Strata
But Many Important Items Still Missing
In the July/August issue, BAR reported on the looting of Iraq’s National Museum in Baghdad following the invasion of Iraq by U.S.-led coalition forces. (Strata, BAR 29:04.) Fortunately, early assessments of the museum’s losses, which ranged up to a mind-boggling 170,000 items or more, have proved exaggerated. Unfortunately, however, some commentators have now gone overboard in the other direction, claiming that reports of looting were unfounded. As usual, the reality is more complex, but let it be clear: The museum has suffered calamitous losses.
First, some good news. The National Museum in Baghdad possesses an important collection of the earliest examples of proto-cuneiform writing (c. 3200 B.C.), excavated in Uruk (the modern Iraqi site of Warka). These pieces and about 100,000 other cuneiform tablets (dating up to the first century A.D.) were kept safely in a storage room that was not breached. This group includes the invaluable Sippar archive of about 800 clay tablets from the Neo-Babylonian period (625–539 B.C.). Cuneiform scholars can breathe a collective sigh of relief.
Additional good news was that almost all artifacts (about 8,000 pieces) in the public galleries of the National Museum were removed by the museum staff to a secure location before the war began. They were recovered unharmed. According to Donny George, director of research for the Iraq Department of Antiquities, and Nawala el-Mutawalli, director of the National Museum, museum workers and archaeologists became highly efficient at the delicate task of hiding objects during the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War and the 1991 Gulf War. The exact location of this hiding place has not been revealed, but it is likely on the museum’s grounds.
About 100 artifacts were left in the public galleries because they were either too large or too fragile to move. Of these, 47 are now believed to have vanished in those lawless days of April, following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which in effect governs Iraq, wisely instituted a “no questions asked” policy for the return of antiquities, combined with a campaign in the mosques appealing to the Iraqis’ sense of honor. Quite a few artifacts have been returned, including a statue of the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (858–824 B.C.) and the famous Warka Vase (c. 3100 B.C.). However, these artifacts often bear the marks of their ordeal; the Warka Vase, for example, is now in 15 pieces. Still missing, at the time of this writing, are 32 high-profile pieces, including an exquisite mask of a woman from Uruk (c. 3100 B.C.), a statue of King Entemena of Lagash (c. 2400 B.C.), a c. 800 B.C. ivory carving from Nimrud (ancient Kalhu, known in the Bible as Calah) of a lioness attacking a man and the base of the so-called Basetki statue (c. 2250 B.C.).
It has been widely reported in the media that the museum’s holdings totaled 170,000 pieces. In fact, this is not the number of artifacts held by the museum, but rather the number of entries in its inventory. These entries frequently subsume large groups of artifacts—for example, all items from a tomb. The total number of artifacts in the museum has been estimated at more than 500,000 by Selma el-Radi of New York University, who participated in a systematic inventory of the National Museum a few years ago.
Can we now form a better estimate of the losses? The circumstances are still changing and the available information is far from perfect, but I would estimate that 3 percent (about 13,000) of the museum’s artifacts have been stolen and 5 percent (over 24,000) are damaged. It bears repeating that the full extent of the damage will not be known until an inventory is completed, which may take several more months. Even then, the damage to unlogged artifacts can only be estimated.
In addition to losses at the Baghdad museum, another major concern is looting in the field. A National Geographic Society mission has investigated the condition of archaeological sites throughout Iraq, and has found that the situation in the north of the country is somewhat better than in the south, where gangs of hundreds of armed looters have been active with heavy equipment. Other reports tell of a thriving and well-organized trade in antiquities, hardly kept in check by authorities, be they Iraqi or CPA.
According to our limited knowledge of the situation on the ground, some of the hardest-hit sites have been reduced to cratered moonscapes—for example, Ishan Bakhriyat (ancient Isin), Tell Jokha (ancient Umma), Tell Senkereh (ancient Larsa) and Umm el-Aqarib. Sadly, however, this looting is nothing new; it has been going on, albeit at a lower intensity, since the 1991 Gulf War. The CPA is now using helicopters to patrol at least some of the major archaeological sites and maintains a presence on the ground at Babylon, Hatra, Nimrud and Ur. But Iraq is estimated to have 10,000 important sites—and it’s impossible to protect them all.
Restoring social order, giving Iraqis back a sense of self-respect, providing work and educational opportunities—these are the only solutions to wipe out the scourge of archaeological plunder and destruction.
