently wounded and could not move.
Click on this link to see one of the pictures: tzafit-beit-shemesh-055.jpg
As you may have noticed, so as to prevent return users of the blog from being too bored, I have changed the foto that is shown on the top of the blog. Instead of the very nice aerial view of the tell (looking NW), I have placed a foto of the fantastic collection of cultic objects that were found this summer in Area A
This group, which is apparently part of a cultic corner in a domestic context, included some 7 phallic shaped vessels, a kernos, and several other objects of clearly cultic connotations. Very interesting was the fact that many of these objects had holes on them, which were apparently made to enable the original users to hang them. Thus, this most likely was some sort of cultic mobile, perhaps similar to various hanging objects that one still sees in contemporary places of worship. As we joked in the summer, perhaps this was baby Golith’s mobile…
Yesterday, Simcha Yacobovici, the famous (or infamous …) “Naked Archaeologist” and his film crew, paid a visit to the Tell es-Safi/Gath project lab at Bar-Ilan University. I had already appeared in previous episodes of this series, and as usual had a lot of fun filming with them. They were working on additional episodes for the series, on a variety of topics (see below).
Once they arrived (and throughout the filming session as well), Simcha and I spent a half an hour or so arguing about his interpretation of the so called “Jesus Family Tomb” and of the “Exodus Decoded” movies, in which he has presented a very different understanding of these issues than that accepted by most scholars dealing with these topics. After an amusing argument, I believe we agreed at least that we don’t agree on these issues …
Mazal tov to Yossi Baruchi and his wife Elisheva on the birth of their son!
Yossi is an assistant area supervisor in Area F (under the able command of Prof. Jeff Chadwick – aka Achish Melekh Gath) and Elisheva in fact joined us for a day on the dig during the 2007 summer season!
Owen Chesnut has been kind enough to send me an excellent picture of a bunch of the “Safiites” having supper in downtown San Diego, one eveing last week during the ASOR meeting.
There is a short article in the Haaretz on the cultic corner that was found this season at Safi.
Here is the Hebrew version.
So far, I am not sure that it has appeared in the English Haaretz.
Enjoy!
Aren
One of the interesting finds of the last few seasons is the Early Bronze Age levels at Tell es-Safi/Gath. These levels, which have been uncovered in Area E (directed by Dr. Itzik Shai), on the eastern ridge of the tell, just below Area A, have opened up a very nice window on this very important phase in the history of the site.
In the excavations in Area F (just to the NW of the summit of the tell), during the 2006 and 2007 seasons we had some very interesting finds. Amoung them are the remains dating to the Middle Bronze Age II (ca. 2000-1500 BCE), which were found in the western part of Area F, in “Lower Area F” (The overall director of Area F was J. Chadwick and the supervisors of the actual work in lower F were E. Levine and Y. Baruchi).
aerial-view-of-f-with-mbii-wall.jpg (click to see picture)
Components of what seems to be a very impressive section of an MB II fortification were found, including a ca. 12 m section of a well-built stone wall over 2 m thick to which a glacis of earthen layers is attached.
This find has several interesting implications:
Just before the Jewish New Year, yet another article relating to the excavation was published. If I may quote from “Monty Python” – this is one is “Something Completely Different …”
The article (which is entitled: Maeir, A. 2007 A New Interpretation of the Term `Opalim (עפלים) in Light of Recent Archaeological Finds from Philistia. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 32(1 September): 23–40) deals with some recent finds at the excavation at Tell es-Safi/Gath (both in previous seasons as well as this very summer), and discusses them in light of the very interesting and up till now insufficiently explained biblical term “ofalim” (appearing primarily several times in the ark Narrative in the book of I Samuel 5-6).
Recent Comments