BARlines

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Prize Biblical Relics Coming to Washington for Annual Meeting and Thanksgiving Weekend

Incredulity is the most common reaction when we tell people that two of the most extraordinary Biblical artifacts ever recovered will be displayed in Washington, D.C., for ten days this November.

The exhibit, which will consist of only two items, is being brought to Washington by the Biblical Archaeology Society, publisher of Biblical Archaeology Review and Bible Review. The two artifacts are being lent for the exhibit by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Israel Antiquities Authority and will be displayed in the Smithsonian Institution on the Mall.

The two objects are an inscribed ivory pomegranate thought to be the only surviving relic from Solomon’s Temple and the ossuary, or bone box, recently discovered in Jerusalem and inscribed with the name Caiaphas, the high priest who, according to the Gospels, presided at the trial of Jesus. Both items are unusually beautiful as well as historically significant.

The occasion for the exhibit is the Annual Meeting,^a which is being held in Washington for the first time since 1974. Washington is also the home of the Biblical Archaeology Society. “We wanted to do something special for the occasion,” said Hershel Shanks, BAS president, “but we never dreamt it would be this special. We couldn’t be more grateful to Israel Museum director Martin Weyl and Antiquities Authority director Amir Drori for making this possible.”

The ivory pomegranate is inscribed in paleo-Hebrew letters, “Belonging to the Temp[le of Yahwe] h, holy to the priests.” It was apparently the head of a scepter used in the Temple service.^b

Scratched on the narrow side of the exceptionally beautiful ossuary is the Hebrew inscription, “Yehosef bar Qafa,” Joseph son of Caiaphas. The same inscription appears on the back of the ossuary with a slightly different spelling of Caiaphas. Although the New Testament calls the high priest who presided at Jesus’ trial by the single name Caiaphas, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus refers to a “Joseph who was called Caiaphas of the high priesthood.^c

The Annual Meeting will be held on November 20 through 23, 1993, and it is expected to draw a record attendance of more than 7,000 scholars. The exhibit will open the day before, on November 19, and will extend through the Thanksgiving weekend, closing on November 28.

The exhibit will be mounted in the Rotunda Gallery of the S. Dillon Ripley Center of the Smithsonian Institution, 1100 Jefferson Drive, S.W. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily. To get there by Metro, the Washington subway, take the blue line to the Smithsonian station. A cab ride from the Annual Meeting hotels costs $4.20 (the basic single-person rate on a zone system; there is a $1 surcharge for telephoning for a cab and an added charge for rush hour service).

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Noted Assyriologist Thorkild Jacobsen Dies

Archaeologist, linguist, textual and literary critic, historian of religious thought as well as of social, legal and political institutions, Thorkild Jacobsen possessed an immense range of expertise. Born in Denmark on June 7, 1904, he began the study of Assyriology at the University of Copenhagen, then came to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in 1927. There he earned his first doctorate, became a professor and remained until 1962. From 1962 until his retirement in 1974, he taught at Harvard University. On May 2, 1993, after a very brief illness, Professor Jacobsen died in a hospital near his home in Bradford, New Hampshire.

His writings span a period of almost 70 years. He was the sole author of six books and a collaborator on five more. The best known, which gained renown and exerted influence far beyond the confines of Assyriological studies, were The Sumerian King List (1939); The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East (collaboration, 1946), reprinted as Before Philosophy (1949); The Treasures of Darkness (1976); and The Harps That Once … : Sumerian Poetry in Translation (1987). His articles number over 100; a collection of 17 of the more important ones appeared under the title Towards the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture (1970).

Professor Jacobsen made contributions of fundamental importance in all the areas of his expertise. As an archaeologist, he was associated with innovations in method that have long since become standard and now seem self-evident, such as the baking of cuneiform tablets in the field to protect them from further harm, the registration of tablets’ findspots and the systematic surface survey to determine settlement patterns. As a linguist, he greatly advanced our understanding of the Sumerian language and its lexicon. As a historian, he concentrated mainly on the earlier phases of Mesopotamian civilization. His dominant concern was with the basic forms of the culture: the matrix of geographical conditions, institutions and conceptual patterns that shaped the culture and continued to define it as Mesopotamian.

Important as all this has undoubtedly been, it does not tell all, not even in outline. Professor Jacobsen also achieved an inner resonance, emotional and intellectual, with the ancient past, and he had an ability to give that resonance exact and elegant expression. In this he stood apart from his colleagues as not only a scholar but a poet, too.

Synagogue with Cairo Genizah Is Restored

After ten years of work, restoration of the Ben-Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, is almost complete. The synagogue is famous for its genizah,^d in which Solomon Schechter discovered the Damascus Document (often called “the first Dead Sea Scroll”) in 1897.^e Because the genizah archive originates from about the same time as the synagogue’s reconstruction in 1040 A.D., it offers little insight into when the original foundation was built. Pits dug around the synagogue suggest a major reconstruction occurred about 1500 A.D., following a serious fire, and then again in 1860. However, because the restoration team was not able to obtain permission from the Egyptian Antiquities Service to excavate the building itself, the date of the original foundation remains a mystery. This question and others will probably not be answered until digging is allowed.

Sponsored by Phyllis Lambert and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, an international team of archaeologists conducted the restoration, during which they recorded and repaired curtains, lamps, carpets, carving, Torah boxes and scrolls; and replaced much stone and woodwork.

Second Volume of Sumerian Dictionary Is Published

“Take two myrrh and call me in the morning”? Perhaps not. But the first medical prescription, the first accounting ledgers and the first written epics are in the ancient Sumerian language. Now with the publication of the second volume of The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary, the world’s first written language is made more available—at last some words beginning with the letter “A” are more available, for this is “Volume A, Part 1.” The first volume, covering the letter “B,” appeared in 1984.

First written more than 5,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, Sumerian is not related to any other known language. Scholars at the University of Pennsylvania used data garnered from hundreds of thousands of clay cuneiform tablets to create this first comprehensive dictionary of Sumerian, which was begun in 1976. In general, the work cites all known occurrences of a word, and, like the Oxford English Dictionary, every word is cited in its full context. Unfortunately, at the current pace the 16 volumes yet to be published (some with multiple parts) would complete the series sometime after 2137. Letters with fewer words will of course shorten the wait.

“Volume A, Part 1” is available for $50 and “Volume B” for $40 (add $2.50 per book for shipping) from The Babylonian Section, The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 33rd and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

Teachers’ Workshop on Ancient Near East

During the 1992 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, the American Schools of Oriental Research introduced their Outreach Education Section, a program designed to teach elementary and secondary school teachers how to incorporate archaeological information into the classroom. In conjunction with the 1993 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. (November 20–23), the Outreach Education Section will host a “Peoples of the Ancient Near East” workshop for middle-school teachers. During the workshop, sixth- through ninth-grade teachers will gain up-to-date information about ancient civilizations of the Holy Land, learn how archaeology offers insight into these civilizations and learn how to convey this information to students. For more information, contact: The American Schools of Oriental Research, 3301 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218.