Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: archaeology

Showing posts with label archaeology. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Al Jazeera archaeologist implies Palestinians have been around for 100,000 years

A couple of weeks ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced a major find of an entire city from 9,000 years ago near Jerusalem.

Since the city pre-dates Biblical times, it is obvious that this was not a dig that discovered any Jewish objects.

I made a humorous tweet about how Israel, which according to academic and professional Israel-hater Nadia Abu el-Haj uses archaeology to only pretend to discover ancient Judean and Israelite finds and which ignores all other archaeology, must have made a mistake by publicizing this find.

But...I was told that the Israel Antiquities Authority didn't bother exposing any archaeology that wasn't Jewish! There have been entire books written with that thesis! pic.twitter.com/zWi8c5kbBH
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) July 16, 2019

Now an Arab site has turned this story around, claiming that Israeli archaeologists are super embarrassed by these findings, which show that people lived in the region before the Jews.

This isn't exactly a revelation to those with a passing knowledge of the Bible.

Archaeologist Abeer Ziad of Al Jazeera looked at the site and - wow - discovered that it was quite old, and she is claiming that the Neolithic people who lived there were, of course, "Palestinians!"

The article says:

She considered this to be evidence that Palestinians had inhabited the area for thousands of years, which refuted Zionist claims that the Jewish people were indigenous.

She explained that there are remnants in Palestine "dating back to a hundred thousand years ago, and this new discovery is evidence of the existence of civilizations and cultures and successive people who preceded the Jewish presence - if proven - by a long time."

Unfortunately for Ziad, those civilizations all disappeared, and the oldest remaining people is indeed the Jews. Which is exactly why Palestinians claim to simultaneously be Arabs and Canaanites or Jebusites when the topic is Jerusalem (not Girgashites or Hittites, for some reason.)

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Saeb Erekat calls archaeology fake and says Jewish history is a lie

From Times of Israel:

A senior Palestinian official Monday condemned the participation of US envoys in the unveiling of an archaeological site in East Jerusalem and scoffed at the “fake” account of Jewish history attributed to the subterranean road.

Saeb Erekat said he believed the tunnel was a project being used by Israeli right-wingers to further Israel’s claim on East Jerusalem and advance settlement growth there.

“It has nothing to do with religion, it is fake,” he told journalists at his office in Ramallah in the West Bank.

He cited reports by two Israeli NGOs questioning the archaeological methods used.

One of the organizations, Peace Now, also says cracks emerged in multiple houses in Silwan after the digging began.

Erekat said: “It’s a settlement project. It’s based on a lie that has nothing to do with history."

This is a person regarded as a "moderate." This is a person that was a lead negotiator for, ahem, "peace."

And this is a person who is actually more reasonable than most other Palestinian leaders!

"Questioning archaeological methods" does not mean that the road discovered that leads up to the Temple Mount is not real. It was clearly used by hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims to visit the Second Temple. No archaeologist in the world denies this.

But Saeb Erekat does.

Which means that (yet again) Erekat is proven to be a liar. You literally cannot believe a word he says.

The Western media, unfortunately, doesn't hold him to the same standards that any Western politician would be held to when they are shown to be knowingly lying. On the contrary, they are eager to interview him. The Forward published an op-ed from this liar just this week (claiming that the US supports "Greater Israel" based on the Bahrain workshop that didn't talk about politics or borders at all.)

A number of years ago, Erekat issued a quote referring to Israel's prime minister, with a saying I never heard and couldn't find anywhere else. Perhaps it is an Arabic saying, but it is clearly Saeb Erakat's personal motto:

“There’s a saying that if you don’t stop a man who is lying after 24 hours, the lies turn into facts."

Who can stop Erekat's lies? Only the media and politicians, but they refuse to. He has been proven a liar too many times to count - claiming a "massacre" in Jenin*, claiming that Israel killed nearly 12,000 civilians in Gaza in 2014, claiming his family was in "Palestine" for 9000 years, on and on.

That's how his lies become facts.

______________
*Electronic Intifada published a letter in the Economist in 2002 claiming that Erekat never used the word "massacre" in describing Jenin. Yet the Irish Times quoted him directly:

"How many civilians must be killed to speak of a massacre?" asked Mr Erakat. "The Israeli massacre in Jenin's refugee camp clearly happened and this is a war crime and crimes against humanity also took place".
Mr Erakat had accused Israel during the battle of killing up to 500 people in Jenin, a figure the UN report dismissed, saying 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers died in the fighting.
"The UN should have used the word "massacre" or "war crime", especially because the Jenin's camp is managed by the UN," Erakat said.

He also used that word on CNN.

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Arabs continue to claim that there is no evidence of Jewish history in Jerusalem

One of the more outlandish lies that one sees often in Arab media is the claim that there is no hint of Jewish history in Jerusalem, and the ties between Jews and Jerusalem are all of recent vintage and false.

I've seen many articles, including one today from AlGhad.tv, that say as a fact that Israeli archaeologists have never found a single stone in Jerusalem that testifies to an ancient Jewish city there.

Jewish archaeologists unanimously agree that there is no Jewish impact in Jerusalem, despite the years spent by the Israeli occupation authorities in searching for Jewish monuments in the city, through excavations on the outskirts of the city, to prove their Jewishness....The results of the excavations that took place in Jerusalem since 1964 until today, confirmed the facts that all historical and archaeological sites are of churches, mosques, houses, schools, monasteries...No trace of the reign of David or Solomon or the kings of the children of Israel can be found within the walls of Jerusalem.

