News and Notes -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Bible and Spade (Second Run)
Volume: BSPADE 02:1 (Winter 1989)
Article: News and Notes
Author: Anonymous


News and Notes

Second International Conference on Biblical Archaeology in 1990

Organized by the Israel Exploration Society and The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, this conference will be held in Jerusalem June 24-July 4, 1990. The Congress will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first stratigraphic archaeological excavation at Tell el-Hesi, by Sir Flinders Petrie. For information, contact: The Israel Exploration Society, PO Box 704 I, Jerusalem, Israel.

[Watch also for announcements of ABR sponsored digs. We plan to coordinate an excavation with the conference so that volunteers can take advantage of both.]

Find from Solomon’s Temple?

Israeli officials paid $550,000 to a secret Swiss bank account to have a small ivory pomegranate returned to the country. It is believed to be the only remaining relic of Solomon’s Temple. The thumb-sized object is on display in the Israel Museum.

Written on it is an ancient Hebrew inscription that reads, “Belonging to the Temple of the Lord (Yahweh), holy to the priests.” This is the oldest-known Hebrew inscription using the four letter (Tetragrammaton) word for God. It is dated by the paleography (very ancient style of writing). (From the Des Moines Register, 8/30/88, with photo.)

Report of Bryant Wood’s England Research

During September 1988, ABR staff member Bryant Wood visited seven museums in England and Scotland holding finds from Jericho excavated by Englishman John Garstang in the 1930’s. Dr. Wood’s objective was to identify and draw pottery from the Late Bronze I period (ca. 1500–1400 BC).

This pottery, which Garstang found in abundance, is important because it provides evidence that Jericho was destroyed at the time of Joshua (ca. 1400 BC) rather than at the end of the Middle Bronze period (ca. 1500 BC}, or not at all, as some say. Although cooking pots, one of the most indicative pottery types of the period, were chiefly drawn, dipper Juglets, bowls and a store jar were also found - all LB I. Most of the material, and the best of it, is under the care of the University of Liverpool and its museum. People responsible for the Jericho collections at each institution were very helpful, as well as museum curators.

Dr. Wood plans to publish his finds in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly as soon as possible. His continual accumulation of evidence that Jericho was violently overthrown in ca. 1400 BC after all, controverts what most scholars have held as a result of Kathleen Kenyon’s excavations in the 1950’s. She had convinced them, on the basis of her mostly unpub-

lished results, that there was no Late Bro...

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