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Tell el-Amarna Centennial Symposium

One hundred years of excavation and discovery at Tell el-Amarna will be commemorated at “A Tell el-Amarna Centennial” at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, February 1–3, 1987.

El-Amarna—the ancient Akhetaten (Egyptian for “The Horizon of the Sun Disc”)—was the capital of Egypt during much of the reign of King Akhenaten (c. 1353–1335 B.C.). Akhenaten was the so-called heretic king who introduced a short-lived monotheistic religion centered on the sun. The religion, called Atonism, is thought by some scholars to have influenced the development of Hebrew monotheism.

In 1887, excavators began uncovering an enormous imperial complex—a window on the art and architecture of the Egyptian New Kingdom.

Abandoned only 15 years after its founding by Akhenaten, el-Amarna escaped the ravages of destruction and rebuilding characteristic of long-inhabited sites.

Perhaps the most significant find at el-Amarna was the famous Amarna Letters, cuneiform diplomatic correspondence between Egyptian rulers Amenophis III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun and vassals and rulers in Canaan, Syria, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor.

The centennial, an international symposium, will be held in conjunction with the annual meetings of the Middle West branch of the American Oriental Society, the Midwest region of the Society of Biblical Literature and the Middle West membership of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

Topics to be covered include: New Light on Tell el-Amarna and the History of Egypt; Interconnections: Tell el-Amarna and the History of the Late Bronze Age Aegean, East Mediterranean and the Near East; Tell el-Amarna, Atonism and the History of Religion; The Archaeology of Tell el-Amarna: Then and Now; Tell el-Amarna and the History of Art; The Inscriptions of Tell el-Amarna; Tell el-Amarna and Modern Egyptology: Recent Contributions, Problems and Prospects; and Tell el-Amarna: An Appreciation.

For more information on the centennial, please contact: Professor Gordon D. Young (President, Middle West AOS), Department of History, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, telephone: (317) 494–4151, or Professor Barry J. Beitzel (Secretary-Treasurer, Middle West AOS), Department of Old Testament and Semitic Languages, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2065 Half Day Road, Deerfield, IL 60015, phone: (312) 945–8800.

Dayan Collection Opens Amidst Controversy

The Dayan Collection, which was previewed in the September/October 1982 BAR,^a opened at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem on April 15, 1986, to rave reviews and a chorus of controversy.

Collected by the late Israeli general and amateur archaeologist Moshe Dayan, who died in 1981, the more than 1,000 pieces comprise a stunning and important assemblage, all agree. It is generally acknowledged, however, that many of the pieces purchased by Dayan had come from illegal excavations; others were actually illegally excavated by the dashing, sometimes above-the-law general and political leader himself.

Outside the museum on opening night, leaders of the newly formed Association of Archaeologists in Israel picketed. The nearly 50 pickets included archaeologists and scholars from Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. A contingent of students from Tel Aviv University swelled the ranks of the protesters.

A statement issued by the AAI charged that the Dayan collection was “partly illegally collected.” The statement continued: “We are obliged publicly and professionally to protest against antiquity robbing and theft. This clandestine activity is still practiced by collectors, public figures and leaders like the late Moshe Dayan. The exhibition of the collection in a special exhibit could be understood as a legitimization of their activities.”

Members of Israel’s Department of Antiquities and Museums protested by their absence: They stayed away from the opening of the exhibition. Neither Avi Eitan, the director of the department, nor archaeologists on his staff attended.

Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek, chairman of the board of governors of the Israel Museum, characterized the picketing as the yapping of small dogs long after the caravan has passed by. According to museum curator Ya’akov Meshorer, only about 15 percent of the collection was acquired illegally by Dayan.

Dayan’s defenders claim most of Dayan’s illegal digging was done at sites already excavated by archaeologists. In one well-known case, an Arab near Gaza accidentally came upon a 14th- to 13th-century B.C. cemetery containing fantastic life-size anthropoid coffins with faces depicted on the lids. Dayan acquired over 20 of the coffins—the stars of the show—before allowing archaeologists to excavate three 008still-uncovered coffins. But, many say, had it not been for Dayan, the cemetery site would have been destroyed by bulldozers or remained unknown.

Some who objected to the exhibition claimed the collection should have been confiscated in a legal proceeding, not purchased. Dayan’s widow was paid one million dollars for the collection, thereby assuring that the collection would remain together. The collection is said to be worth far more if it were sold piece by piece at auction.