Megiddo Puts on Its Party Hat
More than 200 guests gathered this past April 1st for a centennial celebration of the excavations at Megiddo, the prominent hilltop site in Israel’s Jezreel Valley that once guarded a strategic crossroad on the ancient Via Maris connecting Egypt and Mesopotamia. The event marked the 1903 launch of the first excavations, directed by Gottlieb Schumacher—a religious Christian whose excavations at Megiddo were motivated by a yearning to prove the veracity of the Bible—and was organized by Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology, which is currently excavating the site.
The event was held on the lawn outside low stone buildings erected by Megiddo’s second excavation team, which arrived from the University of Chicago in 1925 and remained at the site until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. A photo exhibit of Megiddo’s dig history was on display; it featured Yigael Yadin’s short seasons in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the last ten years of intensive work by Tel Aviv University. A lavish buffet with food, linens, silver and china up to elegant city standards seemed fitting in the ambiance of the still-impressive Chicago dig house.
The festivities featured walks around the site (where, according to Revelation 16:16, the apocalyptic battle at the end of days will occur), led by its current dig directors, Tel Aviv University’s David Ussishkin and Israel Finkelstein and Penn State University’s Baruch Halpern.
Halpern explained that Armageddon (in Hebrew, Har Megiddo) came into the Book of Revelation from an earlier reference in Zechariah 12 to the Lord who “will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem…In that day shall there be great mourning in Jerusalem as the mourning of Haddadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon” (Zechariah 12:9, 11). So while the apocalyptic battle was prophesied to occur in Jerusalem, its location has become attached to Tel Megiddo via the reference to “Megiddon.”
Both Halpern and Finkelstein weighed in on the contentious issue of whether there was or was not a tenth-century B.C. Solomonic city at Megiddo and whether Yigael Yadin was correct in asserting that the near-identical six-chambered gates at Gezer, Hazor and Megiddo were built by Solomon, as the Bible says in 1 Kings 9:15. Halpern says “yes” and Finklestein says “no” (he thinks they were built about a century later). Both agreed, however, that the restorations at Megiddo provide visitors with a superb opportunity to see its gateways, controversial “stables” (provocatively described by Halpern as troughs for opium manufacture), temples, palaces and huge, Early Bronze round altar.
Some of the day’s more memorable moments: Israel Finkelstein read a letter from Lord Allenby of Megiddo, who was unable to attend the event. After his grand-uncle, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, led an Australian force during the First World War to defeat 100 Turks in control of Tel Megiddo, Allenby was knighted and chose the honorific “Lord of Megiddo,” a name that continues today in his family.
Veteran excavator Trude Dothan, reminiscing about Yigael Yadin, recalled the day that Yadin brought Leonard Bernstein to her area at Megiddo, where she was excavating a Canaanite temple. Yadin, in his spellbinding way, began to describe Solomon’s gate to the maestro, who nonetheless quickly lost interest in the Canaanites. Bernstein exclaimed that he would write an oratorio about Solomon—but never did.
Dozens of Rare Artifacts Also on Display
Three of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls, uncovered near Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea in 1947, have traveled across the Atlantic for the first time in 50 years.
Montreal’s Pointe-â-Callière Museum will be displaying the three Dead Sea Scrolls, along with dozens of the most precious artifacts in the Israel Museum’s collection, through November 2. The “War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness” and one of two scrolls of Isaiah (called “Isaiah B.”) have never before been exhibited outside of Israel; the 2,000-year-old “Rule of the Community” scroll (shown above) contains rules and regulations for a devout separatist Jewish group—perhaps the Essenes—who lived in the area of the Qumran settlement.
The Montreal exhibit, “Archaeology and the Bible from King David to the Dead Sea Scrolls,” also includes such extraordinary objects as the first-century C.E. ossuary (bone box) of Caiaphas, the high priest who interrogated Jesus and handed him over to Pontius Pilate for trial. Several of the items on display provide the only material evidence attesting to key figures and places mentioned in the Bible. A ninth century B.C.E. inscribed basalt stele, for example, found at Tel Dan in northern Israel, refers to the “House of David”—the earliest extra-Biblical mention of Israel’s second king. The eighth-century B.C. miniature ivory pomegranate (believed to be the head of a priestly scepter) is the only artifact ever linked to Jerusalem’s First Temple, built by Solomon, King David’s son.
The exhibition will reopen in the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa-Gatineau on December 5 as “Ancient Treasures and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” and will run through April 12, 2004.
The University of Judaism in Los Angeles has announced its 14th annual lecture series on the Bible and archaeology. The first of eight lectures scheduled for consecutive Monday nights, “Biblical Archaeology, Looting and Forgeries,” will be presented by BAR editor Hershel Shanks on October 27.
