Inside BAR

002

Yigal Shiloh, the illustrious director of Jerusalem’s City of David excavations, died on November 14, 1987, after a two-year struggle against cancer. He was just 50 years old. Chosen for the prestigious City of David post in part because the steep, rocky hill demanded a young and vigorous director, Shiloh proved equal to the task. In eight tough, exhilarating seasons, the City of David team confronted the hill and, more often than they would have liked, opponents of the controversial dig. BAR editor Hershel Shanks interviewed Shiloh in June, 1987, recording his frank and incisive assessments of his predecessors’ excavation methods, the exciting discoveries, and the battles with ultra-Orthodox protesters of the excavations. We’ve divided the interview into two parts, presenting part I in this issue (“BAR Interview: Yigal Shiloh—Last Thoughts”); part II will appear in the May/June BAR (“BAR Interview: Yigal Shiloh—Last Thoughts, Part II,” BAR 14:03).

Small clues in an expert’s hands can sometimes lead to big discoveries. When Itzhaq Beit-Arieh found fragments of clay figurines and reliefs scattered on the surface of an eastern Negev hilltop, he realized that he had made a rare discovery and determined to excavate the site. Five years later Beit-Arieh became the first archaeologist to excavate a shrine of the Edomites, implacable enemies of the Israelites. In “New Light on the Edomites,” Beit-Arieh reports on some of the exciting discoveries made in his excavation, still in progress, including the startling fact that this Edomite shrine is not located in Edom, but in ancient Judah.

Beit-Arieh’s special interest in desert archaeology began when he excavated the Biblical tel of Beer-Sheva with the late Yohanan Aharoni from 1969 to 1976. In his previous contribution to BAR, “Fifteen Years in the Sinai,” BAR 10:04, Beit-Arieh reviewed the spectacular progress made by Israeli archaeologists in the years up to the return of the Sinai to Egypt in 1979. Since then, Beit-Arieh has shifted to the Negev desert, helping to direct digs at sites including Tel Ira and Horvat Uza.

Reevaluating old evidence can sometimes be as important as discovering new evidence, scholars say, when trying to fathom the nature of an archaeological discovery. Gabriel Barkay agrees. Reevaluation is fine, as long as you compare apples with apples—or, in the case of a certain Jerusalem cavetomb, headrests with headrests. In “Burial Headrests As a Return to the Womb—A Reevaluation,” Barkay rebuts Othmar Keel’s argument (“The Peculiar Headrests for the Dead in First Temple Times,” BAR 13:04) that Mesopotamian religion influenced the design of several Israelite tomb headrests that are shaped like the Greek letter omega. Says Barkay, the Israelite headrests have no relationship whatever to the Mesopotamian “womb of the earth,” as Keel contends.

Barkay and fellow Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner began the headrest discussion in “Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple,” BAR 12:02. In the March/April 1983 BAR, Barkay reported on his internationally publicized discovery of a tiny silver scroll inscribed in Hebrew with the name of God (“News from the Field: The Divine Name Found in Jerusalem,” BAR 09:02); he is now preparing a more comprehensive article for BAR on the contents of the scroll. Barkay teaches archaeology at Tel Aviv University and at the American Institute of Holyland Studies in Jerusalem. He has excavated at Lachish, Megiddo, Mamshit and Jerusalem.

Restoring and preserving artifacts in the controlled environment of a museum is hard enough, but how does one restore and preserve the ruins of an ancient city constantly exposed to abuse from wind, rain and tourists? David Ussishkin shows how in “Restoring the Great Gate at Lachish,” work supported in part by BAR’s Preservation Fund.

After 15 years at the helm of the Lachish excavations, Ussishkin still impresses his colleagues with original findings, a knack they recently recognized by awarding him the Fellner Award for the best article to appear in BAR in 1987. Professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, Ussishkin edits Tel Aviv, the journal of the university’s archaeology institute, and serves on BAR’s editorial advisory board.

In “A Wild, Wonderful Academic Circus,” Hershel Shanks reports on the four-day whirl of symposia, dig reports, “short talks and long lectures” at the Annual Meeting of archaeologists and Biblical scholars. Highlights include news of a Roman bath/bawdy house discovered at Ashkelon and a possible identification of King Solomon’s stables.

BARlines continues coverage of volunteer dig opportunities, which began in the January/February BAR (“1988 Excavation Opportunities—Sites,” BAR 14:01) and announces a new BAS chapter in Memphis.

Yigal Shiloh, the illustrious director of Jerusalem’s City of David excavations, died on November 14, 1987, after a two-year struggle against cancer. He was just 50 years old. Chosen for the prestigious City of David post in part because the steep, rocky hill demanded a young and vigorous director, Shiloh proved equal to the task. In eight tough, exhilarating seasons, the City of David team confronted the hill and, more often than they would have liked, opponents of the controversial dig. BAR editor Hershel Shanks interviewed Shiloh in June, 1987, recording his frank and incisive assessments of his predecessors’ […]