This theme has been around for a while. In 2016, in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, a columnist wrote:

All of their news is a crime or lies... I challenge them daily to bring me one Jewish archaeological remnant from Jerusalem, or to show us a rock from the alleged Temple.

The irony is that they say this in context of Jews fabricating history.

Even Yasir Arafat claimed at Camp David that the Jewish Temples were not in Jerusalem, but in Nablus.

Even the Arabs know they are lying. Plenty of Muslim literature before 1967 freely admits the existence of Jewish Temples in Jerusalem.

There is not a single Israeli archaeologist who doubts that the two Jewish Temples were in Jerusalem, even the ones who say that the Kingdom of David was much smaller than the Bible says. From Haaretz in 2015:

Was there once a great Jewish temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount? Yes. Does any scholar genuinely doubt there was? No, say archaeologists who have spent their lives studying Jerusalem. "I feel stupid even having to comment on it," says Dr. Yuval Baruch, a leading Israeli archaeologist who has studied Jerusalem throughout his career. "Demanding proof that the Temples stood on the Mount is like demanding proof that the ancient stone walls surrounding Jerusalem, which stand to this day, were the ancient stone walls surrounding Jerusalem," he adds.

As Prof. Israel Finkelstein, a world-renowned expert on Jerusalem archaeology, spells out in an email to Haaretz, "There is no scholarly school of thought that doubts the existence of the First Temple."
Concrete finds definitively from the Temple exist in abundance, says Bar-Ilan University Prof. Gabriel Barkay, an archaeologist who has spent many years working in Jerusalem, and the area of Temple Mount in particular.

"Two copies of inscriptions prohibiting the entry of nonbelievers to the Temple have been found on Temple Mount, which Josephus wrote about. These inscriptions were on the dividing wall that surrounded the Second Temple, which prevented non-Jews from accessing the interior of the [Temple] courtyard," Barkay says, adding that both were written in ancient Greek. The "warning" stone, which is at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, warns non-Jews of the perils of entering the sacred Temple. There were additional, similar inscriptions in Latin, he says.

Another inscription in stone, "To the trumpeting place," was found in 1968 at the southwest corner of Temple Mount. "It is known that trumpets were blown at the corners of Temple Mount, to declare the advent of Shabbat and other dates," Barkay explains. Josephus, the ancient historian of ephemeral loyalties, explains that it was customary for a Temple priest to "stand and to give notice, by sound of trumpet, in the afternoon of the approach, and on the following evening of the close, of every seventh day." The stone is now at the Israel Museum.

Further concrete evidence attests to Jerusalem’s uniqueness in religious observance. "The ancient city of Jerusalem at the time of the First Temple was clearly a hub of ritual worship," says Baruch, who heads the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Jerusalem district. "The hundreds of mikvehs [ritual purification baths] found around the Temple Mount compound and Jewish artifacts made of stone found there show that until the Temple's destruction, at least, Jerusalem was an 'ir mikdash' [holy city], where what matters is the house of worship. Athens and Olympia were like that, too."

A relatively recent addition to this lie is the idea that the ancient Jews didn't go to Israel, but to Yemen, which is really the land that they conquered, and that their Jerusalem is there.

It doesn't take an expert psychologist to understand that the Arabs feel they must deny Jewish history in order to deny Jewish rights to Israel. Truth is not important; only the narrative is.

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Fatah proud of a mosque that was built to destroy priceless Jewish artifacts

The Fatah Facebook page published this photo:

It says it is a picture of mosque under southeast of the Temple Mount.

This appears to be part of the Marwani Mosque.

It is clear that the tunnel under the Mount was ancient, but the contents were scooped out in the 1990s by bulldozers, eradicating hundreds of tons of priceless archaeological data that showed a Jewish presence on the Mount that pre-dates Islam by over a thousand years.

The mountains of dirt and debris are still being sifted through to save whatever can be after this crime, the biggest crime against archaeology in history.

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Amazing Biblical archaeological finds in City of David

From Times of Israel:

Two minuscule 2,600-year-old inscriptions recently uncovered in the City of David’s Givati Parking Lot excavation are vastly enlarging the understanding of ancient Jerusalem in the late 8th century.

The two inscriptions, in paleo-Hebrew writing, were found separately in a large First Temple structure within the span of a few weeks by long-term team members Ayyala Rodan and Sveta Pnik.

One is a bluish agate stone seal “(belonging) to Ikkar son of Matanyahu” (LeIkkar Ben Matanyahu). The other is a clay seal impression, “(belonging) to Nathan-Melech, Servant of the King” (LeNathan-Melech Eved HaMelech).

This burnt clay impression is the first archaeological evidence of the biblical name Nathan-Melech.

The inscriptions are “not just another discovery,” said archaeologist Dr. Yiftah Shalev of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Rather, they “paint a much larger picture of the era in Jerusalem.”

According to Shalev, while both discoveries are of immense scholarly value as inscriptions, their primary value is their archaeological context.

“What is importance is not just that they were found in Jerusalem, but [that they were found] inside their true archaeological context,” Shalev told The Times of Israel. Many other seals and seal impressions have been sold on the antiquities market without any thought to provenance.

