Be Alert! Prophetic Signs Everywhere

September 19, 2009

Prophetic Signs Everywhere

ALERT: Rosh Hashanah (The Feast of Trumpets) is on Shabbat (Friday night), 1 Tishrei 5770 (September 19, 2009).

Leviticus 23:23-25
Again the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, `In the seventh month on the first of the month you shall have a rest, a reminder by blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. `You shall not do any laborious work, but you shall present an offering by fire to the LORD.' "

Psalms 119:105
Your word is a lamp to my feet
And a light to my path.

Psalms 119:160
The sum of Your word is truth,
And every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting.

Psalms 119:89
Forever, O LORD,
Your word is settled in heaven

Isaiah 40:8
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.

John 17:17
Sanctify them in the truth: thy word is truth.

Revelation 22:13
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."

Zechariah 1:14-16
So the angel who was speaking with me said to me, "Proclaim, saying, `Thus says the LORD of hosts, "I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and Zion. "But I am very angry with the nations who are at ease; for while I was only a little angry, they furthered the disaster." `Therefore thus says the LORD, "I will return to Jerusalem with compassion; My house will be built in it," declares the LORD of hosts, "and a measuring line will be stretched over Jerusalem."'

Ezekiel 43:6-7
Then I heard one speaking to me from the house, while a man was standing beside me. He said to me, "Son of man, this is the place of My throne and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell among the sons of Israel forever. And the house of Israel will not again defile My holy name, neither they nor their kings, by their harlotry and by the corpses of their kings when they die, ...

Ezekiel 43:10
"As for you, son of man, describe the temple to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and let them measure the plan.

1 Corinthians 15:51-53
Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.

Shalom in Christ Jesus,

I trust this alert will be an encouragement to all as the articles cover everything from the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem to the rebuilding of Babylon in modern Iraq.

There is so much transpiring on the world stage that is noteworthy that it is becoming almost beyond comprehension and yet the Lord told us in advance that the time of His return would be as in the days of Noah, a time of 'business as usual' per say. We see some of everything at this moment and the world is being lulled back into a bit of a nervous calm because the economy is seemingly turning around some. Yet, the world's system is one big house of cards poised to fall or be blown to smithereens if you ever could see it. Let us keep our eyes firmly focused on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand;...
Joel 2:1

May the Lord bless you and keep you,
BE/\LERT!
Scott Brisk

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God's Covenants
Visualizing the Bible

NEW SCIENTIST - Best Images of 2008
This image [directly above], Visualizing the Bible, was created by Chris Harrison of Carnegie Mellon University and Christoph Römhild of North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church and was awarded an Honorable Mention in Illustration in the International Science and Engineering Visualisation Challenge. The lower part depicts all 1189 chapters of the Bible as a bar graph; the length of each bar is proportional to the number of verses in the corresponding chapter. The coloured arcs in the upper part represent 63,779 cross references between chapters, with different colours denoting varying distances between connected chapters.
See Gallery Here

Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples
Obama Plan: Temple Mount Under Arab-Muslim Sovereignty

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Gil Ronen - August 23, 2009
The Middle East peace plan that United States President Barack Obama will unveil soon involves the creation of a Palestinian Authority state by 2011 and the transfer of Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem [presumably including the Temple Mount - ed.] to Arab-Muslim sovereignty, Saudi newspaper Al-Ukaz has learned.

According to the report published Sunday in Al-Ukaz, the Obama plan also includes the following elements:

Some parts of eastern Jerusalem [presumably Neveh Yaakov, Pisgat Ze'ev and the like - ed.] would be transferred to Israeli control.
There would be an international presence in the Jordan Valley and other parts of Judea and Samaria.
The Palestinian Authority terror organizations would be disbanded and turn into political parties.
The large settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria would not be dismantled.
The fate of smaller Jewish settlement areas would be decided in a three-month-long negotiation period.

A reporter for the Saudi newspaper received the information from Hassan Harisha, the Second Deputy Speaker of the Palestinian Authority Parliament. Harisha told him that the U.S. has handed over a draft of the peace proposal to the PA and other Arabs for their perusal.

The plan also calls for Judea and Samaria to be demilitarized and for its airspace to remain under Israel control. Israeli-Palestinian Authority security coordination would be strengthened, and the Palestinian Authority state would not be allowed to strike military treaties with other countries in the region.

An "agreed number" of Arab refugees would be absorbed in the Jordan Valley area and in other parts of Judea and Samaria - especially in the area between Ramallah and Shechem.

An international fund would support the refugees and Israel would release Palestinian Authority prisoners three years after a diplomatic accord is signed.

Will he lay out a blueprint?
The Saudi report notwithstanding, the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl estimated Sunday that Obama will not go so far as to present a blueprint for a peace settlement, despite being urged to do so by several Arab governments.

"As the U.N. General Assembly meets in late September, Obama aims to announce the opening of a new negotiating process between Israelis and Palestinians, along with 'confidence-building' steps by Israel, the Palestinian Authority and a number of Arab governments," the columnist wrote. Obama "will probably lay out at least a partial vision of the two-state settlement that all sides now say they support, and the course that negotiations should take. More significantly, he intends to set an ambitious timetable for completing the peace deal -- something that will please Arabs but may irritate Israel."
Original Report

Also:

Obama's Rosh HaShanah Video Greeting
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Gil Ronen - September 18, 2009
President Barack H. Obama issued the first ever Presidential Rosh HaShanah video greeting Friday. Obama read a short (2:37) message of holiday well-wishes, and injected an allusion to his plans for peace in the Middle East. Obama looked slightly less buoyant than he did in the initial months of his presidency - a possible reflection of the problems his peace initiative has run into.
Obama is currently trying hard to engineer a three-way summit with Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu and PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas at the upcoming United Nations assembly, but even that symbolic feat is still in doubt. He opened the video statement with an attempt to evoke a conciliatory spirit.
"[T]his sacred time provides not just an opportunity for individual renewal and reconciliation, but for families, communities and even nations to heal old divisions, seek new understandings, and come together to build a better world for our children and grandchildren," he said. ...
Read Full Report

In This Alert

1- Visualizing the Bible

2- Obama Plan: Temple Mount Under Arab-Muslim Sovereignty

3- Census figures ahead of New Year: 7.46 million Israelis, most live in center

4- The economy and persecution draw new immigrants. What will draw them next?

5- Rebuilding the Temple: Can Third Temple be built without destroying Dome of the Rock?

6- Raad Salah: Netanyahu will Try to Rebuild the Jewish Temple

7- 1:60 Scale Model of Temple erected next to Temple Mount

8- Farmer builds model of Biblical temple

9- Rebuilding Babylon: U.S., Iraqi experts developing plan to preserve Babylon, build local tourism industry

10- Preparing the way for the Kings of the East? Iraq Suffers as the Euphrates River Dwindles

11- Iraqi archaeologists discover Babylonian treasures

12- Israel 'Super Gas' Field is World's Largest in 18 Months

13- Blue and White Gas: Israel to be Self-Sufficient for 20 Years

14- Israeli Science Blessing the World

15- Where's the Ark? Ethiopian church speaks out on Ark of the Covenant

16- Is this the face of the apostle Paul?

17- New evidence on shroud emerges

18- Stone Vessel with 'Priestly Inscription' Uncovered In Jerusalem

19- Passage Found, May Have Been Used by Abraham

20- "Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours

21- Enormous 'foot-shaped' enclosures discovered in Jordan Valley

22- Ancient seals of King Hezekiah unearthed in Jerusalem dig

23- Second Temple Stone Quarry Discovered

24- Ancient First Temple Artifacts Uncovered in Jerusalem

25- Bar-Kochba Treasure Discovered in Judean Hills

26- Dream Come True: Buried Treasure Found Outside Temple Mount

27- Stolen 2,000-Year-Old Hebrew Papyrus Recovered

28- Have Israeli archaeologists found world's oldest Hebrew inscription?

29- Experts aim to decipher ancient script

30- Unprecedented Miniature Carving of Alexander the Great Found

31- Artifacts may identify biblical Sodom

32- Shedding light on the Catacombs of Rome

33- Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?

34- 4,000-year-old temple discovered in Cyprus

35- Desert Secret Cracked: Ancient Hunting Techniques Revealed

36- Ancient camel-butchering tools found in Boulder

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Census figures ahead of New Year: 7.46 million Israelis, most live in center

YEDIOTH AHRONOTH [Yedioth Ahronoth Group - Private] - By Yaron Druckman - September 16, 2009
The Central Bureau of Statistics published figures showing the current state of affairs on the eve of the Jewish New Year. The statistics paint a picture of Israeli society in which people are in no rush to get married, prefer living in the crowded Tel Aviv Metropolitan area to the Galilee and the Negev, and eat an average of 3,522 a day.

According to CBS figures, 7,456,000 people live in Israel, about 5,634,000 of whom are Jewish (75.47%), 1,513,000 are Arab (20.26%), and 318,000 are defined as "other" - a group made up mostly of immigrants and their families who are not registered as Jews. The rate of population growth registered at 1.8%. The Jewish population is growing at a rate of 1.7%, while the Arab population is growing at a rate of 2.6%.

Israeli society was found to be young relatively. In 2008, 28.4% of the population were children under the age of 14, as compared to the 17% average in other western countries. At the same time, 9.7% of the population is aged 65 and over, while the average for other western countries is 15%. The percentage of the population over the age of 75 grew, and now stands at 5.6% as opposed to 3.8% some 20 years ago.

Life expectancy continues to climb. The life expectancy for men was 79.1 years and 83 years for women. ...
Read Full Report

The economy and persecution draw new immigrants. What will draw them next?
Israeli Economy a Draw for North American Immigrants

Rebuilding the Temple:
Can Third Temple be built without destroying Dome of the Rock?

THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - By Matthew Wagner - June 21, 2009
A new Jewish interfaith initiative launched last week argues building the Third Jewish Temple in Jerusalem would not necessitate the destruction of the Dome of the Rock.

"God's Holy Mountain Vision" project hopes to defuse religious strife by showing that Jews' end-of-days vision could harmoniously accommodate Islam's present architectural hegemony on the Temple Mount.

"This vision of religious shrines in peaceful proximity can transform the Temple Mount from a place of contention to its original sacred role as a place of worship shared by Jews, Muslims and Christians," said Yoav Frankel, director of the initiative.

The Interfaith Encounter Association at the Mishkenot Sha'ananim's Konrad Adenauer Conference Center in Jerusalem is sponsoring the program, which includes interfaith study and other educational projects.

According to Islamic tradition, the Dome of the Rock, built in 691, marks the spot where Muhammed ascended to Heaven.

But according to Jewish tradition, Mount Moriah, now under the Dome of the Rock, is where the Temple's Holy of Holies was situated.

Until now Jewish tradition has assumed that destruction of the Dome of the Rock was a precondition for the building of the third and last Temple.

However, in an article that appeared in 2007 in Tehumin, an influential journal of Jewish law, Frankel, a young scholar, presented a different option.