Others objected to the fact that the allegedly illegal assemblage was maintained and exhibited separately rather than integrated into the museum’s own archaeological collection. According to museum sources, the assemblage will eventually be dispersed throughout the museum’s collection.

Weinbergs Receive Israel Museum Archaeology Prize

Saul and Gladys Weinberg, a husband-and-wife archaeology team, have been awarded the 1986 Percia Schimmel Award for Distinguished Contribution to Archaeology in Eretz Israel and the Lands of the Bible.

The Weinbergs received the award in recognition of their “distinguished contribution, both independently and jointly, to archaeological research in Israel and Greece.”

Gladys Davidson Weinberg, former curator of ancient art at the University of Missouri’s Museum of Art and Archaeology, is best known for her part in the excavation of Corinth. Her publication, “Corinth, Volume XII, The Minor Objects,” remains an important scholarly reference. A specialist in ancient glass, Weinberg has made pioneering contributions to the study of glass manufacture in antiquity. She is a former editor of Archaeology, the quarterly publication of the American Institute of Archaeology, and of Muse, the annual of the University of Missouri’s Museum of Art and Archaeology.

Saul Weinberg, retired professor of classical archaeology at the University of Missouri, directed the first five years of excavations at Tel Anafa, a Hellenistic site in upper Galilee. An expert on prehistoric Greece, Weinberg led numerous excavations in Greece and Cyprus that furthered scholarly understanding of Neolithic Greece and its connections with the eastern Mediterranean, including Israel.

Weinberg served as the chief curator of the Samuel Bronfman Biblical and Archaeological Museum of the Israel Museum from 1969 to 1971 and was the director of the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri from its founding in 1957 until his retirement in 1977.

The Schimmel Award, Israel’s most prestigious archaeology prize, is given annually by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

George Hanfmann, Excavator of Sardis, Dies

George M. A. Hanfmann, John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology Emeritus at Harvard University, died March 13, of a heart attack in Cambridge, Massachusetts at 74.

Best known for his work at Sardis, in western Turkey, Hanfmann was the field director of the Harvard-Cornell archaeological expedition there from 1958 to 1976. He served as overall excavation director until 1978.

Hanfmann was co-author and, with his 009colleague Jane Ayer Scott, co-editor of the Sardis expedition publications. So far, nine volumes have been published by Harvard University Press. A synthesis of the results, Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman Times, was published in 1983.

Called the Paris of the ancient world, Sardis was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia. Lydia’s “golden age” came during the reign of the legendary King Croesus from 560 to 546 B.C.; Croesus—proverbial for his great wealth—was the final king of Lydia, which fell to the Persians in the last year of his reign.

Among the Sardis expedition’s findings were evidence of gold refineries, a marble-paved shopping street and a huge synagogue dating to the third century A.D. Additionally, the excavators uncovered evidence that Sardis was besieged and conquered by Greek veterans of the Trojan War in the 12th century B.C.—a legend that scholars had long regarded as a fiction.

Donations in memory of Dr. Hanfmann may be made to: The George W. A. Hanfmann Publication Fund, Harvard University, 29 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.

Moshe Pearlman Dies—Prolific Popularizer of Bible and Archaeology

Moshe Pearlman, former director of the Israeli Government Press Office and author of many popular books on the Bible and Biblical archaeology, died on April 5 in Jerusalem. He was 75.

Pearlman, the author of the popular classics, In the Footsteps of Moses, In the Footsteps of the Prophets and The Maccabees, was born in London on March 23, 1911. Son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Pearlman graduated from the University of London in 1933 with a B.Sc. in economics and became the editor of the Zionist Review. In 1936, after spending a year at Kibbutz Ein Harod in British-mandate Palestine, Pearlman wrote his first book, Collective Adventures.

In World War II, he fought with the British army in North Africa and Greece. During and after the war, Pearlman became active in the Aliya Bet, the clandestine organization that broke through British blockades to move Jewish Holocaust survivors to Palestine.

After the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, Pearlman established and directed the Israeli Government Press Office and became a close advisor to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. In 1952, he was named director of Kol Yisrael, the Israeli government-owned radio station.

In his later years, Pearlman wrote prolifically on Biblical and other subjects and assisted such figures as Moshe Dayan and Yigael Yadin in their writings. His other books include The Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann, The Zealots of Masada, Historical Sites of Israel, History of Forty Centuries and Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pearlman’s last book was Digging up the Bible.

Tell el-Amarna Centennial Symposium

One hundred years of excavation and discovery at Tell el-Amarna will be commemorated at “A Tell el-Amarna Centennial” at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, February 1–3, 1987.