This in situ find, said Shalev, serves to “connect between the artifact and the actual physical era it was found in” — a large, two-story First Temple structure that dig archaeologists have pegged as an administrative center.\

This video shows much more:

The name of Nathan Melech as a high officer of the kingdom is found in in 2 Kings Chapter 23.

First Temple-era finds that confirm Biblical accounts are rare but not unheard of. Still, Arabs will often pretend that there is no archaeological evidence of an ancient Jewish kingdom in Israel, and the Givati parking lot and City of David finds show that they are not only lying, but know they are lying.

(h/t Yoel)

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Are there secret new discoveries under the Western Wall?

Palestinian news site Al Hadath says that a private WhatsApp message from an Israeli archaeologist was forwarded to them showing pictures of courses of stone underneath the Western Wall that had been hidden for 1670 years:

The WhatsApp message says that these finds are not yet public and are directly beneath the Western Wall plaza we know of today.

This seems likely to be an extension of the excavations under Wilson's Arch revealed last year that uncovered what appeared to be a Roman theater.

It appears that the message was sent to a group of archaeologists and an Arab was a member of the group; he forwarded it to the deputy chairman of the virulently antisemitic Islamic Movement in Israel, Sheikh Kamal al Khatib, who posted it on his Facebook page.

Al-Khatib warned that these excavations endanger the Al Aqsa Mosque.

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Archaeology be damned! Arabs continue to deny any Jewish connection to the land

Yesterday a dramatic archaeological find was announced:

Archaeologists have uncovered the oldest known instance of the word "Jerusalem" spelled out in full, on an ancient stone carving that was once part of an ancient pottery workshop, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, announced today (Oct. 9).

On earlier inscriptions, Jerusalem was spelled "Yerushalem" or "Shalem," rather than "Yerushalayim" (pronounced Yeh-roo-sha-La-yeem), as it is spelled in Hebrew today.

The carving — which was written in Aramaic and says "Hananiah son of Dodalos from Jerusalem" — dates to the first century A.D., making it about 2,000 years old, according to the IAA.

The evidence of a Jewish nation in the area is one of the best documented facts there is, with hundreds of artifacts and many mentions in contemporaneous writings.

But since that fact is inconvenient to Palestinians, they simply deny it.

Last week the Palestinian site Amad had an entire article by Bakr Abu Bakr claiming that the Land of Israel was never in what became known as Palestine.

The article says that "there is no connection between the myths and legends of the Torah - written hundreds of years ago - and the names of cities, villages, valleys and mountains in Palestine."

He says that Israeli archaeologists like Israel Finkelstein and Ze'ev Herzog show that there was no Jewish nation. Of course, they make no such claims - they just say that the Biblical accounts of the nation are not accurate, but they do not deny the existence of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel.

Abu Bakr further pushes the absurd theory that all Biblical events occurred in Yemen, not Israel, quoting several Arab "scientists."

Of course, Abu Bakr also claims that today's Jews have nothing to do with the Jews of history and are Khazars. Besides being debunked by history and genetics, this doesn't explain Jews who lived in Arab lands, but no matter.

The Arab denial of basic history and science is not a small thing. They know that they are not the indigenous people of the land, and Jews are the only people in existence today who can make that claim. The fundamental basis of the people claiming Arabs are indigenous - and building their arguments by comparing them to First Peoples worldwide - is completely opposite the truth, and Zionism is not only not colonialist but is a movement for the indigenous people to reclaim their lands.

This is the message that must be obscured by Arabs and their leftist Western friends at all costs.

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Haaretz claims calling Israel the Jewish homeland is a myth

One of the more idiotic articles in an ever more crowded field of such from Haaretz comes from Ofri Ilany, who claims that his problem with the Nation State law is that it is ahistorical - that Israel was never the homeland of the Jews.

The attempt to determine historical truth by means of laws is ridiculous. But what makes it impertinent as well is that this claim is blatantly incorrect – even according to the Bible. As the scholars of Jewish history Jonathan and Daniel Boyarin note in their article “Israel Has No Motherland”: “The biblical story is not one of birth from the land, but of those who always came to the land from elsewhere.”

According to the Bible, the Promised Land was not the homeland of Abraham (who came from Ur of the Chaldees) or of the Israelites (who came from Egypt). It is impossible both to rely on the divine promise to “inherit” the land, and to talk about it as a “homeland.” The contradiction here is clear. The history we are familiar with shows, in addition, that the actual Jewish people, in the form we know it today, was born in the Diaspora and not in the Land of Israel.

Of course, this means that no one on Earth, except perhaps some Africans, have a homeland, since all of humanity migrated from Africa.

And if Israel isn't the homeland for Jews, it sure as hell isn't the homeland for Palestinians!

This is a typical pattern of Israel haters - they will create a set of rules for Israel in order to damn it, and ignore that applying those rules to everyone else would result in chaos.

But wait, there's more:

It’s important to understand that the scientific study of the history of the Levant in the Iron Age treats the term “ancient Israel” with considerable skepticism. Since the 1990s, many scholars have maintained that it would be best to abandon that term altogether, as it refers to an entity that is meaningless in historical terms. For example, the influential biblical scholar Niels Peter Lemche noted in a 2008 article that the kingdom of David and Solomon “nowadays may be considered a fairy kingdom rather than a historical fact.”...