His main argument is that Jewish doctrine regarding the rebuilding of the Temple emphasizes the role of a prophet.

This prophet would have extraordinary authority, including the discretion to specify the Temple's precise location, regardless of any diverging Jewish traditions.

Frankel considers the scenario of a holy revelation given to an authentic prophet that the Temple be rebuilt on the current or an extended Temple Mount in peaceful proximity to the dome and other houses of prayer such as the Aksa Mosque and nearby Christian shrines.

However, both Muslims and Jews have expressed opposition to the initiative.

Sheikh Abdulla Nimar Darwish, founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel, said it was pointless to talk about what would happen when the mahdi, the Muslim equivalent of the messiah, would reveal himself.

"Why are we taking upon ourselves the responsibility to decide such things?" Darwish said in a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post. "Even Jews believe that it is prohibited to rebuild the Temple until the messiah comes. So what is there to talk about.

"The mahdi will decide whether or not to rebuild the Temple. If he decides that it should be rebuilt, I will go out to the Temple Mount and help carry the rocks."

Darwish warned against any attempt to rebuild the Temple before the coming of the mahdi.

"As long as there is a Muslim alive, no Jewish Temple will be built on Al-Haram Al-Sharif [the Temple Mount]. The status quo must be maintained, otherwise there will be bloodshed."

In contrast, Baruch Ben-Yosef, chairman of the Movement to Restore the Temple, made it clear that the Temple had to be built where the Dome of the Rock presently stands.

"Anybody who says anything else simply does not know what he is talking about," he said. "A prophet does not have the power to change the law which explicitly states the location of the Temple."

Ben-Yosef also rejected the idea that rebuilding of the Temple had to be done by a prophet.

"All you need is a Sanhedrin," he said.

Mainstream Orthodox rabbis have opposed attempts to rebuild the Temple since the Mount came under Israeli control in 1967.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel even issued a decree prohibiting Jews from entering the area due to ritual purity issues.

However, several grassroots organizations such as the Movement to Restore the Temple, and maverick rabbis, including Rabbi Israel Ariel, head of the capital's Temple Institute and a leading member of the revived Sanhedrin led by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, have called to take steps to renew the sacrifices on the Temple Mount and rebuild the Temple.
Original Report

Raad Salah: Netanyahu will Try to Rebuild the Jewish Temple

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Gil Ronen - May 26, 2009
Sheikh Raad Salah, leader of the Northern Wing of the Islamic Movement in Israel, believes Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will try to rebuild the Jewish Temple.
Speaking at a conference organized by website Islam Online in Doha, Qatar, Salah stated his belief that Netanyahu may try to build the Jewish Temple - which the Islamic preacher called "the false temple" - during his current term after allegedly failing to do so in his first term as Prime Minister in the late 1990s.
"I ask that those with the power to make the political decision hear me," Salah exhorted his audience. "Netanyahu is about to build the false Temple, and when the Jews build the Temple they will do so upon the ruins of the Al-Aqsa [Mosque]."

Immediate danger
The danger to Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa mosque is "tangible and immediate," Salah said, echoing similar dramatic statements he has made over the years. "I warn, I ask for aid and I call out," he said. "We should expect deadly surprises that could hurt Jerusalem in general and Al Aqsa in particular," he said. "We live in years that will determine if Jerusalem survives and in Al Aqsa will remain standing," he added. ...
The Jewish Temple was first built by King Solomon (Shlomo) about 3,000 years ago. It served as the spiritual center of the Hebrew nation and as a place of national pilgrimage and sacrifice. Serviced by the priestly class (Kohanim) and Levites, the Temple contained the Seven-Branched Menorah and housed the golden Holy Ark within a room known as the Holy of Holies.

Coming soon: the Third Temple
The First Temple was razed by Babylonian conquerors, rebuilt by Jews by permission of a Persian emperor, defiled by Greeks and then re-consecrated by the Hasmoneans, and burnt down again by Romans.
Jewish religion commands the Jews to rebuild the Temple as part of a Divine plan for the salvation of the Jewish people and the entire world, but Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is not considered observant, never has associated himself with efforts by Jews to pray on the Temple Mount.
Read Full Report

1:60 Scale Model of Temple erected next to Temple Mount

Second Temple model erected opposite Temple Mount
YEDIOTH AHRONOTH [Yedioth Ahronoth Group - Private] - By Ari Galahar - August 7, 2009
The Aish HaTorah Yeshiva, which is based in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, presented Wednesday a model of the Second Temple and placed it on the yeshiva's rooftop, overlooking the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
The model will remain there on permanent display.
Aish HaTorah's new headquarters will serve as a visitors center and showcase exhibitions dedicated to the way in which Judaism has changed the world and continues to affect humankind today. The center will be open to visitors of all nationalities and faiths.
According to the yeshiva heads, the project aims to underline the inseparable connection between Judaism and Jerusalem's holy sites.
Aish HaTorah head Ephraim Shore explained that there is a lot of ignorance regarding the importance of the Jewish link to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. ...
The model is the largest ever to be built with such level of precision and attention to details. It is 10x4.5 feet in size and is built on a 1:60 scale.
Read Full Report

World's Largest Temple Model Inaugurated next to Temple Mount
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Yehudah Lev Kay - August 5, 2009
The world's largest model of the Holy Temple was inaugurated Wednesday only a few hundred meters away from the Temple Mount, the site where the Temple existed up until 70 CE.
The model, built at a scale of 1:60, was built by Michael Osanis for the Aish HaTorah Yeshiva in Jerusalem's old city, and is displayed on the roof of its new museum, which at seven stories above the Western Wall plaza has a breathtaking view of the Temple Mount.
"We hope that seeing this model of the Temple, with the perspective of its actual location in the background, will give people a sense of the inspiration that people received when they entered the real Temple that stood here for almost 1,000 years," said Ephraim Shore of Aish HaTorah. ...
The Temple model sits on top of Aish HaTorah's new Exploratorium museum, which explores how Judaism and Jewish ideas have changed the world and continue to impact humanity. The model is meant to show how these contributions "were nurtured, studied and exported to humanity from the center of our spiritual world, in the Temple," according to Shore.
"There is a growing ignorance about the centrality of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount," Shore explained. "The Temple model is the beginning of a project that it is hoped will help Jews connect with their heritage and provide non-Jews with the awareness of our rich and broad history in these holy places." ...
Read Full Report

Farmer builds model of Biblical temple

LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH [Barclay] - February 26, 2009
A retired farmer has spent more than 30 years building an enormous scale model of a Biblical temple.
Alec Garrard, 78, has dedicated a massive 33,000 hours to constructing the ancient Herod's Temple, which measures a whopping 20ft by 12ft.
The pensioner has hand-baked and painted every clay brick and tile and even sculpted 4,000 tiny human figures to populate the courtyards.
Historical experts believe the model is the best representation in the world of what the Jewish temple actually looked like and it has attracted thousands of visitors from all over the globe. ...
Mr Garrard, from Norfolk, spent more than three years researching the Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans 2000 years ago and deemed to be one of the most remarkable buildings of ancient times.
He then started to construct the amazing 1:100 scale model, which is now housed in a huge building in his back garden.
"Everything is made by hand. ...
Mr Garrard sculpted and painted 4,000 figures, measuring just half an inch and all wearing their correct costumes including 32 versions of Jesus. ...
Read Full Report

Also:

A model of biblical proportions: man spends 30 years creating a model of Herod's Temple
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH [Barclay] - February 26, 2009
Now, here's a model of biblical proportions. A retired farmer has spent more than 30 years building an enormous scale model of Herod's temple - and it is still not finished
See Slide Show

Rebuilding Babylon:
U.S., Iraqi experts developing plan to preserve Babylon, build local tourism industry

STARS AND STRIPES [U.S. Department of Defense] - By Seth Robson - June 28, 2009
HILLAH, Iraq - The remains of what was once the greatest city in the world occupy a vast site on the bank of the Euphrates River.

Their roots go back 3,800 years to when the city of Babylon was the heart of a Mesopotamian empire, and the remnants include great slabs of stone that are said to be the remains of King Nebuchadnezzar's castle. A giant stone lion guards one end of the fortifications, but the most stunning remnants were removed by European archaeologists in the early 20th century.

Now soldiers with the 172nd Infantry Brigade are exploring the ruins as part of a U.S.-Iraqi effort to preserve the ancient city and plan for the return of Western tourists.

Members of the brigade's 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment escorted a group of U.S. heritage tourism experts to the ruins last week for the first of several visits to develop a preservation and tourism plan for the area.

U.S. and coalition troops have been criticized in the past for damaging and contaminating artifacts. In a 2006 report, the head of the British Museum's Near East department said that, among other things, military vehicles crushed a 2,600-year-old brick pavement, and sand and archeological fragments were used to fill military sandbags.

Now the rapidly improving security situation in surrounding Babil province has persuaded the U.S. State Department and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage to embark on the preservation project, dubbed the Future of Babylon Project.

The State Department and the World Monuments Fund have committed $700,000 to the project, which will see U.S. and Iraqi experts develop a plan to preserve the site and develop a local tourism industry, said Diane Siebrandt, the U.S. embassy's cultural heritage officer.

The Babylon project is one of several that the State Department is involved in to conserve ancient sites in partnership with the Iraqi government, she said.

Two people with expertise developing tourism plans for historic sites in third-world nations, Gina Haney and Jeff Allen, have been employed by the State Department to run the U.S. side of the project. They visited the ruins for the first time last weekend.

Haney said the pair will involve the local community in the plan's development, as they did with a similar project encouraging Western tourists to visit Ghana's Gold Coast.

"You could throw money at it and do all this work, but unless you can create a sustainable situation, your opportunities for tourism will run out," Allen said. "The idea is to develop something that is going to be here 30 to 40 years from now and has benefits for the local people. We don't want something that will only benefit outsiders."

The Iraqi government will be involved in the planning as well.

"If you have 200,000 people a year coming to this site, you will have people staying at hotels, visiting restaurants, buying souvenirs," Allen said. "The site is in some ways a revenue generator for the local community."

Babylon could be comparable to the Egyptian pyramids, which draw millions of tourists each year. But the area lacks the tourist infrastructure that has been built at sites such as the pyramids, he said. ...

Allen, who has experience designing walkways and signs for other heritage sites, said detailed planning won't happen until authorities have worked out how best to preserve the ruins. The crumbling rocks of the original city are surrounded by more elaborate and modern fortifications, including a maze-like collection of interior walls built on top of genuine ruins during Saddam Hussein's time. ...

One of the 172nd soldiers who visited the ruins, 1st Lt. Bryan Kelso, 24, of Jacksonville, Fla., walked in wonder near the ancient stones.

