BARlines

026

Scientists Part the Red Sea

Two scientists recently recreated the parting of the Red Sea on paper, at least. According to a Florida State University press release, Doron Nof, professor of oceanography at Florida State University, and Nathan Paldor, associate professor of atmospheric sciences at Hebrew University, have produced calculations that they claim offer a plausible scientific explanation for the Biblical account of the parting of the Red Sea.

They based their calculations on a strong wind blowing for several hours before the crossing, which coincides with the Biblical account (Exodus 14:21), and on a crossing site at the northern edge of the Gulf of Suez, a location supported by some scholars. Nof notes that this site is “very long and extremely shallow. Because of that, the wind can lift a lot of water. It’s like blowing across the top of a cup of coffee. The coffee blows from one end to the other.”

Nof and Paldor calculate that a 40-mile-per-hour wind blowing for 10 to 12 hours could push the gulf water a mile from the original shoreline and cause a sea level drop of about 10 feet. They say such a drop at the shallow north end of the gulf could allow a crossing on foot. The subsidence of the wind would cause the water to reflood the area in a matter of minutes, swallowing up the pursuing Egyptians in accordance with the Biblical account.

Although their scenario requires a northwesterly wind, while the Bible story tells of an east wind, Nof and Paldor believe that local wind variability may have permitted an east wind in a relatively small portion of the crossing. They also suggested that the exposure of an underwater ridge might explain the Biblical description of the Israelites being flanked on both sides by water.

“We’re not making a judgment on whether this event took place,” Nof says. “We’re just saying that the winds in that area could produce such an event. Believers can find the presence and existence of God in the creation of the wind, just as they find it in the establishment of a miracle.”

Firpo W. Carr Was First

The BAS-published book The Dead Sea Scrolls After Forty Years contains a color plate (5) and a black-and-white photo (p. 67) from the Leningrad Codex, dating to about 1008, the second oldest Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. Bruce and Kenneth Zuckerman of West Semitic Research were properly credited as the photographers of those pictures, but we incorrectly identified them as the first to make these photographs available outside Russia. Actually Firpo W. Carr of Scholar Technological Institute of Research, Inc., in 1989 was the first foreigner to gain access to and photograph a number of items from the collection in the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) state library. At that time Carr photographed, in color, the carpet page from the Leningrad Codex, preceding the Zuckermans by over a year in providing such photographs to the West.

Avraham Biran Receives Honorary Doctorate

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in Jerusalem, has conferred the degree Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, on Professor Avraham Biran, the excavator of Tel Dan. The ceremony was held in the college’s Gersten Courtyard on July 19, 1992. The occasion also served as a celebration of the Israel Exploration Society’s publication of Eretz Israel 23, a volume in honor of Biran, with contributions by Ruth Amiran, Joe D. Seger, Lawrence A. Stager and David Ussishkin.

One of Israel’s most renowned archaeologists, Avraham Biran has been excavating at Tel Dan since 1966, making it the longest-running dig in Israel. His persistence at the site paid off with such discoveries as the lishkah, altar and incense shovels in 1984 and a scepter head in 1987. These discoveries were described in the BAR interview with Biran, “BAR Interview: Avraham Biran—Twenty Years of Digging at Tel Dan,” BAR 13:04, and in his most recent article for BAR, “Prize Find: Tel Dan Scepter Head,” BAR 15:01. A former head of Israel’s Department of Antiquities (now the Antiquities Authority), Biran now directs the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Moshe Dothan to Lead Archaeological Council

Last May, Zevulun Hammer, Israel’s former Minister of Education and Culture, appointed University of Haifa professor Moshe 027Dothan as director of Israel’s newly created Archaeological Council. In this capacity, Dothan—distinguished excavator of Tel Ashdod, Tel Akko and the ancient synagogue of Hammat Tiberias will preside over meetings of the council.

The council’s purpose is to serve as a forum for discussion of archaeological policy between the Israel Antiquities Authority and other institutions. This is accomplished through meetings at which the director of the Antiquities Authority, currently Amir Drori, brings subjects for discussion to the council. Typically the subjects to be discussed include requests for excavation permits, proposals for archaeological reconstruction projects, planning and coordination of excavations, problems of archaeological surveys, division of finds among museums, site protection, illegal export of artifacts and changes in the antiquity laws.

The 38-member council, including the director, serve a three-year term. They are nominated to membership, based on education and experience, by various bodies—including the Israel Antiquities Authority, Hebrew University, the Israel Exploration Society and the Administration of Education and Culture—and then appointed by the Minister of Education and Culture.

Museum Guide

Ancient Nubia Egypt’s Rival in Africa

October 10, 1992–September 1993

Nubia is hot in more than climate. An ancient civilization on the Nile in what is now southern-most Egypt and Sudan, Nubia has inspired at least two other major art exhibits in the past year (see Museum Guide, BAR 18:02). Now the University of Pennsylvania’s University Museum will trace Nubia’s 3,500-year history, from about 3100 B.C. to 400 A.D., in an exhibition featuring more than 300 artifacts. The artifacts will be drawn from the 7,000 in the museum collection, one of the most important collections of Nubian art and archaeology in the United States.