That view is not accepted by all scholars, but in the view of the minimalist school of thought, to which Lemche and Thompson belong, the only reason that “ancient Israel” is still being referenced scientifically is that the evangelical community in the United States and elsewhere is interested in hearing this story.

It turns out, then, that the claim that “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people” is at best dubious.

Let's cherry pick the opinion of a minority of scholars, ignore anything that contradicts it, and call that truth.

The massive mines from the time of the Biblical Kings that point to a powerful monarchy? The Tel Dan Inscription that mentions David? Let's not talk about them. It doesn't fit the narrative, so therefore it is best left ignored. That's Haaretz-quality research.

Of course, it doesn’t follow from this that the Jews have no historical association with the country, or that the Palestinians have exclusive rights to it. But it’s worth recalling that throughout the history of this land, a broad range of peoples and groups have lived in it: Christians, Samaritans, Greeks, Canaanites and others. Some of them thrived here for periods that are longer than the whole history of Jewish sovereignty. In the Gaza Strip, for example, a Zeus-Dagon cult existed for 300 years, and in Hebron there was a temple devoted to the androgynous embodiment of Hermes.

Maybe in the near future the pagans and the genderqueers will also demand rights to worship in the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

Because the claims of a new group of people are exactly as important as the claims of a people who have existed for thousands of years.

Which is, in fact, the Palestinian argument in a nutshell.

(h/t Yoel)

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Jerusalem's Mufti charges Israel with wanting to destroy Islamic palaces that Israel discovered and protected to begin with

Jerusalem is, as far as I can tell, the only city in history with a "Grand Mufti."

The current person to hold that political position is Sheikh Muhammad Hussein. He was appointed to that position by Mahmoud Abbas and he often makes statements that go completely against the PA's official positions presented to the West, like his fatwa that all of Israel should "liberated."

His incitement continues, as Hussein is now claiming that Israel's archaeological digs in the vicinity of the Temple Mount are really an attempt to destroy and "Judaize" the Umayyad palaces there.

Yet those Umayyad palaces were discovered by Israeli archaeologists in the 1970s. They have been protected by Israel. The only reason the Mufti even knows those palaces ever existed was because Israel values all archaeology, including that which preserves Muslim heritage.

I once wrote about other Umayyad structures, barely visited by tourists, which are still preserved by Israel a short distance from the Temple Mount. If Israel wanted to destroy Islamic heritage in Jerusalem it could have covered those structures up and built something on top of it, an area that is prime real estate by any definition.

The Mufti called on the Arab and Islamic world, all its countries and governments and UNESCO for urgent action and immediate pressure on Israel to "stop the implementation of these schemes, which are fueling tension in the region as a whole."

The Mufti also warned that any damage from an earthquake would be the result of Israeli excavations, setting the stage just in case there is an earthquake. In the past, Palestinian Muslim officials have charged Israel with working to create artificial earthquakes to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque.

He is the one fueling tension. Israel cares more about Islamic heritage than he does. His only wish is to destroy Israel.

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1000+ Musllims take advantage of last day of Ramadan to destroy archaeological treasures on Temple Mount (video)

From the Temple Mount Sifting Project:

A very serious incident occurred in the last few days on the Temple Mount. In the eastern part of the Temple Mount there are mounds of earth from various illegal excavations carried out by the Waqf on the Temple Mount in the early 2000s. An attempt to remove the mounds from the Temple Mount was made in 2004, in coordination with the police and IAA, was forestalled by a petition to the High Court of Justice filed by Committee for the Prevention of Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount. The court ruled that the earth can only be removed under archaeological supervision and with coordination with the Committee.

It should also be noted that according to an internal report written by the Israel Antiquities Authority in 2016, the excavation permit, given to us to which we sift the earth that was removed from the Temple Mount at the end of 1999 and at the beginning of 2004, also applies to these mounds.

For years, the Israel Police has had some success in preventing work in these piles of dirt. In 2013 there was an attempt to evacuate them by truck and tractor on the false grounds that only park waste was removed, but thanks to the media, we were able to stop the works.

Now, under the auspices of the last days of the month of Ramadan, when the Temple Mount is closed to none-Muslim visitors and the police presence is limited, over than a thousand people carried out excavation work, stone clearance and the creation of terraces in these piles of earth!

This is a clear violation of the High Court’s order and shows – this constitutes decade’s worth of regression in the level of enforcement of the antiquities law on the Temple Mount.

The changes in the earth mounds will greatly disrupt the ability to separate the sources of the debris during their eventual evacuation. During the course of such a manual excavation, many archeological artifacts are routinely discovered, but it is highly doubtful that any such items will reach the hands of archaeologists.

This is a huge archaeological crime. But don't expect, say, UNESCO to say a word. Because their job isn't to protect ancient relics but to protect Arabs destroying ancient relics.

(h/t Yoel)

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Palestinians really get upset when archaeology shows Jews controlled Jerusalem (update)

Haaretz reports:

A fantastically preserved seal impression made by the biblical Governor of Jerusalem during the First Temple era has been found by archaeologists where it fell 2,700 years ago.