"It's amazing to be surrounded by this history. To think that we are standing where Alexander the Great has been," he said, referring to the great Macedonian conqueror who died in Babylon. "Babylon is one of the oldest and first civilizations known to man. They created the wheel and the first calendars. Everybody coming here gets a sense of what this place really is and how it all traces back."
Read Full Report

Preparing the way for the Kings of the East?
Iraq Suffers as the Euphrates River Dwindles

NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Campbell Robertson - July 13, 2009
JUBAISH, Iraq - Throughout the marshes, the reed gatherers, standing on land they once floated over, cry out to visitors in a passing boat.

"Maaku mai!" they shout, holding up their rusty sickles. "There is no water!"

The Euphrates is drying up. Strangled by the water policies of Iraq's neighbors, Turkey and Syria; a two-year drought; and years of misuse by Iraq and its farmers, the river is significantly smaller than it was just a few years ago. Some officials worry that it could soon be half of what it is now.

The shrinking of the Euphrates, a river so crucial to the birth of civilization that the Book of Revelation prophesied its drying up as a sign of the end times, has decimated farms along its banks, has left fishermen impoverished and has depleted riverside towns as farmers flee to the cities looking for work.

The poor suffer more acutely, but all strata of society are feeling the effects: sheiks, diplomats and even members of Parliament who retreat to their farms after weeks in Baghdad.

Along the river, rice and wheat fields have turned to baked dirt. Canals have dwindled to shallow streams, and fishing boats sit on dry land. Pumps meant to feed water treatment plants dangle pointlessly over brown puddles.

"The old men say it's the worst they remember," said Sayid Diyia, 34, a fisherman in Hindiya, sitting in a riverside cafe full of his idle colleagues. "I'm depending on God's blessings."

The drought is widespread in Iraq. The area sown with wheat and barley in the rain-fed north is down roughly 95 percent from the usual, and the date palm and citrus orchards of the east are parched. For two years rainfall has been far below normal, leaving the reservoirs dry, and American officials predict that wheat and barley output will be a little over half of what it was two years ago.

It is a crisis that threatens the roots of Iraq's identity, not only as the land between two rivers but as a nation that was once the largest exporter of dates in the world, that once supplied German beer with barley and that takes patriotic pride in its expensive Anbar rice.

Now Iraq is importing more and more grain. Farmers along the Euphrates say, with anger and despair, that they may have to abandon Anbar rice for cheaper varieties.

Droughts are not rare in Iraq, though officials say they have been more frequent in recent years. But drought is only part of what is choking the Euphrates and its larger, healthier twin, the Tigris.

The most frequently cited culprits are the Turkish and Syrian governments. Iraq has plenty of water, but it is a downstream country. There are at least seven dams on the Euphrates in Turkey and Syria, according to Iraqi water officials, and with no treaties or agreements, the Iraqi government is reduced to begging its neighbors for water.

At a conference in Baghdad - where participants drank bottled water from Saudi Arabia, a country with a fraction of Iraq's fresh water - officials spoke of disaster. ...
Amir A. al-Obeidi, Mohammed Hussein and Abeer Mohammed contributed reporting.
Read Full Report

Iraqi archaeologists discover Babylonian treasures

ASTIGAN.com [Published by the Astigan Society] - By Vlad Jecan - April 2, 2009
A team of Iraqi archaeologists have unearthed about 4000 artifacts dating back to Babylonian times. The findings include royal seals, talismans and clay tablets bearing Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions.
According to the Iraqi Tourism and Antiquities Ministry, the artifacts were discovered after two years of fieldwork in 20 different sites between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This region was known to the ancient Greeks by the name of 'Mesopotamia'. Among the discoveries, a series of ancient Persian and medieval Islamic artifacts have also been unearthed.
Archaeologists said that these artifacts are of priceless value and very significant. Two talismans have been unearthed from which one bears a carved face in Sumerian style accompanied by a triangle. The other talisman has a running antelope carved into it, Reuters reports.
A number of clay tablets bearing Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions have also been found. Cuneiform is the oldest known form of writing, dating back 5,000 years. The writing originated in southern Mesopotamia and was created in the Sumerian culture and to write the Sumerian language. Later, however, it was used for Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian as well. The cuneiform script was deciphered in mid 19th century. ...
Read Full Report

See Also:
Drought Reveals Iraqi Archaeological Treasures
Full Report Posted on the Be Alert! Blog

Israel 'Super Gas' Field is World's Largest in 18 Months

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - August 30, 2009
The Tamar gas field, 50 miles off the Haifa coast, keeps getting bigger with every report, and the gas discovery now is estimated to be the world's largest in 18 months. The Scotland-based Wood Mackenzie research and consulting firm assessed the value of the field at $8 billion, approximately double that of local analysts.

The latest upside projection comes less than two weeks after another revised estimate that the reserves are 16 percent higher than previously thought.

Changing gas prices could make the gas worth anywhere between $3.5-$17 billion in the future, and partners in the offshore project are preparing for the first deliveries of gas in 2012. They have approved expenditures of $230 million for equipment and services to be provided by Noble Energy, a partner in the project, along with Israeli firms Delek Drilling, Avner Oil and Gas and Isramco.

The future impact of the gas field on the Israeli economy is enormous. "Few doubt that the country, which for decades has been dependent on importing nearly all of its energy needs, has entered a new era of far greater economic independence," Business Week commented in its current issue.

Delek official Yitzchak Tshuva jubilantly announced after the discovery that Israel is on the road to energy independence. Tshuva and other project participants stated, "We have already sufficient Israeli natural gas to meet all of the country's needs for many years, and we intend to continue searching in our many franchises off the Israeli coast."

The area of the gas discovery has largely been unexplored, leaving open the possibility of more finds, perhaps even of oil. Delek Drilling's Tzvi Greenfeld said, "If we find more gas, then there is a greater chance Israel will become an exporter."

The multi-billion infrastructure work for new sea-to-land gas lines and for a 500-kilometer long (311 mile) distribution network will create hundreds of jobs for engineers and workers. The move to gas from oil and coal will help diversify the economy, Ohad Marani, board chairman of the state-owned gas distribution network told Business Week.

The Finance Ministry will enjoy approximately $5 billion in royalties when gas starts flowing, estimates Gal Reiter, energy industry analyst at Clal Investments. Furthermore, Israel will drastically cut back the $5 billion it pays for fuel imports, leading to stronger balance of payments.

An era in which Israel will be more self-sufficient in energy needs also will help make the shekel more attractive. Cheaper foreign currencies will help lower the price of imports for consumers but could cause further problems for the exporters, whose profits are dented after income in dollars and euros is exchanged for shekels.
Original Report

Blue and White Gas: Israel to be Self-Sufficient for 20 Years

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - July 8, 2009
New estimates of natural gas reserves recently discovered off the Mediterranean Coast near Haifa will allow Israel to be self-sufficient in energy for two decades, according to Yitzchak Tshuva, one of the investors in the project. "Israel today is independent - completely independent with blue and white [Israeli-made] energy," said Tshuva, chief executive office of Delek Energy.
The Tamar 2 drilling, 3.5 miles north of the Tamar 1 site that was discovered in April, indicates the reserves are 26 percent larger than previously estimated. Noble Energy, the largest participant in the project, said that appraisals confirmed the quality of the gas and "have reduced the uncertainty in previous resource estimates." The gas reserves are in addition to the Dalit gas field discovered off the Hadera coast, south of Haifa, earlier this year.
"With drilling at Tamar and Dalit, we have already confirmed a very substantial amount of natural gas resources, perhaps over two decades of future supply based on projected needs," said Charles D. Davidson, Noble's chairman and chief executive officer. "We are moving forward with development plans focused on bringing the first phase of production to the Israeli shores by 2012." ...
Self-sufficiency would significantly strengthen the shekel as well as create jobs. ...
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Huge Israeli Gas Find Even More Massive Than Expected
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Malkah Fleisher - February 11, 2009
A massive natural gas find off the coast of Haifa which was lauded as capable of fueling all of Israel for 15 years is actually more than 60 percent larger than originally estimated, according to the American partner in the drill, Noble Energy Inc. ...
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Israeli Science Blessing the World

Successful Test of Cage to Protect Kids in Earthquake
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Maayana Miskin - September 14, 2009
The Jerusalem municipality blew up an old school building shortly after noon on Monday as part of an experiment set up to test a unique new earthquake cage. The building, located in Jerusalem's Katamon neighborhood, was demolished in a controlled explosion.
The explosion was set up by Tamar Explosive Laboratories to simulate an earthquake.
The experiment was deemed a success by supervising engineers. Engineers hoped to determine whether or not the cage would maintain its structure during a powerful earthquake. ...
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Israeli Researchers: Generating Electricity from Road Traffic
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Zalman Nelson - July 12, 2009
Researchers at Haifa's Technion Institute of Technology have started testing a new system for generating electricity from road traffic on a 30-meter strip of highway near Tel Aviv.
The system is based on piezo electricity, which uses pads of metallic crystals buried over hundreds of meters of road to generate electricity when put under the pressure of quickly moving traffic.
"The name of the game is harvesting," team member Chaim Abramovich told Sky News. "Harvesting means energy which is available but is going to waste."
While the concept is not new, the application is a novelty. According to Abramovich, one truck can generate 2,000 volts which could already be used to power traffic lights or street lamps. A kilometer of "electric road" could generate enough power for 40 houses, and progress in the technology could generate enough electricity to feed the national power grid.
A company called Innowattech is working with the team to develop the technology.
Future plans include placing the crystal generators in railways. Trains are advantageous in that they are guaranteed to apply pressure in the same place over and over again. ...
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Supernova: Israelis Track the Case of the Exploding Star and the Black Hole
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - March 24, 2009
Scientists from the Rehovot-based Weizmann Institute have participated in the first-ever study of the world's largest exploding star and discovered the after effects: a black hole. The observation was carried out in coordination with colleagues at San Diego State University.
The observed star was 50 times larger than the sun, and after the explosion, the star simply collapsed and left a black hole in the universe that was so dense that light could not pass through it. ...
They were able to predict the end of the start's existence by studying its energy from birth and until their fuel depletes and leaves an iron core that collapses from intense heat. ...
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Israeli Researcher Finds Natural Cure for Insomnia
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Ilana Teitelbaum - August 28, 2009
Traditional sleeping pills have many side effects. Now an Israeli company is introducing a new drug that works with the body's natural processes to induce restful, restorative sleep.
Circadin, a new drug produced by Neurim Pharmaceuticals and based on the research of company founder and chief scientific officer Professor Nava Zisapel at Tel Aviv University (TAU).
Unlike other sleep medications which suppress brain activity, Neurim says that Circadin works with the body's natural processes to induce a restful, restorative sleep. It does so by gradually releasing melatonin in the body - the hormone that prepares the body for sleep. ...
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Where's the Ark?
Ethiopian church speaks out on Ark of the Covenant

