Strata

018

Imperial Slammer Identified

Caesarea Complex May Have Been Paul’s Prison

Archaeologists in the seaside town of Caesarea have unearthed a building they suspect is the jail in which Saint Paul was imprisoned for two years almost 2,000 years ago.

The site, called the praetorium, encompasses an expansive palace, administrative offices, a bathhouse and sprawling courtyards. It lies between the Roman amphitheater and hippodrome and was originally part of a magnificent palace built by King Herod along the water’s edge.^a

The 161,000-square-foot complex functioned as the seat of Roman government in Judea from the first century A.D. until the middle of the third century, when Caesarea was the capital of Judea.

Yosef Porath, the Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist who headed the team that made the discovery, told of a mosaic floor inscription that led him to believe the room was connected with security operations. The inscription reads, “SPES BONA ADIV(T)ORIB(VS) OFFICI CVSTODIAR(VM),” or “Good luck to the assistants of the office of the guards.”

Porath said that the office wing of the praetorium had probably been the location of the audience hall in which Paul’s hearing before the Roman governor took place.

“This is an important discovery because there are very few praetoria in the Roman Empire,” said Porath. “Its importance is magnified for Christians because of the connection to Saint Paul.”

Paul, one of the first Christian missionaries to non-Jews, was jailed in Herod’s praetorium from 58 to 60 A.D. for preaching “transgressions of the law.” The Jews in Jerusalem called for Paul to be tried for preaching against Mosaic law and for bringing gentiles into the Temple.

But Paul, who held Roman citizenship, demanded a trial before a Roman court. “I stand at Caesar’s judgment seat where I ought to be judged. To the Jews I have done no wrong as you very well know,” said Paul in Acts 25:10. “For if I be an offender, or have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die. But if there be none of these things whereof these accuse me, no man may deliver me unto them,” he said.

Paul was indeed sent to Rome for trial but was killed there under the anti-Christian rule of Emperor Nero.

Porath said he believed the actual hearing room, as yet undiscovered, lay in the one-third of the praetorium still to be excavated.

The complex was first excavated in 1976 by a group of archaeologists from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1990, the University of Pennsylvania joined in, and from 1993 on, the IAA has participated in what has become a “communal excavation,” Porath said.

The Only Way to Travel

Pass Provides Entry to Israel’s Parks

It’s the best deal in Israel: For about $18, visitors can purchase the Green Card, a two-week pass that provides entry to all 43 of the country’s national parks. The sites include Israel’s major archaeological, historical and religious places of interest. For about $25, the cable car at Masada is included as well. The pass can be purchased at major national parks or directly from the Israel National Parks Authority, Twin Towers 2, 35 Jabotinsky St., Ramat Gan 52511, Israel; 011–972-3–576-6888 (telephone), 011–972-3–613-6224 (fax).

019

Did Mary Rest Here?

“Seat” Found in Memorial Church

At first glance the large slab of limestone protruding from a verdant olive grove doesn’t catch the eye.

But archaeologists in Israel announced in November that the unassuming rock marks the spot where tradition says the Virgin Mary rested on her way to give birth to Jesus. Church lore holds that Mary stopped to rest three miles from Jerusalem on her journey to Bethlehem.

The rock juts out of the middle of the ruins of a fifth-century octagonal church that archaeologists say was built to encircle it.

The rock—which was first discovered four years ago but has remained mostly underground due to lack of funding for excavation—was unearthed in the center of the Byzantine church’s well-preserved mosaic floor. Historical sources record that Iquilia, a rich widow, built the church around the rock in the fifth century.

“It is one of the earliest, largest and major churches dedicated to Mary, mother of Jesus,” said Rina Avner, who directed the excavation for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). “Its influence can also be seen in the octagonal Dome of the Rock mosque on the Temple Mount,” she said.

Archaeologists came upon the stone edges of the church and the tip of the rock four years ago, when the highway connecting Jerusalem to Bethlehem was widened. A budget crunch and the refusal of the Greek Orthodox Church to approve digging put a halt to further excavation. The church owns the land and feared relinquishing control.

The moratorium on digging at the site ended in October, when archaeologists discovered that contractors had laid an unauthorized water pipe for construction workers at the controversial Jewish settlement of Har Homa, in southern Jerusalem.

Concerned about possible damage to the ruins, they made the Housing Ministry, which is sponsoring the Har Homa development, fund a three-week rescue excavation.

Archaeologists found marble slabs; largely intact mosaic floors in shades of pink, blue, white and, more unusual, yellows and greens; and a tiled palm tree only a few feet from the rock.

On the fall day when the discovery was announced publicly, the Greek Orthodox patriarch, Diodoros I, blessed the holy site and praised the IAA’s work. “It is an honor to uncover and show to the world these treasures,” he said. He pledged thousands of dollars to refurbish the Byzantine ruins and turn the area into a popular tourist attraction.