Many dozens of seal impressions and seals themselves have been found in ancient Jerusalem, including in this area by the Temple Mount. Also, several seal impressions of the Jerusalem governor ("sar ha'ir"), who was the highest-ranking officer in the city, have been making the rounds in the black market, Dr. Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah told Haaretz.

But this lump of baked clay, all of 1.3 by 1.5 centimeters in size and just over two millimeters thick, is unique in being of unquestionable provenance.

"Ours is special because this was the first time the seal of the Governor of the City of Jerusalem itself was found in the right place," Weksler-Bdolah says.

The upper part of the governor's seal impression shows two standing figures facing each other, though their potential identities are obscure, as their heads are depicted as dots, with no special features. The two are garbed in a striped, knee-length garment, say Ornan and Sass.

The lower part has bears the inscription in ancient Hebrew script "sari'r" which the archaeologists are confident is ancient Hebrew for "sar ha'ir" or "governor of the city." Typical of the time, there is no space between the words.

The Governor of Jerusalem is mentioned twice in Hebrew Scripture, once in 2 Kings 23:7.

The Palestinian Arab Ma'an News Agency, which is touted as independent and objective, reports the story this way in Arabic:

Continuing the attempts of the Israeli occupation to write an imaginary history of its control over the city of Jerusalem, it continues to talk about the artificial history of the temple and what it calls "its ancient history" in the city.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman for the Arab media, Ophir Gendelman, published photographs of relics that the Israeli Antiquities Authority allegedly found in excavations near the Al-Buraq Wall. The occupation claims that they confirm their "ancient history" in the city, and that the seals and artifacts date back to the period of the "First Temple" 2,700 years ago and to one of the "rulers of Jerusalem" mentioned in the Torah.

The article proves again that Palestinian media isn't objective. It is propaganda.

The idea that Jews controlled Jerusalem, which Muslims freely admitted until recently, is now forbidden to be said. Because politics and hate of Israel is more important than facts or history.

Whether Ma'an writes this way out of fear of repercussions if they reported the story accurately, or whether it simply regards itself as a propaganda arm for Palestinian anti-Israel narrative, is not important. What is important is that the world needs to understand that even "objective" Palestinian media is anything but, that lying comes easily to them, and that they will not report anything that violates Palestinian political correctness. History and facts be damned.

If you want to laugh, read how Ma'an describes itself:

Ma'an News Agency takes the utmost neutrality in its news editorial policy, aimed at facilitating access to information and promoting freedom of opinion and pluralism in Palestine.

UPDATE: To give an idea of how much the official rules of propaganda must be adhered to - Palestinian Christians know that Jerusalem was a Jewish city and that the Temple was there, it is in their scriptures. Yet not once have I ever seen a Palestinian Christian denounce official Palestinian Temple-denial.

Regular Palestinians know what they are allowed to say to the media and to Westerners.

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Palestinians destroying ancient Herodian and Hashmonean antiquities - literally bulldozing Jewish history

We've discussed the The Temple Mount Sifting Project before:

The Temple Mount Sifting Project (formerly known as the Temple Mount Salvage Operation) is an Israeli archaeological project begun in 2005 dedicated to recovering archaeological artifacts from 400 truckloads of topsoil removed from the Temple Mount by the Waqf during the construction of the underground el-Marwani Mosque from 1996 to 1999.[1] The project is under the academic auspices of Bar Ilan University and until 2017 was funded by the Ir David Foundation and Israel Exploration Society.

The destruction of so many tons of property from the Temple Mount was the biggest archaeological crime in history.

The project webpage is now warning of other large-scale destruction of Jewish history by Palestinians, ISIS-style.

In full view of people passing on the highway 90, Palestinians are using bulldozers and other heavy equipment to destroy Second Temple-era Jewish settlements in order to build a new village.

This is all happening in Area B, under Palestinian administrative control.

Moreover, it looks like Palestinian antiquities thieves are working in the area at night to steal whatever ancient artifacts they can find to sell on the market.

The article notes that similar destruction has recently begun in the area of the Hasmonean palaces in Jericho.

These areas are under Israeli military control, but complaints have gone unheeded. At a time that Jerusalem's Jewish history is in the news, the Israeli government is allowing Jewish history in Judea and Samaria to be wantonly destroyed.

In Israel, any construction project must be checked out - and stopped or modified, if necessary - by archaeologists to see if anything of historic value would be destroyed. Muslim artifacts are protected as well as Jewish ones.

The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, wants to destroy any vestiges of Jewish history from areas under its control.

This is another crime being done in broad daylight.

(h/t Yoel)

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Did early Muslims respect Jewish symbols - or co-opt them?

Muslim coin with seven branched menorah

From Times of Israel:

Jerusalem’s Muslim identity was forged alongside the dawn of Islam. However, according to a pair of Israeli archaeologists, that identity was originally one of coexistence and tolerance. They say they have the 1,300-year-old archaeological evidence to prove it, and now they want to share it with the Muslim world.

Jerusalem-based doctoral students in archaeology Assaf Avraham, 38, and Peretz Reuven, 48, launched a crowdfunding campaign Wednesday to gather funds to continue their work in exposing a lesser-known period of Jerusalem history which, they argue, saw Jews and Muslims conducting “an inter-religious dialogue.”

Their archaeological evidence includes the use of Jewish symbols during Muslim rule. Avraham said in conversation with The Times of Israel on Wednesday that this and other findings illustrate an era of Jerusalem history in which the Muslim conquerors felt themselves to be the continuation of the People of Israel.