Statement says Ten Commandments box won't be displayed
WORLDNETDAILY - June 29, 2009
There was considerable confusion last week when the leader of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church apparently told an Italian news agency of an upcoming announcement about the possible public display of the Ark of the Covenant - the box holding the Ten Commandments - and then the prescribed time passed with no word.
However, there was no equivocation today in an e-mail received by WND from the webmaster of a church website in response to an inquiry about the truth of the matter.
"It is not going to happen so the world has to live with curiosity," said the statement, signed only "Webmaster" in response to the WND inquiry.
The webmaster statement described the tempest as being caused either because of a translation mistake or "a slip [of the] tongue from the patriarch."
WND reported first when the apparent "revelation" was to be announced and then again later when the scheduled time came and went without word.
Ark hunters and Bible enthusiasts had been buzzing for days on the report from the Italian news agency Adnkronos that Patriarch Abuna Pauolos, visiting in Italy last week for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, was quoted, "Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God delivered to Moses and the center of searches and studies for centuries."
He apparently had suggested the possibility the artifact might be viewable in a planned museum.
"I repeat (the Ark of the Covenant) is in Ethiopia and nobody ... knows for how much time. Only God knows," he said in the Adnkronos report available online.
The report said Pauolos reported the artifact "is described perfectly in the Bible" and is in good condition.
"The state of conservation is good because it is not made from man's hand, but is something that God has made," Pauolos said, according to the report.
The agency had reported an announcement would be made at the hotel Aldrovandi in Rome, and a hotel spokeswoman told WND Pauolos had been in residence there, but no news conference or event was scheduled.
"The Ark of the Covenant is in Ethiopia for many centuries," said Pauolos in the report. "As a patriarch I have seen it with my own eyes and only few highly qualified persons could do the same, until now." ...
Full Report Posted on the Be Alert! Blog

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Holy Ark Announcement Due
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - June 25, 2009
... Abuna Pauolos, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, was in Rome this week to meet with Pope Benedict XVI. While there, he told reporters that the time had come to reveal before the world the Holy Ark. He said that the holy container has been in the custody of his church for hundreds of years.
The claim that the Biblical Holy Ark has been kept at the Church, in the city of Axum, is an old one, but this is the first time that the Church plans to actually reveal the actual container, or news of it. It is not known whether the Church claims that the actual Tablets of the Law are inside it.
Copies of the alleged Ark are kept in many other churches in Ethiopia. ...
Pauolos said "The Ark of the Covenant has been in Ethiopia for many centuries. As Patriarch, I have seen it with my own eyes, and only a few, highly-qualified persons could do the same - until now."
Back to Earth
Stuart Munro-Hay, author of "Quest for the Ark of the Covenant: The True History of the Tablets of Moses," concluded that the object in question is definitely not the original Holy Ark.
The building of the Ark of the Covenant - also known as the Ark of Testimony and the Ark of G-d's Covenant - in accordance with Divine instructions is recounted in the Book of Exodus. The Ark held the Tablets of the Law, and traveled with the People of Israel, leading the way into the Promised Land. It was placed first in the Tabernacle in Shilo, and centuries later in the Holy Temple built by King Solomon. Since then, its whereabouts have been unknown, though one popular legend says it was brought to Ethiopia. Alternatively, it could be under the Temple Mount, in a cave at Mt. Nevo in Jordan, in the Vatican, a hideaway in Utah, or elsewhere.
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Is this the face of the apostle Paul?

Newly uncovered artwork has experts 'identifying' biblical hero
WORLDNETDAILY - By Joe Kovacs - June 28, 2009
A newly uncovered artwork in the catacombs of Rome has some experts believing it's the oldest image of the Christian apostle Paul.
The faded image shows a man with a triangular-shaped face and pointed beard as he looks straight ahead.
According to published reports in Europe, the fresco dating back to the 4th century was discovered during restoration work at the Catacomb of St. Thekla but was kept secret for 10 days. The catacomb, or Christian burial place, is close to the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, which is said to be built on the location where Paul was buried.
Vatican archaeologists used a laser to remove centuries of grime from the artwork before announcing the discovery through their official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.
Barbara Mazzei, director of the work at the catacomb, told the London Telegraph:

We had been working in the catacomb for some time and it is full of frescoes. However the pictures are all covered with limestone which was covering up much of the artwork and so to remove it and clean it up we had to use fine lasers.
The result was exceptional because from underneath all the dirt and grime we saw for the first time in 1,600 years the face of St. Paul in a very good condition. It was easy to see that it was St. Paul because the style matched the iconography that we know existed at around the 4th century - that is the thin face and the dark beard.
It is a sensational discovery and is of tremendous significance. This is then first time that a single image of St. Paul in such good condition has been found and it is the oldest one known of. Traditionally in Christian images of St Paul he is always alongside St. Peter but in this icon he was on his own and what is also significant is the fact that St. Paul's Basilica is just a few minutes walk away.
It is my opinion that the fresco we have discovered was based on the fact that St. Paul's Basilica was close by, there was a shrine to him there at that site since the 3rd century. This fresco is from the early part of the 4th century while before the earliest were from the later part and examples have been found in the Catacombs of Domitilla."

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's culture minister, added: "This is a fascinating discovery and is testimony to the early Christian Church of nearly 2,000 years ago. It has a great theological and spiritual significance as well as being of historic and artistic importance."
Although the Catacomb of St. Thekla is closed to the public, officials are hoping to put the ancient artwork on display later this year.

Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI announced today that the first-ever scientific tests on what some think might be the remains of Paul's body "seem to conclude" they belong to the New Testament hero.
"A tiny hole was made to introduce a probe" which led to the retrieval of "minuscule bone fragments, and carbon dating showed they belonged to someone who lived between the first and the second century," the pope said. "This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of the apostle Paul."
Cardinal Andrea Codero Lanza di Montezemolo, chief priest of the basilica, told Agence France-Presse Friday the pope had not ruled out "one day ordering a more detailed analysis" of the remains.
He cautioned that opening the sarcophagus would be "a big job, given the tomb is enormous and it might involve the demolition of the altar."

According to the New Testament, Paul was a Roman Jew, a member of the tribe of Benjamin born in the ancient city of Tarsus located in modern-day Turkey.
He began his career persecuting Christians but then converted to Christianity after being temporarily blinded by God on the road to Damascus.
He is known as the apostle to the Gentiles and wrote most of the books in the New Testament.
Original Report

Pope confirms visit to Shroud of Turin; new evidence on shroud emerges

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE [U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops] - By Carol Glatz - July 27, 2009
VATICAN CITY -- [....] The last time the Shroud of Turin was displayed to the public was in 2000 for the jubilee year. The shroud is removed from a specially designed protective case only for very special spiritual occasions, and its removal for study or display to the public must be approved by the pope.
The shroud underwent major cleaning and restoration in 2002.

According to tradition, the 14-foot-by-4-foot linen cloth is the burial shroud of Jesus. The shroud has a full-length photonegative image of a man, front and back, bearing signs of wounds that correspond to the Gospel accounts of the torture Jesus endured in his passion and death.
The church has never officially ruled on the shroud's authenticity, saying judgments about its age and origin belonged to scientific investigation. Scientists have debated its authenticity for decades, and studies have led to conflicting results.

A recent study by French scientist Thierry Castex has revealed that on the shroud are traces of words in Aramaic spelled with Hebrew letters.
A Vatican researcher, Barbara Frale, told Vatican Radio July 26 that her own studies suggest the letters on the shroud were written more than 1,800 years ago.
She said that in 1978 a Latin professor in Milan noticed Aramaic writing on the shroud and in 1989 scholars discovered Hebrew characters that probably were portions of the phrase "The king of the Jews."
Castex's recent discovery of the word "found" with another word next to it, which still has to be deciphered, "together may mean 'because found' or 'we found,'" she said.
What is interesting, she said, is that it recalls a passage in the Gospel of St. Luke, "We found this man misleading our people," which was what several Jewish leaders told Pontius Pilate when they asked him to condemn Jesus.

She said it would not be unusual for something to be written on a burial cloth in order to indicate the identity of the deceased.
Frale, who is a researcher at the Vatican Secret Archives, has written a new book on the shroud and the Knights Templar, the medieval crusading order which, she says, may have held secret custody of the Shroud of Turin during the 13th and 14th centuries.
She told Vatican Radio that she has studied the writings on the shroud in an effort to find out if the Knights had written them.
"When I analyzed these writings, I saw that they had nothing to do with the Templars because they were written at least 1,000 years before the Order of the Temple was founded" in the 12th century, she said.
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Turin Shroud 'could be genuine as carbon-dating was flawed'
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH [Barclay] - By Stephen Adams - April 10, 2009
New evidence suggests the Turin Shroud could have been the cloth in which Jesus was buried, as experiments that concluded it was a medieval fake were flawed.
Radio carbon dating carried out in 1988 was performed on an area of the relic that was repaired in the 16th century, according to Ray Rogers, who helped lead the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STRP).
At the time he argued firmly that the shroud, which bears a Christlike image, was a clever forgery.
But in a video made shortly before his death three years ago, he said facts had come to light that indicated the shroud could be genuine.
Rogers, a chemist from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said: "I don't believe in miracles that defy the laws of nature. After the 1988 investigation I'd given up on the shroud.
"But now I am coming to the conclusion that it has a very good chance of being the piece of cloth that was used to bury the historic Jesus."
He came to his conclusion after re-examining a theory from two amateur scientists that he had earlier dismissed as being from "the lunatic fringe".
Sue Benford and Joe Marina, from Ohio, suspected the 1988 sample was from a damaged section of the linen shroud repaired in the 16th century after being damaged in a fire.
Rogers said: "I was irritated and determined to prove Sue and Joe wrong."
However, when he came to examine threads taken in 1978 - luckily from the same section as the 1988 sample - he found cotton in them.
He said: "The cotton fibres were fairly heavily coated with dye, suggesting they were changed to match the linen during a repair.
"I concluded that area of the shroud was manipulated by someone with great skill.
"Sue and Joe were right. The worst possible sample for carbon dating was taken.
"It consisted of different materials than were used in the shroud itself, so the age we produced was inaccurate."
In the video, made shortly before he died of cancer in March 2005, he said: "I came very close to proving the shroud was used to bury the historic Jesus."
This latest evidence, to be broadcast in The Turin Shroud: New Evidence ... on the Discovery Channel, is the latest chapter in the shroud's history.
For the last 21 years most have considered it to be a medieval fake, after the 1988 tests dated it as being made between 1260 and 1390.
The result overturned 10 years of hope among Christians that it was real, after the first scientific tests found evidence of blood and serum stains.
The earliest documented sighting of the shroud is from 1353, but last week a historian claimed in the Vatican's newspaper that she had found a "missing link" in the Holy See's Secret Archives proving the Knights Templar had safeguarded it during the 13th century.
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Stone Vessel with 'Priestly Inscription' Uncovered In Jerusalem

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hana Levi Julian and Gil Ronen - July 30, 2009
A rare 2,000-year-old ritual vessel made of limestone and inscribed with 10 lines of text has been discovered in an excavation near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is an unprecedented find, according to Dr. Shimon Gibson, the archaeologist who heads the University of North Carolina team conducting the dig.