Israeli authorities said they plan to act immediately to preserve the finds and return the area to its early status as a pilgrimage site. They hope to restore the church by the year 2000 in anticipation of heavy Christian tourism to mark the turn of the millennium.

Book Prize to Be Awarded in May

Nominations Now Being Accepted

Authors and publishers are urged to submit their works for consideration for the Irene Levi-Sala Prize for the best book on the archaeology of ancient Israel. The winner will be named in May and will receive $10,000.

The prize committee will consider books that deal primarily with “the traditional period of ‘Biblical Archaeology’ from the Early Bronze Age to the Classical period and preferably against the wider context of Near Eastern history and archaeology.” The nominations can be popular nonfiction books that combine scientific accuracy with accessibility, a scientific publication such as a final site report or a monograph, or an excavation report written by a team of specialists. The books should be in English or another international language and must have been published within the three years preceding the award ceremony.

Five copies of the nominated book should be sent no later than February 28th to Professor Eliezer D. Oren, Irene Levi-Sala Book Prize Committee, Archaeology Division, Ben-Gurion University, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.

022

Goddess Cleared of Cannibalism

But Anat Was One Tough Cookie

Anat, a goddess of ancient Ugarit, was a tough warrior, but—despite the impression left by conventional scholarship—she was never a cannibal. Her reputation has been given a boost thanks to new photographs of a 3,400-year-old clay tablet found along modern Syria’s coast in 1929 and first translated in 1960. The standard reading of one passage in the tablet had been, “Anat ate his flesh without a knife, she drank his blood without a cup.”

Anat’s rescuer is Ted Lewis, of the University of Georgia. Studying photographs made by the West Semitic Research Project, Lewis determined that the last letter of the first word of the passage is not actually a T. “I made the goddess disappear,” Lewis told the Long Island, N.Y., newspaper Newsday. “Without the final letter, there is no mention of Anat in that text.” What that first word really means remains a mystery. It may mean “evil eye,” and the passage may be an incantation to ward off nasty spells, Lewis suggested.

Anat is known from other texts as the daughter of the Canaanite high god El and as the sister, or even the wife, of Baal. In the Hebrew Bible, El is one name for God, and Baal is frequently denounced as a false god.

Though she may not have munched on human flesh, Anat was no doubt a fearsome character. “I still wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley,” Bruce Zuckerman, of the West Semitic Project, told Newsday. Zuckerman is himself a specialist in Near Eastern texts (he is a professor at the University of Southern California) and an expert photographer. Zuckerman has made new photos of many Dead Sea Scrolls in recent years, but he believes the tablets from Ugarit are far more significant. “Do the Dead Sea Scrolls change our view of the Bible? They do not,” he said. “The Dead Sea Scrolls tell us what happened after the Bible was written. The Ugaritic texts give us the cultural context in which the Bible was written.”

Sites of the Month

The Latest in Old News

Readers who enjoy cruising the World Wide Web will want to visit a site called Commentarium, subtitled The Ancient World in the Popular—and Not-So-Popular—Press. The address is (or, as we say in Web lingo, point your browser to) http://web.idirect.com/~atrium/commentarium.html. The site is a labor of love for David Meadows, a Ph.D. candidate at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario. Meadows also acts as Webmeister for the Atrium, which is aimed at “devotees of Ancient Greece and Rome.”

Meadows does a fine job of collecting news reports related to ancient history; a recent sampling included “Navy to Help Search Pensacola Bay” (about attempts to locate six ships that sank in 1559) and “Neolithic Gold Recovered” (a report on the seizure, by Greek police, of a hitherto unknown hoard just prior to its being sold). Meadows tells BAR that the site attracts 1,500 “hits” a week.

A recent visit to Commentarium linked us to a New York Times update on the work of Kent Weeks, the American archaeologist who discovered a vast tomb complex—called KV5—in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.^b The 023complex may be the burial place of at least some of the sons of Pharaoh Ramesses II, including his firstborn. Many scholars believe Ramesses II is the best candidate for the pharaoh of the Exodus; if they are right, and if the Biblical account of the Ten Plagues has a historic basis, Ramesses’ firstborn son would have been a victim of the final plague, the Death of the Firstborn.

From the New York Times report, we were linked to the KV5 home page, at http://www.kv5.com, a site with lovely graphics and a trove of information on ancient Egypt in general and the Valley of the Kings excavation in particular. Happy cyber-touring!

