Finders of a Real Lost Ark - The BAS Library
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Home > Magazines > BAR > November/December 1981

Finders of a Real Lost Ark

American archaeologists find remains of ancient synagogue ark in Galilee

By Eric M. Meyers, Carol Meyers

When we returned to Nabratein in upper Galilee for our second excavation season in June 1981, we were unaware of a movie called “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” This may be difficult to believe, but it is true. Day by day we excavated in the clear Galilee sun, quietly, slowly, carefully, patiently—oblivious to the fact that America was being swept up in a lost ark craze as millions flocked to the summer’s most successful movie. Had we seen the movie, we would hardly have made a connection between our own search for synagogue remains and the golden Ark of […]

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Endnotes

1.

The 1981 excavations were sponsored by Duke University and the American Schools of Oriental Research; in 1980 the National Geographic Society and Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary were additional sponsors. Eric Meyers served as Director, with Carol Meyers and James Strange as Associate Directors and Lawrence Belkin as Architect.
The 1980 season as a whole is presented in Meyers, Strange, and Meyers, “Preliminary Report on the 1980 Excavations at en-Nabratein, Israel,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR) forthcoming; the 1981 dig will likewise be presented in a forthcoming BASOR article. The stone ark fragment is discussed in detail in Meyers, Strange, Meyers, “The Ark of Nabratein: A First Glance,” (Biblical Archeologist 44 September 1981).

2.

See the twin shrines of Sardis in Asia Minor and the niche of Dura Europas in Syria in Hershel Shanks, Judaism in Stone (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 172, 89, 92. At neither of these sites, however, is the identification certain.

3.

Full publication and discussion of this piece will appear in the author’s article “The Ark in Art: A Ceramic Rendering of the Torah Shrine from Nabratein,” Eretz Israel forthcoming (Orlinsky volume).

4.

See Meyers, Strange, Meyers, “Preliminary Report on the 1977 and 1978 Seasons at Gush Halav (el-Jish),” BASOR 233 (1979):45.

5.

Cf. the Beth Ha Midrash or study house at Khirbet Shema’: Meyers, Strange, and Kraabel, Ancient Synagogue Excavations at Khirbet Shema’ (Durham: Duke University Press, 1976) pp. 85ff. and figs. 314, 315.

6.

“A Dated Lintel-Inscription from the Ancient Synagogue of Nabratein,” Louis Rabinowitz Fund for the Exploration of Ancient Synagogues Bulletin III, pp. 49–56 and Pl. XIII.