"Such stone vessels were used in connection with maintaining ritual purity related to Temple worship, and they are found in abundance in areas where the priests lived," Gibson reported. "We have found a dozen or more on our site over the past three years. However, to have ten lines of text is unprecedented. One normally might find a single name inscribed, or a line or two, but this is the first text of this length ever found on such a vessel," he said.

Although the letters are clearly visible it will take some time before their meaning can be discerned due to the style of the writing. Gibson estimated in his preliminary report that it could take up to six months to translate the inscription. "It is written in a very informal cursive hand and is quite difficult to read," he explained.

Initially, Gibson thought the inscription was written solely in Aramaic. However, a group of experts consulting on the matter was not convinced; they say there is a possibility that the text contains the sacred name of G-d and is deliberately cryptic.

"Stephen Pfann, of the University of the Holy Land, is leaving open the possibility that it is Hebrew. He has also suggested that the text might have had meaning within a closed circle of priests, similar to texts at Qumran," said Dr. James D. Tabor, co-director of the dig.

The excavations, which lasted several months, were carried out under the auspices of the Jerusalem branch of the Nature and Parks Authority.

At least 30 people per week "sacrificed their own money, time, and hard labor to advance this important effort," according to Gibson, who said the results "have been simply astounding, the finds quite spectacular, and the whole area has been transformed."

He added that the excavation site was in ancient times "precisely at the center of Herodian/2nd Temple Jerusalem...we have extraordinarily well preserved ruins from the 2nd Temple period, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE."

It is that terrible holocaust that is commemorated, as well as the destruction of the First Temple, on the Fast of Tisha B'Av.

Excavations began on June 14, in the same site where previous archaeologists had probed the earth searching for clues to Israel's history in the 1970s.

This time around, structures from the First and Second Temple periods were discovered, including a mikvah (ritual pool) left almost completely intact, a vault, and a room with two ovens. Buildings from the Byzantine and early Islamic periods were also uncovered, as well multiple coins, intact lamps, ceramic and glass vessels, bits of jewelry and similar items.

Tekhelet snails found?
Also uncovered were at least half a dozen Murex snail shells with holes drilled through them. "Prior to our excavation one or two such shells had been found in all of Jerusalem," Gibson said. "That so many would be found at our site further supports our supposition that we are in a priestly residential area."

Murex snails were cultivated in ancient times at sites along the Mediterranean Sea, and a royal blue dye was extracted from them. "According to some experts this blue color was used for the priestly garments, as well as the tzitzit or threaded tassels worn by all pious Jews of the period," he explained in his report, referring to the Biblical tekhelet -- the thread of blue that G-d commanded male Jews to include in the ritual fringes on the corners of their garments.

"Speak to the Children of Israel and bid them that they make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of each corner a thread of blue (tekhelet). And it shall be for you as a fringe, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of G-d, and do them..." (Numbers 15:38-15:39)

Such fringes are worn by observant Jews to this day, although in most of them, the thread of blue is no longer included, since the precise technology for making the dye has been lost. However, in recent times rabbis have overseen a modern recreation of the tekhelet technique and some Jews have begun using tekhelet in their fringes again.
Original Report

The discovery marks the first time archaeologists have found such massive construction from before the time of Herod
Passage Found, May Have Been Used by Abraham

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - September 2, 2009
A Jerusalem walkway from the times of the Patriarch Abraham, protected by a wall of large rocks, has been discovered, and will be displayed to the public on Thursday.

The double-wall was uncovered in a dig run by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and sponsored by the City of David Association. Prof. Roni Reich of the University of Haifa, who is directing the dig together with Eli Shukrun of the IAA, told Israel National News, "Based on clay pottery fragments found at the site, it is assumed to have been built by the Canaanites some 3,700 years ago, during the period known as the Middle Bronze Age."

The Patriarch Abraham met with "Malki-Tzedek, King of Shalem" - later known as Jerusalem - during this period, according to Biblical chronology and Genesis 14,18.

The fortifications are eight meters (over 26 feet) high, and served to protect those walking down to a spring in what is now the National Park, around and at the foot of the walls of Jerusalem. Some 24 meters of the double wall's length have been uncovered, but it is apparently even longer, waiting to be uncovered in the future.

"This is the most massive wall ever discovered in the City of David," Reich said. "It is tremendously large in terms of its dimensions, thickness, and size of the rocks used. It appears that they protect a walk-way used to walk down from some tower atop the hill towards the spring."

The protected passage is designed to solve an inherent paradox in the need for a spring, Reich explained: "On the one hand, water is necessary, especially in times of crisis, but its source is located in a spring, in the lowest and most vulnerable spot in the area. Thus the need to build such a protected passage, even though it involved great effort." ...

Fortifications on such a massive scale indicate that Jerusalem became, at this time, a city-state of its own that was able to deploy and gather the resources to build them. "A small village would not have been able to build such a structure," Reich said.

"This discovery shows that our picture of Jerusalem's eastern fortifications, and of its water supply, from these periods is far from complete," Reich said. "Though so many people have dug this hill, there is still a strong chance that large architectural elements are still well-hidden and waiting to be discovered." ...
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Israeli Archaeologists Find Ancient Fortification
ASSOCIATED PRESS - By Jen Thomas - September 3, 2009
Archaeologists digging in Jerusalem have uncovered a 3,700-year-old wall that is the oldest example of massive fortifications ever found in the city, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Wednesday.
The 26-foot-high wall is believed to have been part of a protected passage built by ancient Canaanites from a hilltop fortress to a nearby spring that was the city's only water source and vulnerable to marauders.
The discovery marks the first time archaeologists have found such massive construction from before the time of Herod, the ruler behind numerous monumental projects in the city 2,000 years ago, and shows that Jerusalem of the Middle Bronze Age had a powerful population capable of complex building projects, said Ronny Reich, director of the excavation and an archaeology professor at the University of Haifa.
The wall dates to the 17th century B.C., when Jerusalem was a small, fortified enclave controlled by the Canaanites, one of the peoples the Bible says lived in the Holy Land before the Hebrew conquest. The kingdom thought to have been ruled from Jerusalem by the biblical King David is usually dated to at least seven centuries later.
A small section of the wall was first discovered in 1909, but diggers have now exposed a 79-foot portion, and Reich believes it stretches much further. Reich said budget constraints related to the global financial crisis put an end to the excavation, at least for now.
"The wall is enormous, and that it survived 3,700 years -- this is, even for us, a long time," Reich said. It was remarkable that a fortification of this kind was not dismantled for later building projects, he said.
"When you just stand there and see it, it is amazing," he said. ...
Archaeological research at the site known as the City of David, just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, is caught up in the struggle for control over the city.
The archaeological site, one of the richest in a country full of ancient remains, is in the midst of a Palestinian neighborhood in east Jerusalem. ...
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Second Temple Pilgrimage Route Uncovered
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Gil Ronen - September 13, 2009
Archaeologists have uncovered a section of a stone-paved street with stairs which connected the Temple Mount with the Pool of Shiloach (Siloam). The section is about 550 meters south of the Temple Mount, and is believed to be the point at which pilgrims began to ascend by foot to the Temple during Second Temple times (516 BCE - 70 CE). ...
The street was Jerusalem's central street, ascending northward from the north-western corner of the Pool of Shiloach. Another part of the street is exposed and runs across the western side of the Temple Mount. ...
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Huge cavern may answer biblical questions
THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret] - By Rachel Wexler - August 17, 2009

"Then Moses and the elders of Israel charged all the people as follows: 'Keep the entire commandment that I am commanding you today. On the day that you cross over the Jordan into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall set up great stones and cover them with plaster. You shall write on them all the words of this law when you have crossed over." (Deuteronomy 27:1-3).

Built on the foundations of an ancient Byzantine church, the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George is home to the oldest, most precise map of biblical Israel and the surrounding areas. The church is northwest of Madaba, a provincial town of the Roman Empire that is now a Jordanian village. During the reign of Justinian (527-565 CE), the long central hall of the cross-shaped Byzantine structure was covered from wall to wall by the Madaba Map, which originally spanned 94 square meters, though only 25 are preserved. The map (see Page 36) identifies Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley with astounding accuracy, and depicts a site called Galgala near Jericho. The Greek inscription next to Galgala reads Dodekaliton, which translates as "Twelve Stones." The inscription was believed to refer to the 12 stones the Israelites carried from the Jordan River bed and set up in Gilgal (Joshua 4). However, it is also possible that these stones are those mentioned in the above passage from Deuteronomy. In that passage, Moses commanded the Israelites to inscribe "all the words of this law" on large plastered stones after they crossed the Jordan near Jericho.
Galgala, so accurately located by the Madaba Map, is believed to be the site recently discovered by Prof. Adam Zertal and a team from the University of Haifa which has been surveying the region since 1978. They unearthed a huge man-made cavern 30 feet underground, which they believe may have been a quarry that was already sacred to ancient Christians.
The largest man-made cavern in Israel, the excavation is about 100 yards long, 40 yards wide and four yards high. Inside, Zertal and his team found a ceiling supported by 22 huge columns bearing various carved symbols. Thirty-one crosses were discovered, in addition to a possible zodiac and the symbol of a Roman legion. ...
THE MOST perplexing question, according to Zertal, the answer to which might support the notion that this is where the "great stones" described in Deuteronomy were quarried, inscribed and left for safekeeping, is why anyone would dig such a large quarry with such a narrow entrance so far underground. The Madaba Map may shed some light on this mystery. Zertal explained that scholars had always supposed that "12 stones" referred to the biblical story of the stones removed from the Jordan River bed to commemorate the miracle that the river stopped flowing when the Israelites passed over it. However, the discovery of this cave suggests that the "12 stones" inscription on the map may refer to the location of the "master copy" stones of Deuteronomy and Joshua 8. Though this theory appears to provide a logical reason for the quarry being constructed underground, Zertal points out that "it is just a theory" and "much more research needs to be done." ...
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"Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours;..." - Deut 11:24a
Have the first Israelite sites built after Exodus been found?

'Foot' structures found in Jordan valley

HAARETZ [Schocken/DuMont Schauberg] - By Ofri Ilani - April 14, 2009
A Haifa University archaeologist on Monday said he has unearthed structures in the shape of human feet believed to have been erected by the Israelites upon their initial entry to the Land of Canaan.

Prof. Adam Zertal said that the large compounds discovered in the Jordan Valley were "the first sites to have been built by the Israelites upon entering Canaan and manifest the biblical notion of claiming ownership of the land by setting feet on it."

Prof. Zertal's excavation team uncovered five large foot-shaped compounds that he identifies as the biblical site of Gilgal.

Most contemporary archaeologists do not consider the Israelite Exodus from Egypt and the conquest of Israel to be verifiable historical events. Zertal is one of the few Israeli archaeologists who claim to have found archaeological evidence supporting the Israelite entrance to Canaan.

Zertal's most famous discovery is a compound on Mount Ebal near Nablus, which he identified as the site of the Covenant ceremony depicted in the biblical Book of Joshua. Other archaeologists have identified that site as a watchtower.

