BARlines
Yadin to Hunt for Ancient Library
The August 1981 issue of Discovery features an article about Yigael Yadin’s return to archaeology after five years in politics, the last four as Deputy Prime Minister. The reform party which Yadin organized had captured 15 seats in the 1977 elections, making it the third largest party in Israel. But the Democratic Movement for Change, as it was called, soon split, then disintegrated and finally dissolved. Yadin chose not to run for the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) in the 1981 election. Instead, the former Chief of Operations during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, will return to archaeology.
Yadin has excavated Masada and Hazor and more recently edited the Temple Scroll, the latest-to-be-discovered and the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
According to the article in Discovery, Yadin hopes to continue excavating at Hazor because he is convinced a royal library is still buried there. (See “American Tourist Returns ‘Hazor Tablet’ to Israel After 13 Years,” BAR 02:02) Yadin intends to find it,” says the Discovery article. The article refers to Yadin as Israel’s “premier archaeologist” and quotes Yadin on his intention of finding the buried library at Hazor: “It’s just a matter of time, perhaps two seasons,” he says.
BAR’s 1976 article about a cuneiform tablet found by a tourist on the surface of the mound called attention to its “clear archival character.” BAR’s article concluded, “It was doubtless part of a library or administrative center of similar documents. Its discovery means that someday this cache of texts may yet be found at Hazor. It’s lying there somewhere, buried beneath the centuries.”
We wish Professor Yadin the best of luck in his resumed archaeological career and in his excavations at Hazor.
BAS Newsletter Joins BAR
Because of huge increases in postal rates, the Biblical Archaeology Society Newsletter will appear four times a year in regular issues of BAR, rather than as a separate publication.
The BAS Newsletter was originally planned as a separate quarterly, designed to keep in touch with BAS members in most of the months between bi-monthly issues of BAR. The BAS Newsletter, which began publication in February 1980, features news and announcements concerning Society activities, especially chapter activities and archaeological preservation projects undertaken by BAS’s Archaeological Preservation Fund. The Newsletter also reports on Society tours, seminars, and lectures.
In the new format, the BAS Newsletter will continue to report to our readers on the same activities and will even keep the same format, but will appear as an additional section to the Biblical Archaeology Review. The editorial content of BAR will not, however, be decreased. It is simply that mailing (and printing) the BAS Newsletter as part of BAR greatly reduces the costs.
Kempinski Challenge to Go Unanswered—For the Time Being
In the May/June BAR, Dr. Aharon Kempinski of Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology issued a challenge to his colleague at the Institute, Professor Moshe Kochavi, to support the latter’s identification of Tel Masos with Biblical Ir Amalek (“Is Tel Masos An Amalekite Settlement?” BAR 07:03). Kochavi had expressed the view that Tel Masos, a site excavated by Kempinski, was the Amalekite city referred to in 1 Samuel 15:5. Kempinski believes Tel Masos was an Israelite settlement and challenged Kochavi to support his Amalekite identification so it could be “scientifically refuted.”
Kochavi has declined to reply at this time. He will support his identification in due course, he says, in a paper he will publish in a festschrifta for the British archaeologist, Olga Tufnell, which is scheduled to appear sometime in 1982.