Monthly Digest - April 2023
In The Field…
Archaeologists Have Uncovered a Sphinx-like Statue and Shrine in Egypt
CNN reports:
A new sphinx-like statue has been discovered in Egypt -- but this one is thought to be Roman.
The smiling sculpture and the remains of a shrine were found during an excavation mission in Qena, a southern Egyptian city on the eastern banks of the River Nile.
The shrine had been carved in limestone and consisted of a two-level platform, Mamdouh Eldamaty, a former minister of antiquities and professor of Egyptology at Ain Shams University, said in a statement Monday from Egypt's ministry of tourism and antiquities. A ladder and mudbrick basin for water storage were found inside.
A Medieval Synagogue Predating the Inquisition Has Been Found Under a Spanish Nightclub
Reported by Live Science:
Archaeologists first examined the building in 2021 after they came upon a description(opens in new tab) left by a 17th-century priest and historian named Rodrigo Caro. In 1604, Caro described Utrera, a municipality in southwest Spain not far from Seville, as a place where before his time "there were only foreign people and Jews there, for which reason they called it Val de Judíos [Valley of the Jews], who had their synagogue where the Hospital de la Misericordia is now."
The Utrera synagogue was built in the 1300s and likely survived the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain because it was reused and added to over the years, according to Miguel Ángel de Dios, the archaeologist leading the scientific investigation of the building.
A Rare Embroidered Deisis Depicting Jesus Christ Has Been Discovered in a Medieval Burial Ground
Russian archaeologists have uncovered a rare embroidered Deisis depicting Jesus Christ in a medieval burial ground.
46 graves have been dug up during excavations; one of them contained a woman who was buried with an embroidered Deisis depicting Jesus Christ and John the Baptist and was between the ages of 16 and 25.
The discovery was made during the construction of the Moscow-Kazan highway, where archaeologists found an 8.6-acre medieval settlement and an associated Christian cemetery.
More at Arkeonews.
A Bronze Age Mycenaean Well Contents Reveals the History of Animal Resources
Reported by Phys.Org:
A large Bronze Age debris deposit in Mycenae, Greece, provides important data for understanding the history of animal resources at the site, according to a study published March 1, 2023, in the open-access journal PLoS ONE by Jacqueline Meier of the University of North Florida and colleagues.
Animals were an important source of subsistence and symbolism at the Late Bronze Age site of Mycenae in Greece, as evidenced by their depictions in art and architecture, but more research is needed on the animals that actually lived there. In this study, researchers performed a detailed analysis of a large deposit of animal remains inside a well within Petsas House, a household in Mycenae that also included a ceramics workshop.
A Roman Soldier’s 1,900-Year-Old Payslip Uncovered in Masada
During excavations at Masada, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities (IAA) uncovered a papyrus payslip dated to 72 BC belonging to a Roman soldier.
Masada is a rugged crag in the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea. Herod, the first-century BCE Judean king best known for constructing Jerusalem’s Temple Mount complex, built a fortress and palace on the mountain.
Jewish rebels entrenched themselves at Masada a century later, from 66 to 74 CE, during the Jewish Revolt against Rome. A Roman army besieged the last holdouts nearly four years after the fall of Jerusalem.
Read more at Arkeonews.
Archaeologists Have Deciphered the Sabaean Inscription on a Clay Jar Finding a Link Between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba
Arkeonews reports:
Archaeologists deciphered a partially preserved inscription that was found on the neck of a large jar dated back to the time of King Solomon.
Dr. Daniel Vainstub of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) was able to decipher an ancient South Arabian script used at the time in the southern Arabian Peninsula (current-day Yemen region) when the Kingdom of Sheba was the dominant kingdom.
The jar was originally discovered together with the remains of six other large jars during excavations carried out in 2012 in the Ophel area south of the Temple Mt., led by the late Dr. Eilat Mazar from the Institute of Archeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Quote Of The Month
Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference. - Aristotle
Resources
Listen to The Epic of Gilgamesh Being Read in its Original Ancient Language, Akkadian
Theban Mapping Project - The Valley of the Queens and Western Wadis
Museum Exhibits
The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge) - Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean
Recommended Books
Knossos, Mycenae, Troy: The Enchanting Bronze Age and its Tumultuous Climax
by Natale Barca
This work puts a particular emphasis on the mixing and osmosis of the first Mediterranean civilizations, with particular reference to the Minoan, Cycladic, Mycenaean, and Trojan, and on the causes of their decline, which are to be identified in a jumble of natural and human causes, and in a long-lasting, slow, but irreversible crisis. It takes into account that the Mediterranean Dimension of the Bronze Age is a garden in which many legends flourished, clearly distinguishing between myth and history, and always bearing in mind that legends are not to be taken literally (nonetheless, they often have a grain of truth). It does not aim to provide an exhaustive report but to compose a broad and evolutionary picture, in which the facts and their connections, which are deducible from archaeological evidence or from the accounts of ancient historians, find their place, in their consequentiality. Its originality lies not in the choice of the subject, but in the way of treating it. The author introduces and explains, in order to be read, and perhaps to get excited. Another characterizing element of Knossos, Mycenae, Troy is the wide use of the ‘historical present’ that is made there to represent events and construct the text, to reduce the reader’s distance from the narrated events, and facilitates their approach to them. This book aims to provide the reader with an overall picture of the cultures that laid the foundations of Western civilization, which is not generic, but rather detailed and updated, and which has scientific solidity.
Artifact Of The Month
Represented above in an Assyrian palace relief (713–706 BC), from Dur-Sharrukin (now in the Louvre), the mythological Gilgamesh was an ancient Mesopotamian hero and the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem initially written in Akkadian during the late 2nd millennium BCE.