Zertal has also recently claimed to have found clay markings unique to early Israelites, around the time of the conquest of Canaan described in the Bible.

According to the Book of Joshua, the Israelites arrived at Gilgal after having crossed the Jordan River. Some researchers have claimed that Gilgal is named after the collection of stones at the site that were used during various rituals, but no archaeological evidence has been discovered to support that claim.

Since 1990, five sites shaped like human feet have been excavated in the Jordan Valley. All five date back to the early Iron Age (12th to 13th centuries B.C.E.), and their shapes indicate that they were used as communal gathering places.

Zertal said that the foot-shaped sites were used during ceremonies following the Israelites' entry into the Land of Canaan. He added that the concept of the Jewish pilgrimage to Jerusalem on three major holidays (known as "aliya la'regel" or ascending on foot) also originates from the foot-shaped sites in the Jordan Valley and Mount Ebal.
Original Report

Enormous 'foot-shaped' enclosures discovered in Jordan Valley

ASTIGAN.com [Published by the Astigan Society] - April 6, 2009
"The 'foot' structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the People of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot," said archaeologist Prof. Adam Zertal of the University of Haifa, who headed the excavating team that exposed five compounds in the shape of an enormous "foot", that it were likely to have been used at that time to mark ownership of territory.
On the eve of the Passover holiday, researchers from the University of Haifa reveal an exceptional and exciting archaeological discovery that dates back to the time of the People of Israel's settlement in the country: For the first time, enclosed sites identified with the biblical sites termed in Hebrew "gilgal", which were used for assemblies, preparation for battle, and rituals, have been revealed in the Jordan valley. The researchers, headed by Prof. Adam Zertal, exposed five such structures, each in the shape of an enormous "foot", which they suppose functioned during that period to mark ownership on the territory. "I am an archaeologist and only deal with the scientific findings, so I do not go into the additional meanings of the discovery, if there are any," Prof. Zertal said.
The Hebrew word "gilgal" (a camp or stone-structure), is mentioned thirty-nine times in the Bible. The stone enclosures were located in the Jordan valley and the hill country west of it. To this day, no archaeological site has been proposed to be identified with the gilgal. Between the years 1990 and 2008, during the Manasseh Hill-Country Survey that covers Samaria and the Jordan Valley, five such enclosures were found and excavated, all designed in the shape of a human foot. All of these sites were established at the outset of the Iron Age I (the 13th-12th centuries BCE). Based on their size and shape, it is clear that they were used for human assembly and not for animals.
Two of the sites (in Bedhat esh-Sha'ab and Yafit 3) were excavated in the years 2002-2005, under the directorship of Dr. Ben-Yosef and the guidance of Adam Zertal. The findings, mostly of clay vessels and animal bones, date their foundation to the end of the 13th century BCE, and one of them endured up to the 9th or 8th century BCE without architectonic adjustment.
In at least two cases, paved circuits, some two meters wide, were found around the structures. These were probably used to encircle the sites in a ceremony. "Ceremonial encirclement of an area in procession is an important element in the ancient Near East," Prof. Zertal says, adding that the origins of the Hebrew term "hag" (festival) in Semitic languages is from the verb "hug", which means "encircle". Thus, this discovery can also shed new light on the religious processions and the meaning of the Hebrew word for festival, "hag".
Prof. Zertal emphasized that the "foot" held much significance as a symbol of ownership of territory, control over an enemy, connection between people and land, and presence of the Deity. Some of these concepts are mentioned in ancient Egyptian literature. The Bible also has a wealth of references to the importance of the "foot" as a symbol: of ownership over Canaan, the bond between the People of Israel and their land, the link between the People and God's promise to inherit the land, defeating the enemy 'underfoot', and the Temple imaged as a foot.
"The discovery of these 'foot' structures opens an entirely new system of linguistic and historical perceptions," Prof. Zertal emphasizes. He explains that the meaning of the biblical Hebrew word for "foot" - "regel" - is also a "festival", "holiday", and ascending to see the face of God. As such, the source of the Hebrew term "aliya la-regel", literally translated as "ascending to the foot" (and now known in English as a pilgrimage), is attributed to the "foot" sites in the Jordan valley. "Now, following these discoveries, the meanings of the terms become clear. Identifying the 'foot' enclosures as ancient Israeli ceremonial sites leads us to a series of new possibilities to explain the beginnings of Israel, of the People of Israel's festivals and holidays," he stated.
According to Prof. Zertal, the "foot" constructions were used for ceremonial assemblies during Iron Age I (and probably after). When the religious center was moved to Jerusalem and settled there, the command of "aliya la-regel" (pilgrimage) became associated with Jerusalem. The source of the term, however, is in the sites that have now been discovered in the Jordan valley and the Altar on Mt. Ebal. "The biblical text testifies to the antiquity of these compounds in Israel's ceremonials, and the 'foot' structures were built by an organized community that had a central leadership," Prof. Zertal stated. He stressed that there is a direct connection between the biblical ideology, which identifies ownership over the new land with the foot and hence with the shape of the constructions.
Material provided by the University of Haifa
Original Report

Ancient seals of King Hezekiah unearthed in Jerusalem dig

THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret/CanWest] - By Etgar Lefkovits - February 23, 2009
A routine archeological excavation ahead of private construction in an Arab neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem has uncovered a series of seal impressions from the reign of the biblical King Hezekiah 2,700 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Monday.
The archeological treasure trove was discovered in Umm Tuba, on the southeastern edge of the city, during a salvage excavation carried out in January ahead of planned construction at the site.
The seal impressions found include those of two high-ranking officials named Ahimelech ben Amadyahu and Yehohail ben Shahar, who served in the Judean kingdom's government.
Another Hebrew inscription, dating 600 years later than the seal impressions, was discovered on a jar fragment from the Hasmonean period in the second century BCE.
The site also housed a large building during the First and Second Temple periods unearthed during the dig.
The remains of the building included several rooms arranged around a courtyard. Pottery that was recovered from the ruins of the building were used to date it to First Temple period.
The building was destroyed, along with Jerusalem and all of Judah during the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. ...
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Also:

Biblical Era Royal Seals Found in Jerusalem Hills
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Maayana Miskin - February 23, 2009
The Israel Antiquities Authority has announced the discovery of royal seal impressions from the times of the First and Second Temples. The finds were made at a site in the southern Jerusalem hills.
The seal impressions are believed to date back to the time of King Hezekiah, who ruled over Judea in the late eighth century BCE. Four "LMLK"-type seals were found, as were seals from high-ranking administrators Ahimelech ben Amadyahu and Yehokhil ben Shahar.
One seal impression combined the LMLK-type seal and the seal of Yehokhil, an occurrence that archaeologists confirmed is highly unusual. ...
The name of the current Arab village, Umm Tuba, was derived from the Byzantine name, Metofa, which in turn is a variation on the Biblical name, Netofa. The ancient Judean village of Netofa is mentioned in the second book of book of Samuel (23:28-29) as the birthplace of two of King David's warriors.
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Second Temple Stone Quarry Discovered

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - July 6, 2009
Archaeologists have discovered a quarter-acre (one dunam) quarry in Jerusalem that apparently was the source for mammoth stones used by Herod to build the Second Temple. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) discovered the quarry prior to the planned construction of apartment buildings on Shmuel HaNavi Street.
The ancient quarry dates back 2,030 years, according to excavation director Dr. Ofer Sion. The immense size of the stones, which measure up to three meters long and two meters high and wide, "indicates it was highly likely that the large stones that were quarried at the site were destined for use in the construction of Herod's magnificent projects in Jerusalem, including the Temple walls," he said.
He also estimated that a large work force among Herod's estimated 10,000 laborers produced the stones by creating detachment channels with the use of a one-pound chisel. "After the channels were formed, the stones were severed from the bedrock using hammers and chisels," Dr. Sion explained.
"We know from historical sources that in order to build the Temple and other projects which Herod constructed, such as his palace, hundreds of thousands of various size stones were required - most of them weighing between two and five tons each", said the director of the excavation. "The dimensions of the stones that were produced in the quarry...are suitable for the Temple walls." ...
Dr. Sion described the ancient "high-tech method of removing and transporting the stones on rolling wooden fixtures, some of which were pulled by camels."
Other artifacts discovered at the site include metal plates, referred to in the Talmud and which were used as fulcrums to sever the stones from the bedrock, as well as coins and pottery shards from the end of the Second Temple period in the first century, before the beginning of the non-Jewish calendar. ...
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Remains of Second Temple Era Jewish Town Revealed
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz - December 15, 2008
Archaeological evidence of a Jewish town located on the edge of the Samaria desert during the Second Temple Period (516 BCE to 70 CE) will be made public later this month. The recently-discovered artifacts include the remains of a mikveh (ritual bath), stone tools and hidden chambers.
The town was located in the Akraba district, a frontier region northeast of Jerusalem. The poorly-developed district served as a natural division between the Samarians, who distanced themselves from Jerusalem as the political and spiritual center of Judea, and the Jews. The geographical and ethnic make-up of the region also gave rise to militant rebel sects, such as the Sicarii faction led by Shimon Bar-Giora during the First Jewish-Roman War (1st century CE).
Eitan Klein, a researcher from Bar-Ilan University, explained that "until recently, historical sources, dated from the Second Temple Period until the Bar Kochva Rebellion, testified to Jewish settlement existing in the Akraba district. As opposed to the wealth of relevant historical sources, there were few archaeological findings that supported the presence of such a settlement." The current findings, Klein said, support historical references to the Jewish presence in the Akraba region in ancient documentation. ...
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Ancient First Temple Artifacts Uncovered in Jerusalem

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hana Levi Julian - May 20, 2009
Archaeologists from Israel's Antiquities Authority (IAA) have revealed two important artifacts recently discovered in Jerusalem, both dating from the First Temple Period (8-7 BCE).

The first, a bone seal engraved with the name "Shaul" was found in an excavation being conducted under the auspices of the IAA, in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park, located in the City of David.

The dig, which is underwritten by the "Ir David Foundation" (City of David) is being carried out under the direction of Professor Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa and Eli Shukron of the IAA.

The seal, which is made of bone, was found broken and is missing a piece from its upper right side. Two parallel lines divide the surface of the seal into two registers in which Hebrew letters are engraved. A period followed by a floral image or a tiny fruit appear at the end of the bottom name.

The name of the seal's owner was completely preserved and it is written in the shortened form of the name, Shaul, which is known from both the Bible (Genesis 36:37; 1 Samuel 9:2; 1 Chronicles 4:24 and 6:9) and from other Hebrew seals.

Another Hebrew seal and three Hebrew bullae (pieces of clay stamped with seal impressions) were previously discovered nearby.

The second artifact, an ancient jar handle bearing the Hebrew name "Menachem" was uncovered in the neighborhood of Ras el 'Amud during an excavation prior to construction of a girls' school by the Jerusalem municipality.