Subsequent lectures include “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Messiahs before Jesus” (Michael O. Wise, November 3); “From Abraham to Jacob: Archaeology, Ancient Nomads, Modern Bedouin” (William G. Dever, November 10); “‘Come, let us build a city’ (Gen 11:4): What Has Archaeology Discovered about Israelite Cities and What Do the Cities Teach about Israelites?” (Ze’ev Herzog, November 17); “The Bible and the Blessing of Bread and Beer” (Jehon Grist, November 24); “What a Physicist Saw: A New (and Different) Look at the Dead Sea Scrolls and at Scroll Scholars When Relaxed” (Sheila Spiro and Gregory H. Bearman, December 1); “The Tenth Century Torah: Abraham and His Kin in the Court of King David” (Gary A. Rendsburg, December 8); and “Rediscovered Memories and Black Athena Today” (Martin Bernal, December 15). Call (310)440–1246 for further information.
They Bet Their Bottom Thaler They’d Be Back
Last spring, during the eighth excavation season of a Roman-Byzantine manor house in Horvat Raqit on Mount Carmel in northern Israel, a surprising artifact came to light. It wasn’t the fourth to seventh-century C.E. residence’s oil press, wine press, decorated tombs or pre-Islamic-era coins; similar items have been uncovered at other contemporaneous manor house sites. It wasn’t even the discovery of a small synagogue that once served the wealthy Jewish or Samaritan family who lived in the manor, along with the farm workers, glass blowers and other artisans in their employ. (The synagogue was decorated with a mosaic floor containing geometric patterns and a Greek inscription reading “God, help. One is the only God.”)
It was a late 17th-century C.E. Dutch silver coin about the size of an American silver dollar that particularly piqued the curiosity of the archaeological team headed by Shimon Dar of Bar-Ilan University. Dated 1687 and engraved with an image of a rearing lion, the coin found in Horvat Raqit is known to numismatists as a “Lion thaler.”
Just how did it wind up in Carmel’s thickly wooded hills? Dar suggests a possible scenario: The owner of the Lion thaler may have been threatened by highway robbers and hidden it in the heavy undergrowth nearby, intending to return for it later.
Only 20 years before the coin was minted, and halfway around the world, colonists in Maryland named their new, official unit of currency the “dollar,” an English transliteration of the Germanic word thaler. The first thalers were large silver coins minted in Holland in 1575 during that country’s struggle for independence from Spain and later were minted in vast numbers. Since thalers contained a smaller amount of silver and were thus lighter in weight than other silver coins, they were the preferred currency of Dutch traders. Like today’s U.S. dollar, the thaler was the most trustworthy and best-known unit of currency in the world during its day.
“The Dutch made good money trading with this coin,” says numismatic expert Arie Kindler, who identified the Carmel coin. He knows of no other Lion thalers uncovered in Israeli excavations, although he notes that “Lions” are mentioned as charitable donations to Jewish communities in Palestine in writings dating to this period.
Tsvika Tsuk, chief archaeologist of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, also weighed in on the rare find. Since Israeli law defines antiquities as artifacts dating from 1700 C.E. or earlier, Tsuk notes that the Carmel Lion thaler “may well be the youngest antiquity ever found in Israel.”
ASOR Also Names New Executive Director
The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) has named Sandra Scham as editor of its journal Near Eastern Archaeology. Dr. Scham, an anthropological archaeologist with a special interest in Biblical and textual studies, most recently has served as a lecturer and research coordinator at the University of Maryland’s department of anthropology. She is also a consulting editor for Archaeology magazine and has participated in organizing and funding conferences in the area of Palestinian-Jordanian-Israeli archaeological cooperation.
ASOR has also announced that Ingrid Wood will be succeeding executive director Rudy Dornemann when he retires this December. Ms. Wood is a former ASOR treasurer and until recently was an executive at the MetLife insurance company.
A
Cultic wall bracket
B
Serving ladle
C
Coal scoop
D
Candle holder
What It Is, Is
A
Cultic wall bracket
Clay wall brackets like this one—an 11-inch long example from the Reuben and Edith Hecht Museum in Haifa, Israel—have been assigned different functions by scholars: coal scoop, incense burner and ladle, to name a few. However, it is more likely that these brackets had no such specific function, but were affixed to walls by their suspension holes and used to hold various cultic offerings. Oil, herbs or animal bones could have been placed inside the small bowl (2.5 inches in diameter) at the bottom.
It is impossible to tell exactly what kind of ritual(s) this wall bracket was used for. It was almost certainly made in Cyprus, and dates to sometime between the late 11th and late 8th centuries B.C.