Serious (and not-so-serious) musings about the project
On Wednesday evening, Feb. 20th, 2019, I will be giving a lecture, in Hebrew, at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, on the results of the recent seasons of excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath. In the lecture, I will focus, in particular, on the finds from the lower city.
So, if you’re in the region – you are invited!
If you read Hebrew, an excellent book on the history of Mesopotamia in the early 2nd Millennium BCE has appeared:
Wasserman, N., and Block, Y. 2019. The Amorites: Mesopotamia in the Early Second Millennium BCE (In Hebrew). Jerusalem: Carmel.
Hopefully, an English version will appear in the future.
On Thursday, February 21, 2019 (11:00-13:00), a very interesting workshop will be held at Bar-Ilan University – on the production of ancient coins – replicating ancient production technologies.
The workshop will be led by Yeshu Drei – who is an expert on recreating ancient technologies.
The workshop is open to all!
See more details in the following PDF:
Coin production workshop_BIU Feb 21_2019
Today (Wed., Feb. 6, 2019) the 8th and final lesson of the MOOC on biblical archaeology went online. You can still register, and study, this round of the course until Feb. 20th. Those who sign up before that date will have access (full access for those who register for certification, and partial access [only to video clips] for those who register for auditing only).
All told, close to 2400 students registered from the course, from all over the world!
The MOOC will run again in the first semester of the next academic year at BIU (which starts in Oct. 2019). At that time, I hope we will have captions for the videos in English, Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian and French – and perhaps a few additional languages as well.
So – if you missed registering and doing the MOOC this time – you’ll have another opportunity in a few months!
I had a lot of fun preparing this MOOC, had some great help from my assistants and the technical team of “Online Academe” – and from the responses of many of the participants – they had a great and enriching experience as well!
Aren
A video clip on Tell es-Safi/Gath, which appeared on i24News has been posted on Youtube. In it, the tour guide Arieh O’Sullivan gives a tour of the site, from biblical to modern periods.
The best part of the video is of course in the very beginning, when Tell es-Safi/Gath is called (0:10) – “the greatest biblical site in the Holy Land“!! I’ll buy that! :-)
While there are things, here and there, that I would have presented differently (;-), you do get a very nice view of different parts of the site (and when the site is very green), and discussions on different parts of the site’s history.
Check it out!
A new issue (68/2 [2018]) of the Israel Exploration Journal, which I co-edit with Shmuel Ahituv and Zeev Weiss, has appeared.
Check out the new issue’s table of content and abstracts:
A new paper on the provenance of the EB ground stone tools from Tell es-Safi/Gath has appeared. The paper, which was spearheaded by Jeremy Beller is entitled:
Beller, J. A., Greenfield, H. J., Fayek, M., Shai, I., and Maeir, A. M.
2019 Raw Material Variety and Acquisition of the EB III Ground Stone Assemblage of Tell es-Safi/Gath (Israel). Pp. 121–50 in Stone Tools in the Ancient
Near East and Egypt: Ground Stone Tools, Rock-Cut Installations and Stone Vessels from the Prehistory to Late Antiquity, eds. A. Squitieri and D. Eitam. Oxford: Archaeopress.
See a link to a PDF here.
Check it out!
Aren