The jar handle, inscribed with the name "Menachem" carved in Hebrew, was found among settlement remains dating to different phases of the Middle Canaanite period (2200 - 1900 BCE), and the last years of the First Temple period (8-7 BCE) that were recently uncovered during the excavation.

The name Menachem Ben Gadi is noted in the Bible as that of a king of Israel who reigned for 10 years in Samaria, as one of the last kings of the Kingdom of Israel. According to Kings II, Menachem Ben Gadi ascended the throne in the 39th year of Uzziah, King of Judah (Judea).

The names Menachem and Yinachem both are expressions of condolence, noted excavation director Dr. Ron Be'eri, who speculated they might be related to the death of family members. The archaeologist added that such names already appeared earlier in the Canaanite period, on Egyptian pottery sherds and a document about an Egyptian governor on the Lebanese coast.

This is the first time that a handle with the name "Menachem" has been found in Jerusalem.
Original Report

Bar-Kochba Treasure Discovered in Judean Hills

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - September 9, 2009
The largest-ever known number of coins from the time of Bar-Kochba, the Jewish leader against Roman invaders, has been discovered in the Judean Hills by cave researchers from Hebrew and Bar-Ilan Universities.
The research team found three batches of bronze, silver and gold coins in a deep cavern in a nature reserve.
Pottery and weapons also were discovered during a research project by Prof. Amos Frumkin of Hebrew University and Prof. Hanan Eshel and Dr. Boaz Zissu of Bar-Ilan University.
They found the approximately 120 coins in a "hidden wing" of the cave where the only opening is via a narrow and dangerous approach. Beyond the opening, a small chamber leads to a hall where Bar-Kochba's army apparently hid.
Most of the coins are in excellent condition, and Bar-Kochba's followers imprinted their own designs over the currency, which is of Roman origin.
The new imprints show Jewish images and words, including the façade of the Holy Temple and the slogan "freedom for Jerusalem."
Bar-Kochba coins of this quality and quantity have never before been discovered in one location by researchers in the Land of Israel, although antiquities looters have found and sold large numbers of coins from this period.
Prof. Frumkin pointed out the significance of the particular cave, near the site of ancient Beitar, which was the site of the "last stand" of the rebels led by Bar-Kochba in their struggle against Roman rule in Judea from 132-35 CE.
"This discovery verifies the assumption that the refugees of the revolt fled to caves in the center of a populated area in addition to the caves found in more isolated areas of the Judean Desert," he said.
Original Report

Dream Come True: Buried Treasure Found Outside Temple Mount

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - December 22, 2008
A 1,300-year-old treasure of 250 gold coins has been unearthed at the archaeological dig just below Dung Gate outside the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The excavation, which has already provided a series of fascinating finds, has been underway for two years at the Givati car park just outside and below the southern part of the Old City.
... The coins were found amidst the ruins of an impressively large building in the process of being uncovered. The building is dated from the end of the Byzantine period, around the seventh century C.E. ...
The only other treasure of gold coins found from the same period in Jerusalem includes only five coins - compared to the 264 found now. The image of Caesar Heraclius, who ruled the East Roman Empire from 610 to 641, is engraved on the coins. ...
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Stolen 2,000-Year-Old Hebrew Papyrus Recovered

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - May 6, 2009
A 2,000-year-old Hebrew document has been recovered by police and antiquities authorities, shedding light on post-Temple Jewish life in the Land of Israel.

The 15x15 cm (6x6 inch) papyrus is 15 lines long, and is clearly dated, "Year 4 to the destruction of Israel." Archaeologists say this refers to either 74 CE, four years after the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans, or the year 139 CE, after the destruction of rural settlement in Judah following the Bar Kokhba Revolt. ...

The document is written in ancient Hebrew script characteristic of the Second Temple period. This style of the writing is primarily known from the Dead Sea scrolls and various inscriptions that occur on ossuaries and coffins. The papyrus is incomplete and was in all likelihood rolled up; pieces of it crumbled, mainly along its bottom and left sides. The name of a woman, "Miriam barat [Aramaic for 'daughter of'] Yaakov" is also legible in the document, followed by a name that is likely to be that of the village in which she lived: Misalev, believed to be Salabim and possibly the present-day Kibbutz Shaalvim in the Ayalon Valley.

Also mentioned in the document are the names of other people and families, the names of a number of other villages from the Second Temple period, and legal wording dealing with the property of a widow and her relinquishment of it.

Ganor says that the document is "95%" believed to be authentic and ancient, "based on the epigraphic style, the material the document is written on, the state of preservation and the text, which includes a historic date that can be deciphered." However, "since this object was not discovered in a proper archaeological excavation, it still must undergo laboratory analyses in order to negate the possibility it is a modern forgery."

"The document is very important from the standpoint of historical and national research," Ganor stated. "Until now, almost no historic scrolls or documents from this period have been discovered in proper archaeological excavations... The deciphering of the entire document by expert epigraphers and historians may shed light on how the people of the period managed their affairs and supplement our knowledge about their way of life. What we have here is rare historic evidence about the Jewish people in their country from more than 2,000 years ago, during the days following the destruction which sent the people of Israel into exile for a very long time - until the creation of the State of Israel."

To download a high-resolution photo of the document, click here.
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Every word of God is tested...
Have Israeli archaeologists found world's oldest Hebrew inscription?

ASSOCIATED PRESS - October 30, 2008
An Israeli archaeologist digging at a hilltop south of Jerusalem believes a ceramic shard found in the ruins of an ancient town bears the oldest Hebrew inscription ever discovered, a find that could provide an important glimpse into the culture and language of the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.

The five lines of faded characters written 3,000 years ago, and the ruins of the fortified settlement where they were found, are indications that a powerful Israelite kingdom existed at the time of the Old Testament's King David, says Yossi Garfinkel, the Hebrew University archaeologist in charge of the new dig at Hirbet Qeiyafa.

Other scholars are hesitant to embrace Garfinkel's interpretation of the finds, made public on Thursday. The discoveries are already being wielded in a vigorous and ongoing argument over whether the Bible's account of events and geography is meant to be taken literally.

Hirbet Qeiyafa sits near the city of Beit Shemesh in the Judean foothills, an area that was once the frontier between the hill-dwelling Israelites and their enemies, the coastal Philistines. The site overlooks the Elah Valley, said to be the scene of the slingshot showdown between David and the Philistine giant Goliath, and lies near the ruins of Goliath's hometown in the Philistine metropolis of Gath.

A teenage volunteer found the curved pottery shard, 15 centimeters by 15 centimeters, in July near the stairs and stone washtub of an excavated home. It was later discovered to bear five lines of characters known as proto-Canaanite, a precursor of the Hebrew alphabet.

Carbon-14 analysis of burnt olive pits found in the same layer of the site dated them to between 1,000 and 975 B.C., the same time as the Biblical golden age of David's rule in Jerusalem.

Scholars have identified other, smaller Hebrew fragments from the 10th century B.C., but the script, which Garfinkel suggests might be part of a letter, predates the next significant Hebrew inscription by between 100 and 200 years. History's best-known Hebrew texts, the Dead Sea scrolls, were penned on parchment beginning 850 years later.

The shard is now kept in a university safe while philologists translate it, a task expected to take months. But several words have already been tentatively identified, including ones meaning judge, slave and king.

The Israelites were not the only ones using proto-Canaanite characters, and other scholars suggest it is difficult - perhaps impossible - to conclude the text is Hebrew and not a related tongue spoken in the area at the time. Garfinkel bases his identification on a three-letter verb from the inscription meaning to do, a word he said existed only in Hebrew.

"That leads us to believe that this is Hebrew, and that this is the oldest Hebrew inscription that has been found," he said. ...

Some scholars and archeologists argue that the Bible's account of David's time inflates his importance and that of his kingdom, and is essentially myth, perhaps rooted in a shred of fact.

But if Garfinkel's claim is borne out, it would bolster the case for the Bible's accuracy by indicating the Israelites could record events as they happened, transmitting the history that was later written down in the Old Testament several hundred years later. ...
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Experts aim to decipher ancient script

2,500-year-old writing found on stone tablets in Portugal
ASSOCIATED PRESS - February 28, 2009
ALMODOVAR, Portugal - When archaeologists on a dig in southern Portugal last year flipped over a heavy chunk of slate and saw writing not used for more than 2,500 years, they were elated.
The enigmatic pattern of inscribed symbols curled symmetrically around the upper part of the rough-edged, yellowish stone tablet and coiled into the middle in a decorative style typical of an extinct Iberian language called Southwest Script. ...
For more than two centuries, scientists have tried to decipher Southwest Script, believed to be the peninsula's oldest written tongue and, along with Etruscan from modern-day Italy, one of Europe's first. The stone tablet features 86 characters and provides the longest-running text of the Iron Age language ever found.
About 90 slate tablets bearing the ancient inscriptions have been recovered, most of them incomplete. Almost all were scattered across southern Portugal, though a handful turned up in the neighboring Spanish region of Andalucia.
Some of the letters look like squiggles. Others are like crossed sticks. One resembles the number four and another recalls a bow-tie. They were carefully scored into the slate. The text is always a running script, with unseparated words which usually read from right to left.

Little known about the ancient language
... Though the evidence is gradually building as new tablets are found, researchers are handicapped because they are peering deep into a period of history about which they know little, says professor Pierre Swiggers, a Southwest Script specialist at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Scientists have few original documents and hardly any parallel texts from the same time and place in readable languages.
"We hardly know anything about (the people's) daily habits or religious beliefs," he says.
Southwest Script is one of just a handful of ancient languages about which little is known, according to Swiggers. The obscurity has provided fertile ground for competing theories about who wrote these words.
It is generally agreed the texts date from between 2,500 and 2,800 years ago. Most experts have concluded they were authored by a people called Tartessians, a tribe of Mediterranean traders who mined for metal in these parts - one of Europe's largest copper mines is nearby - but disappeared after a few centuries. Some scientists have proposed that the composers were other pre-Roman tribes, such as the Conii or Cynetes, or maybe even Celts who roamed this far south.

Clues to the puzzle
Another translation difficulty is that the writing is not standardized. It seems certain that it was adapted from the Phoenician and Greek alphabets because it copied some of their written conventions. However, it also tweaked some of those rules and invented new ones.
Experts have identified characters that represent 15 syllables, seven consonants and five vowels. But eight characters, including a kind of vertical three-pronged fork, have confounded attempts at comprehension.
There's also the problem of figuring out what messages the slate tablets are intended to convey. Even when they can read portions of text, scientists don't really understand what it is saying - like a child mouthing the words of a Shakespeare play.
"We have a lot of doubts," says Guerra, who has written scholarly articles about Southwest Script. "We can read characters and see the phonetics in action ... but when we try to understand what they actually mean we have a lot of problems."
There are clues, however.
The symmetrical, twisting text gives the impression of a decorative flourish. Some stones also feature crudely rendered figures, such as a warrior carrying what appear to be spears. The lower part of the rectangular stones is left blank as if intended to be stuck in the ground.
That has led experts to a supposition: The tablets were gravestones for elite members of local Iron Age society. Repeated sequences of words perhaps mean "Here lies..." or "Son of...," Guerra explains. Since most people probably couldn't read, the ornamental elements lent distinction. ...
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While I was observing, behold, a male goat was coming from the west over the surface of the whole earth without touching the ground; and the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes.
- Daniel 8:5

Unprecedented Miniature Carving of Alexander the Great Found

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz - August 26, 2009
Excavations in Tel Dor have turned up a rare and unexpected work of Hellenistic art: a precious stone bearing the miniature carved likeness of Alexander the Great. Archaeologists are calling it an important find, indicating the great skill of the artist.