Up and Down, Up and Down …

Bones of Byzantine Monks Reveal the Hazards of Humility

They say dead men tell no secrets, but it would be more accurate to say they tell no lies—especially these dead men. The bones of over 6,000 monks, resurrected from deep in a crypt beneath the Byzantine monastery of St. Stephen, outside of Jerusalem, have all told the same story to a University of Notre Dame anthropologist who has been studying them. Susan Sheridan found that although the monks who lived in the monastery circa 500 A.D. were the healthiest population she had ever studied, they all seem to have suffered from the same disease—arthritis. She noticed that the monks’ kneecaps were worn shiny and smooth and that the areas where the muscles used for kneeling were once attached had the rough appearance characteristic of arthritis.

The monks’ records confirmed her suspicions. They describe the monks’ habit of kneeling for prayer at least six times a day. One monk wrote that every night he would make 100 genuflections on each of 18 steps leading down to a holy cave. With all of that humility, it’s a wonder “Dem bones, dem bones, dem aching bones” was never a pre-Gregorian chant.

Click on Rabbi Akiva

Talmud Study Goes Online

Would you like to enter the world of the Talmud? This body of rabbinic law and lore is the core of traditional Jewish learning and practice. Long the domain only of those steeped in religious education, the Talmud is now widely accessible thanks to an online program run by the Jewish Theological Seminary, in New York City. The Seminary ordains rabbis in the Conservative branch of Judaism, which seeks to balance Jewish traditions and modern life by taking a more flexible approach to religious law than Orthodoxy but a more traditional approach than the Reform movement.

The online course description (reached at http://www.jtsa.edu/melton/courses) call the Talmud the first hypertext document: “The text is self-referential, as the same material is discussed in many places. Each word of the text is also a jumping-off point to the thoughts of many commentators, both on and off the printed page. As the product of over 500 years of Jewish intellectual life, it includes a wide range of legal, historical, philosophical, theological, and folkloric material.”

Classes are scheduled to launch about every six to eight weeks. The instructor is Rabbi Joel Roth, who has served on the seminary’s committee on Jewish law and standards since 1978, including eight years as chairman.

The online class is available either for credit or not. “Students taking the course for credit should at the minimum be familiar with the Hebrew alphabet, and ideally would have at least some reading skills,” according to the course description. A second online class, Theology for Educators, is also available.

Quoteworthy

“Cultural anthropologists tend to believe everything they hear, and archaeologists tend to believe everything they think.”

—Peter Y. Bullock, staff archaeologist, Museum of New Mexico, in a letter to the magazine Lingua Franca

022

Mark Your Calendar

Calendar

Dig It! An Interactive Exhibition for Children

Through May 30, 1998

Sift for artifacts. Piece together ancient pottery. Assemble a large mosaic fragment from a 6th-century church. Compare the Hebrew, Latin and Arabic alphabets. You’ll discover what makes Judaism, Christianity and Islam distinct from one another.

Searching for Ancient Egypt

Through February 1, 1998

Advertised as the largest and finest American collection of Egyptian art, the almost 140 artifacts on display from the University of Pennsylvania’s century of Egyptian archaeology cover thousands of years of Egyptian culture. Funerary objects, jewelry, carved reliefs, painted wall panels, papyrus fragments from the Book of the Dead, pottery and stone vessels show how the Egyptians prepared for eternity. Highlights include the Old Kingdom tomb chapel of a nobleman from Saqqara and architectural elements from the Palace of Merneptah.

Roman Glass: Reflections on Cultural Change

Through November 1998

Two hundred delicate glass vessels—bottles, bowls, cups and jugs—illustrate the changing technology, tastes and cultural influences in the Roman Empire from the first century B.C. to the sixth century A.D. A series of events, including a day-long symposium on Roman lifestyle, is planned in conjunction with the exhibit.

Seminar

BAS Caribbean Seminar Cruise

February 14 to February 21, 1998

Explore Mayan ruins, snorkel, scuba dive and sunbathe on some of the world’s most beautiful beaches as the M.S. Noordam visits Grand Cayman, Guatemala and Mexico. On board, Boston College professor Anthony Saldarini will lead “Looking Back 2,000 Years—The Many Faces of Judaism, Jesus & Early Christianity,” lecturing on the Second Temple period, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jerusalem, messiahs and the end of the world. For more information, call (800) 221–4644.

018

What Is It?

A. Rudder

B. Cleaver

C. Mirror frame

D. Razor

E. Ancient windshield wiper

023

What It Is, Is …

D. Razor.

Part of an Egyptian male’s toiletry kit, this razor is the finest example ever found. It is made of bronze and still has its original handle. Joseph probably used one like this when he was called from jail to appear before the pharaoh and interpret the pharaoh’s dream (Genesis 41:14). In all the eastern nations during the Bronze Age, only Egyptian men (and those men who adopted Egyptian manners) shaved their beards.

Imperial Slammer Identified

Caesarea Complex May Have Been Paul’s Prison