“At the beginning of the Muslim rule, not only didn’t they object to the Jews, but they saw themselves as the continuation of the Jewish people.” They adopted the Jewish narrative and symbols for their own, said Avraham. The menorah was a Jewish symbol; its use is testimony that Muslims didn’t have a problem with the Jews, he said.

As evidence, the researchers offer 1,300-year-old coins and other vessels from the Umayyad period (from 638 CE) which bear the seven-stemmed menorah. Additionally, the archaeologists point to an inscription mentioning the Temple Mount which the pair dramatically deciphered and unveiled last year and which links the Dome of the Rock with the Temple Mount.

The inscription, found in a working mosque in the village of Nuba, was etched in 1,000-year-old Kufic script onto a limestone block which points to Mecca and reads: “In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate, this territory, Nuba, and all its boundaries and its entire area, is an endowment to the Rock of Bayt al-Maqdis and the al-Aqsa Mosque, as it was dedicated by the Commander of the Faithful, Umar ibn al-Khattab for the glory of Allah.” The tie to the Temple Mount, said Avraham, shows the Muslim rulers wanted to rebuild King Solomon’s Temple, not supersede it.

This is wishful thinking, not science.

We've looked at the Muslim use of the menorah before. It is true that they started depicting a seven-branch menorah in their coins, but soon they changed it to a five-branch menorah with a base of two legs instead of three as virtually all menorahs were depicted on Jewish coins.

Some scholars say that the five branches as meant to represent the give pillars of Islam, and one intriguing theory says that these later coins - which were all minted in Jerusalem - were meant to be a visual pun, where turning them one way looks like a menorah but turning them the other way looks like the Dome of the Rock, complete with the crescent on top formed by the anomalous two-leg base! And on at least some coins the text was written as if the Dome picture is meant to be primary.

It is true that Islam originally tried to attract Jews by emphasizing its Jewish roots. But, as with Christianity, this was not evidence of co-existence - it was evidence that Judaism was being superceded by Islam, and anyone who did not see the light was clearly a problem.

The researchers pushing this "co-existence" meme are seeking crowdfunding for their efforts to paint early Islam as a tolerant religion based on biased reading of archaeology. True research doesn't decide what the results would be ahead of time.

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Egyptian minister strongly implies that no Jewish archaeologists are approved to do research there

Recently, Egyptian historian Bassam al-Shamma claimed that 70% of the archaeological missions in Egypt are Jewish researchers who "seek to facilitate the smuggling and Judaization of the Egyptian antiquities and to transfer false information about ancient Egypt in their books and research papers published abroad."

Yes, the Egyptians are obsessed with the idea that Jews are stealing their history.

Naturally, the Antiquities Ministry needed to address these concerns. So it responded to the antisemitic claims by saying that it is far too antisemitic to allow such a thing to happen.

Dr. Abd Al-Rahim Rihan, the general manager of archaeological research and study and scientific publications in the Antiquities Ministry, confirmed that there is no connection between the statements of the (Antiquities) Minister regarding the finding of Pharaonic antiquities in Israel and what was said by the historian Bassam Al-Shama’a in his interview with “Al-Youm Al-Sabi’”, namely that 70% of the scholars of the expeditions that are excavating for antiquities in Egypt are Jewish. (Dr. Rihan) described these statements as “unfounded claims”.

In exclusive statements to “Al-Youm Al-Sabi’”, Rihan stressed that there isn’t a single Jewish antiquities scholar in Egypt, and that the (Antiquities) Ministry properly supervises the examination of the background and education and knowledge of every single person who comes in the framework of foreign expeditions to excavate for antiquities in Egypt, and that there are additional security approvals and conditions to the supervision of the (Antiquities) Ministry, and that it is impossible for a scholar to get approval to participate in an excavation expedition without getting those security approvals.

Rihan is reassuring worried Jew-hating Egyptians that his department's extensive background checks ensure that none of the Western archaeology scholars that are allowed into Egypt have Jewish blood.

It really isn't hard to find official Arab antisemitism. But Western media try really, really hard not to notice it.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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First Temple-era seals with Biblical names in Hebrew discovered in Jerusalem (updates)

I often see Arabs claim in Arabic media that there is no evidence of Jewish history in Jerusalem.

The charge is absurd because there have been hundreds of archaeological finds that prove otherwise, but mere facts aren't important to these people.

Here are the latest stunning finds from excavations at the City of David. (This is a press release from the City of David and Israel Antiquities Authority.)

BUREAUCRACY AND CLERKS FROM THE PAST:

A collection of seals (bullae) from the late First Temple period, discovered in the City of David excavations, shed light on the bureaucracy and officials of ancient Jerusalem

A collection of seals, some of which bear ancient Hebrew inscriptions, as well as additional new findings, will be displayed to the public at the annual City of David archaeology conference taking place this week.

Who was Achiav ben Menachem? A collection of dozens of sealings, mentioning the names of officials dated to the days of the Judean kingdom prior to the Babylonian destruction, was unearthed during excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the City of David National Park in the area of the walls of Jerusalem, funded by the ELAD (El Ir David) organization.