A wide variety of artifacts—including ceramic vessels, jewelry, statues and funerary inscriptions—will be used to document the rise and fall of a series of Nubian kingdoms and their complicated relationships with pharaonic Egypt. Among the highlights will be extraordinary eggshell-thin painted wares from the Early Bronze Age (3100–2200 B.C.), some of the most delicate ceramics ever made; and third- and fourth-century A.D. objects from Karanog, capital of a major Lower Nubian province of the Meroitic empire, a unique site that is represented in no other museum outside of Cairo, Egypt.

After concluding its run at University Museum, the exhibit will travel to the following seven locations: The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ; The Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, CA; Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL; Rochester Museum, Rochester, NY; Kelsey Museum, Ann Arbor, MI, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; and Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN.

Goodbye Molds, Hello Stereolithography

A new process for replicating three-dimensional objects promises to one day do away with replicas cast from molds. Called stereolithography, the process uses a laser connected to a computer to scan an object, such as a statuette, and to record in the computer a detailed representation of the object’s dimensions and surface features. Then the computer image is used to guide 084a beam of ultraviolet light in the creation of a replica. The beam traces the image in a vat of photosensitive liquid polymer, gradually solidifying layer after layer of polymer. After the light beam shapes and hardens each layer of polymer and fuses it to the layer beneath, the replica is dipped into the vat to pick up another layer, which the beam likewise shapes, hardens and fuses. The complete object is thus recreated layer by layer.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Santa Monica, California—in collaboration with Hughes Aircraft Company, 3-D Systems Inc. and LaserDesign Inc.—recently conducted a successful experiment with the process by replicating a replica of a rare idol of a fertility goddess dated to 2500 B.C. Their next step, planned for later this year, will be to create a replica from the original object.

The advantage of stereolithography is that it will allow for the creation of exact replicas, far better than molded replicas, which can be used for study if the original is too fragile to bear much handling. Moreover, this process, unlike molding, poses no risk of damage to the original. Although the current cost of the equipment is too great for widespread application among museums and archaeologists, the cost is expected to decrease significantly in the years to come.

027

The Case of the BAS Seminars

Trying to Turn the Camera in the Other Direction

Dick Ostling, the religion writer for Time magazine, and Kate Olsen, a producer for MacNeil-Lehrer television news, just left my house with their camera crew. I tried to turn the camera on them, but failed, so my only alternative is to resort to a form of communication that is open to me.

Time and MacNeil-Lehrer, in cooperation with one another, are producing a series of mini-documentaries to be shown on MacNeil-Lehrer news. One of them is on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ostling and Olsen spent three hours here. If the usual pattern prevails, I can expect to be on national television for somewhere between 4.5 and 5 seconds. But that’s really beside the point.

They had just come from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they had filmed a Biblical Archaeology Society Seminar on the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had filmed our faculty members James Tabor of the University of North Carolina and Anthony Saldatini of Boston College lecturing on the scrolls to the BAS participants. They had interviewed the participants separately. They even joined the participants in the evening, at a place the participants had dubbed the BAR bar, where, after a day of study, lectures and discussions, good conversation continued over a beer.

Dick Ostling, who did the interviewing, described the experience at Guilford with near ecstatic enthusiasm. Here, he said, Christians of all kinds and Jews of all kinds could—and did—meet and study together on common ground. He told me about the variety of wonderful people who attended, some of whom he interviewed on camera—such as first-time attendee Eugenia Ballesteros, a New York attorney with an interest in ancient civilizations; and repeat-attendee Ann Baldwin, a data processor from Madison Heights, Virginia, who uses the experience both for personal enhancement and to help her teach at her Southern Baptist church. He told me how exciting the lecturers were and how well they related to the participants. The participants each had an annotated Bible and a copy of Geza Vermes’ Dead Sea Scrolls in English, which they thumbed through during the lectures. Then, still full of energy, they repaired to the BAR bar in the evening for more talk, much of it about what they were studying. They formed an instant community, Dick said. All he was trying to do, he explained, was describe some of their enthusiasm to me.

I had heard such things regularly about BAS seminars, but almost always from the participants. My 84-year-old mother still describes the BAS seminar she attended at Oxford University as one of the highlights of her life. But coming from the religion writer of Time magazine, it all somehow sounded more reliable. We weren’t just puffing ourselves.

I wanted to turn the camera around and get Ostling on film. But no luck. The camera crew was working for MacNeil-Lehrer, not for me. So I tried the next best thing. Could I have the outtakes of the interviews with the BAS participants after the MacNeil-Lehrer segment on the Dead Sea Scrolls was shown? Answer: No … against policy … a firm rule.

So I am reduced to the inadequate medium of words to convey the difference these BAS seminars are making—something I continually hear from the teachers as well as from the students—and to urge all of you to become part of this exciting learning experience. (Upcoming seminars include one in San Francisco, preceding the Annual Meeting, November 19–21, 1992; and a Seminar at Sea to the Mexican Riviera, with former Jerusalem archaeologist Dan Bahat, February 6–13, 1993.)—

Scientists Part the Red Sea