This Week in the Ancient Near East

Missing basilicas, poison rats, and Trojan Horses? Holy Jerusalem earthquake Batman! Yes, that too and more in our end of summer stranger than fiction fantastic archaeology ripped from the headlines roundup episode! Our contestants are on the clock and it’s like Hollywood Squares without Paul Lynde! Or is it? 

First sharks and now pigs? What’s going on in Iron Age Jerusalem with all these non-kosher species? Were Judeans in the shadow of the Temple noshing on something naughty or are there other explanations? Are there ever! Our panelists'  speculations are unbridled in this laughter filled episode.

 

To learn more

https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/cryptic-2700-year-old-pig-skeleton-found-in-jerusalems-city-of-david-673989

It’s only four little letters, well maybe five, but another tiny Iron Age inscription has raised more than a few eyebrows. What’s the significance of this latest scribble? Is it the name of a biblical character, or the name of a guy who didn’t want his lunch stolen? And why are our panelists talking about being stuck in a suburban cul-de-sac?

 

To learn more

Five-letter inscription inked 3,100 years ago may be name of biblical judge

https://www.timesofisrael.com/five-letter-inscription-inked-3100-years-ago-may-be-name-of-biblical-judge/

The ‘Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’ is the latest high profile example of a forged ancient text. Scholars should have known better, but hey, where’s the fun in that? When Fox Mulder meets Elaine Benes the sparks fly and scholarship takes it on the chin. Our panelists are there ringside, sagely opining.

 

To learn more

A Scholarly Screw-Up of Biblical Proportions

https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-scholarly-screw-up-of-biblical-proportions

A bunch of 80 million year old shark teeth in Iron Age Jerusalem have set the archaeological world ablaze. What are they doing there along with 10,000 fish bones and six and a half tons of pottery? It’s gotta be a joke, right? Do our panelists speculate wildly or do they jump the shark?

 

To learn more

Cache of 80-million-year-old shark teeth found in Solomon-era site in Jerusalem

https://www.timesofisrael.com/cache-of-80-million-year-old-shark-teeth-found-in-solomon-era-site-in-jerusalem/

Iron Age figurines in the Southern Levant depict naked women and not a lot else. The usual explanations are goddesses or magical devices related to fertility. But isn’t everything sort of related to fertility? What were mostly male Biblical Archaeologists missing? Probably quite a bit. Our panelists wax eloquent in this family friendly episode.

 

To learn more

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-birth-rites-in-canaan-the-enigma-of-the-figurines-1.9892078

Is the third millennium BCE burial mound at Tell Banat in north Syria a war memorial to the site’s defenders? What moves the living to take a random sample of human and animal bones and bury them in a mound that looms over their community? What is a kunga anyway and how does the modern sport of donkey basketball fit in? Our panelists are strangely eloquent, in an episode not to be missed.

 

To learn more

Pyramid-shaped mound holding 30 corpses may be world's oldest war monument

https://www.livescience.com/oldest-war-monument-discovered-syria.html

Resurrection genomics sounds fancy, even a little scary, but in this case it means cultivating date trees from ancient seeds and then sequencing their genes. What do we learn about the antiquity of this ever-popular fruit? And if dates are so great, how come the tree is the symbol and not the fruit? Our panelists are torn, yet characteristically sweet and sticky.

 

To learn more

 

Researchers Sequence Genomes of Revived 2,000-Year-Old Date Palms

http://www.sci-news.com/genetics/judean-date-palm-genomes-09627.html