The Tel Dor dig, under the guidance and direction of Dr. Ayelet Gilboa of Haifa University and Dr. Ilan Sharon of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, has just ended its summer excavation season. For more than 30 years, scientists have been excavating in Tel Dor, identified as the site of the Biblical town of Dor. The town's location, on Israel's Mediterranean Sea coast some 30 kilometers south of Haifa, made it an important international port in ancient times.

"Despite the tiny proportions - the length of the gemstone (gemma) is less than a centimeter and its width less than half a centimeter - the artist was able to carve the image of Alexander of Macedon with all of his features," Dr. Gilboa said. "The king appears as young and energetic, with a sharp chin and straight nose, and with long, curly hair held in a crown."

According to the archaeologists involved in the Tel Dor excavations, the discovery of the miniature Alexander gemstone carving in Israel is fairly surprising. The Land of Israel was not, for the Greek Empire, a central or major holding.

"It has been accepted to assume that first-rate artists - and whoever carved the image of Alexander in this gemstone was certainly one of them - were primarily active under the patronage of the large royal courts in Greece itself or in major capitals," the scientists explained. "It turns out that local elites in secondary centers such as Dor could allow themselves - and knew to appreciate - superior artwork." ...
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Artifacts may identify biblical Sodom

KRQE-TV CBS 13/16 ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO [LIN TV Corporation] - By Kim Vallez - May 15, 2009
ALBUQUERQUE - An Albuquerque archeologist and his team have returned with artifacts from a dig site near the Dead Sea which they believe reveals the lost city of Sodom.
Dr. Steven Collins and a team of about 70 have spent the last four years digging in Jordan. They have recovered thousands of artifacts, most of it pottery.
They have also discovered human and animal bones, jewelry and weapons.
"We have some Roman from the Iron Age, say from about 600-700 BC, going all the way back to Bronze Age, even very early in the bronze age going back to about 3000, even back as early as 4000 BC," Collins said.
Collins and his team have brought all the pieces back to Albuquerque for further study.
"Human beings are very prone to fads, and in pottery the pottery forms are changing constantly over time," Collins said. "No one uses them for more than 35 years or so.
"By identifying the forms that are tied to certain periods we can date the layers of dirt that we are digging."
Collins said based on the location of the site and the age of the pottery they believe they have in fact found the lost city.
"The prescribed profile from Bible is that we would have a Middle Bronze Age city that was destroyed and not reoccupied for some time," Collins said. "That's exactly what we've got ...
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Shedding light on the Catacombs of Rome

BBC NEWS [PSB operated by BBC Trust] - By Duncan Kennedy - May 3, 2009
Rome's underground Christian, Jewish and pagan burial sites, the Catacombs, date back to the 2nd Century AD.
ROME -- There are more than 40 of them stretching over 170km (105 miles).
But, until now, they have never been fully documented, their vast scale only recorded with handmade maps.
That is now changing, following a three-year project to create the first fully comprehensive three-dimensional image using laser scanners.
A team of 10 Austrian and Italian archaeologists, architects and computer scientists have started with the largest catacomb, Saint Domitilla, just outside the Italian capital.
The tunnels, caves, galleries and burial chambers of Saint Domitilla stretch for about 15km (9 miles) over a number of levels.
At a time when Christians, in particular, were persecuted, the Catacombs became a relatively safe place to bury the dead. ...

Scanner
The new, moving, images of this entire underground system will change all that and open up this beautiful subterranean world in a way that it has never been seen before. ...
Gone are the days when archaeologists just used shovels, brushes and sieves to unearth the past.
The scanner has been placed in hundreds of different locations in the Catacombs.
It turns slowly, sending out millions of light pulses that bounce off every surface they come into contact with. The light pulses rebound back into the scanner and are recorded on a computer as a series of white dots, known as a "point cloud".
Gradually, every wall, ceiling, and floor is bombarded with the dots, enabling the computer to build up a picture of each room.
Eventually, the computer completes a 360-degree, three-dimensional, moving image of that room, with every surface looking like it is made up of small white dots. ...

'Real data'
When the process is finished, it looks like an actual film of the particular room in question. ...
The final result is astonishing.
On a computer screen, you can now see the whole underground complex. Using different buttons on the key pad, you can zoom in on the tunnels.
You can travel "through" walls, down corridors and into chambers, giving the first real sense of its beauty, scale and detail.
Paintings on walls, which have not been seen in nearly 2,000 years, are now visible - their colours vivid and clear. ...
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Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?

LONDON DAILY MAIL [Associated Newspapers/DMGT] - By Tom Cox - February 28, 2009

Ed. Note: The real Garden of Eden was destroyed by the flood during the days of Noah, nevertheless, this is an interesting find.(See link to original article for pictures)

For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.
The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.

They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.
A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd's find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones.
They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations.
As he puts it: 'As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn't walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.'

Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University.
David Lewis-Williams, professor of archaeology at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, says: 'Gobekli Tepe is the most important archaeological site in the world.'
Some go even further and say the site and its implications are incredible. As Reading University professor Steve Mithen says: 'Gobekli Tepe is too extraordinary for my mind to understand.'

So what is it that has energised and astounded the sober world of academia?
The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge.
Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images - mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions.
The stones seem to represent human forms - some have stylised 'arms', which angle down the sides. Functionally, the site appears to be a temple, or ritual site, like the stone circles of Western Europe.

To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated.
So far, so remarkable. If Gobekli Tepe was simply this, it would already be a dazzling site - a Turkish Stonehenge. But several unique factors lift Gobekli Tepe into the archaeological stratosphere - and the realms of the fantastical.

The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old.
That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC.
Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.

How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food.
The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site.

This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.
It's as if the gods came down from heaven and built Gobekli for themselves.
This is where we come to the biblical connection, and my own involvement in the Gobekli Tepe story. ...
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4,000-year-old temple discovered in Cyprus

Structure predates any found on the Mediterranean island by a millennium
ASSOCIATED PRESS - By Menelaos Hadjicostis - March 27, 2009
NICOSIA, Cyprus - An Italian archaeologist claimed Friday to have discovered Cyprus' oldest religious site, which she said echoes descriptions in the Bible of temples in ancient Palestine.
Maria Rosaria Belgiorno said the 4,000-year-old triangular temple predates any other found on the east Mediterranean island by a millennium.
"For sure it's the most ancient religious site on the island," she told The Associated Press from her home in Rome. "This confirms that religious worship in Cyprus began much earlier than previously believed."
But authorities on the island say they cannot confirm her claim before further study.
"That the site is dated to around 2,000 B.C. is certain, but the interpretation that it's a temple or a sacred site has yet to be confirmed," Cyprus Antiquities Department official Maria Hadjicosti told state radio.
The 200-sq.-meter (2,150-sq.-foot) building was discovered last year outside Pyrgos, a village near the south coast, where previous digs unearthed a settlement dating to 2,000 B.C. that included a perfumery, winery and a metal workshop. ...
She said evidence points to a monotheistic temple with a sacrificial altar that resembles Canaanite places of worship described in the Bible.
"The temple has a very peculiar shape for a building, which is very rare."
Belgiorno said a key piece of evidence linking the site to Biblical accounts of temples in ancient Palestine is a pair of 6-meter (20-foot) stone "channels" extending from either side of the altar that allowed sacrificial animals' blood to flow out of the structure. ...
Although it is difficult to say with certainty, she said the settlement was home to around 500 people. Their origins are unclear, but they had trade links with ancient Egypt and Palestine, she said. ...
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Desert Secret Cracked: Ancient Hunting Techniques Revealed

ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Baruch Gordon - March 2, 2009
How did humans living in the third millennium BCE manage to find sufficient quantities of meat in the arid desert regions? A new study of the "desert kites" that are spread across the expanses of Israel's Negev and Arava desert region, carried out by researchers from the University of Haifa, unearths the answer to this riddle.
Already in the early 20th century, British pilots flying over the Middle Eastern deserts identified strange forms spreading over hundreds of meters, sometimes even over a few kilometers. The shapes looked like two long walls that meet at angles and at the meeting point of each wall was a round-shaped trench.
To the pilots, the shapes resembled kites, hence the name given to them: "desert kites." A few such "kites" are known of in the deserts of Jordan, Syria, Israel, and Sinai. Archaeologists have suggested a number of theories as to the uses of these constructs, most supposing that they were used for hunting purposes, others suggesting that they served as cattle pens.
A few weeks ago, an interdisciplinary research group, funded by National Geographic, completed an encompassing survey of all eleven "kites" of the Negev and Arava, which included archaeological digs in four "kites", detailed documentation by means of state-of-the-art measuring instruments, aerial and ground photography, and dating by means of two independent radiometric methods.
The study's findings have clearly shown that these "kites" were used as mass hunting apparatus, dating back no later than the third millennium BCE. "When standing in one of these kites, it is astounding to see how it fits into the landscape and how the wild animals' migration routes would converge into the hidden kite," stated Dr. Bar-Oz. "Only then can one grasp how much energy and strategic understanding were invested in its construction." ...
According to the researchers, the hunting method involved directing the indigenous wild animals alongside the walled branches of the kite toward its tip and its trench, where hunters awaited them. ...
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Ancient camel-butchering tools found in Boulder

Cache of 83 sharpened rocks buried in resident's front yard
COLORADO DAILY.com [Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group/E.W. Scripps] - By Laura Snider - February 25, 2009
BOULDER, Colo. - Patrick Mahaffy was just getting a little routine landscaping done outside his home at the foot of Flagstaff Mountain - a work crew was shaping a small drainage ditch - when a shovel hit stone.
The "chink" of the impact sounded odd, so the crew poked around, and just 18 inches beneath the soil surface they made an extraordinary find: 83 stone tools left in a cache 13,000 years ago by people who used the sharpened rocks to butcher ice-age camels.
Of course, the biochemical evidence that the tools were used for prehistoric camel slaughter - along with the discovery of protein residue from sheep, bear and horses - didn't come until later, when curiosity drove Mahaffy, who guessed the tools were just a few hundred years old, to call the University of Colorado.
His call was routed to anthropologist Douglas Bamforth, who tends to field questions from locals who have found something odd in the dirt. ...
"This is the only time in my career that this is ever going to happen to me," Bamforth said. "To have something like this appear - to have it be what it turns out to be - it's quite spectacular." ...
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