The sealings (bullae- from which the Hebrew word for stamp, “bul”, is derived) are small pieces of clay which in ancient times served as seals for letters. A letter which arrived with its seal broken was a sign that the letter had been opened before reaching its destination. Although letters did not survive the horrible fire which consumed Jerusalem at its destruction, the seals, which were made of the abovementioned material that is similar to pottery, were actually well preserved thanks to the fire, and attest to the existence of the letters and their senders.

According to Ortal Chalaf and Dr. Joe Uziel, directors of the excavation for the Israel Antiquities Authority, “In the numerous excavations at the City of David, dozens of seals were unearthed, bearing witness to the developed administration of the city in the First Temple period. The earliest seals bear mostly a series of pictures; it appears that instead of writing the names of the clerks, symbols were used to show who the signatory was, or what he was sealing. In later stages of the period – from the time of King Hezekiah (around 700 BCE) and up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE - the seals bear the names of clerks in early Hebrew script. Through these findings, we learn not only about the developed administrative systems in the city, but also about the residents and those who served in the civil service.”

Some of the seals bear biblical names, several of which are still used today, such as Pinchas. One particularly interesting seal mentions a man by the name of “Achiav ben Menachem.” These two names are known in the context of the Kingdom of Israel; Menachem was a king of Israel, while Achiav does not appear in the Bible, but his name resembles that of Achav (Ahab) the infamous king of Israel from the tales of the prophet Elijah. Though the spelling of the name differs somewhat, it appears to be the same name. The version of the name which appears on the seal discovered – Achav [sic, should be "Achiav" - Yoel] – appears as well in the Book of Jeremiah in the Septuagint, as well as in Flavius Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 15: 7-8).

Chalaf and Uziel add that the appearance of the name Achiav is interesting for two main reasons. First - because it serves as further testimony to the names which are familiar to us from the kingdom of Israel in the Bible, and which appear in Judah during the period following the destruction of the kingdom of Israel. “These names are part of the evidence that after the exile of the Tribes of Israel, refugees arrived in Jerusalem from the northern kingdom, and found their way into senior positions in Jerusalem’s administration

(Yoel adds:

But as biblical scholar Gershon Galil points out

The name Menachem isn't just typical of the kingdom of Israel - it also appears on two ostraca from Horvat Uza in Judea and also on an ostracon from the south-west part of the Judean mountains.

So I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that Achiav ben Menachem is necessarily an Israelite and not a Judean.)

Furthermore, the sealings is the fact that the two names which appear on the seal- Achiav and Menachem- were names of kings of Israel. Though Achav (Ahab) is portrayed as a negative figure in the Bible, the name continues to be in use- though in a differently spelled version- both in Judea in the latter days of the First Temple, as reflected in Jeremiah and on the seal, and also after the destruction- in the Babylonian exile and up until the Second Temple period, as seen in the writings of Flavius Josephus.

The various stamps, along with other archaeological findings discovered in the recent excavations, will be exhibited to the public for the first time at the 18^th City of David research conference, the annual archaeological conference held by the Megalim Institute, on September 7^th at the City of David National Park.

(h/t Ze'ev Orenstein, who gave me a tour of Ir David and I feel bad for never editing and posting the video.)

UPDATE:

(h/t Yoel)

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Are Biblical scholars that ignorant? Or is it only Haaretz?

From Haaretz:

Can We Eat Bacon Now? Leviticus Was Written for Priests, Not You, Say Scholars

The Book of Leviticus, the third book in the Old Testament, is considered something of an anomaly by some scholars.

The rest of the Old Testament books are concerned with the history of the Jewish people and their belief. But Leviticus concerns itself with ritual, legal, and moral practices. It lays down the laws by which the Jewish people are supposed to live.

But, was it truly meant for the laity? Should all Jews have to adhere to its tenets, as is commonly assumed? Some Biblical scholars argue that the Book of Leviticus was not originally meant to apply to the general public: its laws were meant for the priests of the Temple.

Dr. Robert Gnuse, professor in the Religious Studies Department at Loyola University, says that historically, the rules on food and clothing found in the Book of Leviticus were meant exclusively for priests, just like the laws in the Hindu Code of Manu Smriti for Brahmin priests.

That is, until the period of the Babylonian captivity. Someone from the priestly class in Babylon found a way to encourage the Jewish people living in exile to take on these laws in order to keep them together as a community, Gnuse theorizes. This is also the view Mary Douglas took in her earlier works.

First of all, the text of Leviticus makes it clear which rules are for all Israelites and which only for priests.

Some sections start with variants of And the LORD called unto Moses, and spoke unto him out of the tent of meeting, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them:

Others start with And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: Command Aaron and his sons, saying:

It is pretty clear which sections were meant for priests and which were meant for everyone.

Beyond that, the laws of Kosher are also in Deuteronomy, where the entire book was clearly meant for the entire nation. (A little of the kosher laws are in Exodus, too, and at least one mentioned in Genesis.)

So how much is this are idiotic Biblical scholars and how much Haaretz twisting their words for the story?

I want to stress that I have respect for some non-Jewish Biblical scholars. Like George Bush. No, not that one, but a relative who wrote books about the Bible in the 19th century. Here is the first page of his commentary on Leviticus 11, the chapter that speaks about kosher laws:

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Israeli archaeology blamed for potholes

Every winter, potholes and cracks appear around Israel because of the rains.

And every winter, the Arabs who live in Silwan blame their "landslides" on Israelis building multiple tunnels under their land.

Even if the archaeological sites are hundreds of meters away.

This year the accusation was reported as fact by Al Jazeera.

Here's the only photo I could find of supposed damage from this year.

The head of the "Islamic - Christian Commission in support of Al Quds" warned that the excavations can cause the Al Aqsa Mosque to collapse.

The head of the Islamic Endowments ministry of the PA called on UNESCO to stop any Israeli actions that could possibly upset Muslims, because UNESCO has declared the Temple Mount and Western Wall to be exclusively Muslim.

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Muslim "experts" claim all finds from the Temple Mount Sifting Project are Islamic

Palestinian site Safa has an article that describes the Temple Mount Sifting Project, where tons of debris that was excavated from the Temple Mount by the Waqf in the late 1990s is being searched to find archaeological artifacts.

Findings so far have included coins, jewelry and tiles from the Second Temple period - and from the Second Temple itself.

But Muslim "experts" are now saying - without actually inspecting the artifacts - that every single thing that was found was from the Umayyad or Ottoman periods.

Because, of course, Jewish history is a myth. And the entire purpose of the Temple Mount Sifting Project is, according to this "expert," to falsify a fake history of a Jewish Temple and Jewish presence in the area.

The psychological projection is classic. Not only is it the Arabs who are trying to erase Jewish history, but the Temple Mount Sifting Project also has experts to identify Islamic artifacts!

Gilded glass mosaic tesserae from the
Early Islamic Period removed from the
Dome of the Rock exterior walls
during later renovations.

Originally from Haifa, Peretz Reuven is our expert in the Islamic period pottery and artifacts. He originally got interested in the Islamic period while at Hebrew University. He began with Arabic and Islamic history, added in a bit of archaeology, and the rest is history. He has studied under some of the most widely published scholars, including Myriam Rosen-Ayalon, Rachel Milstein, and Hava Lazarus-Yafe. Now he works on many excavations and research projects across Jerusalem and Israel.

Peretz was working on a project with Dr. Eilat Mazar documenting all the walls of the Temple Mount, and researching and publishing the large ophel medallion when he met our director, Zachi Dvira. Zachi invited him to join our project, and now Peretz is researching all of the Early Islamic period pottery found by the Sifting Project. He is also planning to use his experience in researching architectural elements from the Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic periods to research the architectural elements found in our sifting.

The Early Islamic period assemblage from the Sifting Project is very rich in materials. We have a lot of ceramic vessels, many of which are glazed and elaborated. Though most of them are locally made, some were imported from Persia, Egypt, or parts of Europe.

The Jews are careful, as always, to preserve Muslim artifacts they find. Muslims are careful, as always, to destroy any vestiges of Jewish history that they find.

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It's not the first time that Palestinians have claimed the Dead Sea Scrolls

From JPost:

The Palestinian Authority is preparing to lay a claim to the Dead Sea Scrolls at the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Israel Radio reported on Saturday night.

The scrolls – a large cache of mostly Hebrew writings from the Second Temple period and its immediate aftermath – were discovered in Qumran between 1947 and 1956. They include many biblical texts and are believed to have been penned by members of a Jewish sect known as the Essenes.

Qumran, which is near the Dead Sea, was under British, and later Jordanian, rule at the time of the discoveries.

It is now located in Area C of the West Bank, which is under Israeli civil and military control.

The PA considers Area C to be part of its future state.

Qumran is on the list of preservation areas which the PA wants to see registered under the “state of Palestine” on the World Heritage List.

This isn't the first time that they have made this claim. In 2009, when an exhibit of some of the scrolls was to be opened in Canada, they tried to shut it down:

Last April, the Palestinian Authority appealed to Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, to cancel the show, citing international conventions that make it illegal for a government agency to take archaeological artifacts from a territory that its country occupies.
The P.A. and Muslim activists claimed that the scrolls were “stolen” from Palestinian territory and illegally obtained when Israel annexed East Jerusalem — where the scrolls were stored — in 1967. “The exhibition would entail exhibiting or displaying artifacts removed from the Palestinian territories” by Israel, wrote Hamdan Taha, head of the archaeological department in the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities, in a widely publicized letter, calling the show a violation of international law.
Echoing those sentiments on the day of the press preview, Canadian Arab Federation executive director Mohamed Boudjenane called the scrolls “stolen property… seized from an occupied territory,” and repeated the call to close the show on a national newscast.

Interestingly - Jordan also claims ownership:

The Jordanian government has asked Canada not to release the Dead Sea Scrolls that have been on exhibit in Toronto for six months, claiming their ownership is "disputed."
Jordan alleges that Israel took illegal possession of the 2,000-year-old Isaiah scrolls from the Rockefeller Museum in east Jerusalem during the Six Day War.
The Jordanian government claims that the scrolls fall under the auspices of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which allows "cultural property" from "any occupied territory" to be seized by countries that signed the ruling.

Does anyone think for a minute that the Arabs care about the Dead Sea Scrolls as a hugely important historic artifact?

The desire is to erase Jewish history from the region, not to protect any "Palestinian" heritage of the area.

And as was evident from the beginning, the entire purpose of "Palestine" joining UNESCO was that same desire to erase Jewish history.

This is the real politicization of archaeology - and it is not being addressed.

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