arqueologia

Sobre o túnel recentemente descoberto em Jerusalém, um bom lugar para se ler sobre o assunto e ver fotos é o BiblePlaces Blog de Todd Bolen.

Veja o post First Century Drain Found in Jerusalem. E não deixe de ler os comentários ao post.

Veja, em artigo do jornal israelense Haaretz, de 23/08/2007, assinado por Ofri Ilany, como o estudo das mudanças climáticas ocorridas no passado ajuda a explicar situações históricas, como o (des)povoamento de uma região e deslocamentos de grupos humanos em um território.

Aqui, na região costeira de Canaã, na Idade do Bronze.

 

Researchers say communities abandoned the coastal plain in the Bronze Age due to climate change and flooding

The history of the Land of Israel over the last few thousand years has been fraught with upheavals and wars, and the arrival and disappearance of many peoples. A recently published study raises the possibility of a different kind of cause for shifting settlement patterns in the land some 5,500 years ago: Climate change led to the flooding of the coastal plain (which had been a populated commercial and settlement center) and the creation of many swamps.

The concentration of population, commerce and trade in Israel’s coastal plain is not a phenomenon unique to our era. Even before the events the Bible describes in the Land of Israel, during the early first Bronze Age, 5,500 years ago, numerous communities dotted the coastal strip, from the vicinity of Gaza to the Galilee. The first royal dynasties appeared around that time in Egypt, and clay vessels uncovered in southern coastal communities indicate that the area (apparently under Egyptian control) served as an important trade route for the Egyptians.

And then, 5,500 years ago, say the archaeologists, there was a dramatic change. The coastal region was almost completely abandoned while concurrently in other areas an urban revolution was underway, with large fortified cities being built. After the era of urban, commercial prosperity, for almost a thousand years, the coastal plain mostly contained but a few small and scattered communities.

“The phenomenon is amazing,” says archaeologist Dr. Avraham Faust, director of Bar-Ilan University’s Institute of Archaeology. “There was a fairly large population in the coastal plain, and at the end of a relatively short process it emptied almost completely. In the alluvial areas, nearly all of the communities disappeared. The Egyptians also abandoned the coastal plain and trade no longer passed that way.”

Faust adds: “The key question that engaged us is why? What caused the community to disappear?” His research with Dr. Yosef Ashkenazy, a climate researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, suggests a comprehensive explanation of the phenomenon: The Canaanite coastal settlements were abandoned in the face of environmental change. Increased precipitation led to the flooding of parts of the coastal plain and to a rise in the level of groundwater, which eventually resulted in the spread of swamps, and that apparently caused the residents to leave the area.

The two researchers’ article appeared recently in the journal Quarternary Research. As part of the study, Faust and Ashkenazy compared the archaeological findings on the thinning of communities in the coastal region with data indicating a rise in precipitation in the relevant period. Among other things, the researchers rely on measurements of precipitation during earlier eras, taken from the Nahal Sorek stalagmites, and evidence of changes in the level of the Dead Sea.

According to Faust, the limestone ridges of the coastal plain blocked the flow of surging rivers, creating a drainage problem, and the swelling waters caused swamps to appear specifically in this area. There are findings that indicate a peak level of swamps in this era, says Faust. Excavations in Tel Aviv, at the Exhibition Grounds, uncovered a settlement that was abandoned a little after 3000 BCE. It was covered by a layer of dark soil that proved to contain “a very high percentage of swamp flora,” says Faust.

One of the most interesting findings, indicating the likeliness of swamps in the coastal region, is the relative abundance of hippopotamus bones uncovered in excavations. Hippopotamuses thrived in the Land of Israel during prehistoric times and are identified as the “behemoths” mentioned in the Bible. The substantial evidence of an increased hippopotamus population indicates these animals came to enjoy more hospitable living conditions, i.e., more swamps, attesting to higher humidity levels.

Faust and Ashkenazy’s study considers the unexpected and considerable impact that climate change can have on a population. “It is usually believed that only a drop in precipitation leads to the abandonment of settlements,” say the researchers. “We are trying to show that an increase in precipitation can also have an impact.”

SAFE – Saving Antiquities for Everyone – é uma organização sem fins lucrativos dedicada a preservar a herança cultural mundo afora.

Our mission is to raise public awareness about the irreversible damage that results from looting, smuggling and trading illicit antiquities.

Dica de Jim Davila em PaleoJudaica.com.

Antonio Lombatti, em seu blog, tem um post de hoje com o título More ossuaries with the name “Jesus”.

Que trata de vários ossuários da mesma região onde Simcha Jacobovici diz ter encontrado O Sepulcro Esquecido de Jesus…

Há muitos sepulcros “encontrados” de Jesus! Vários ossuários trazem o nome “Jesus”…

Leia o post, que está em italiano, e veja as as fotos de ossuários e inscrições!

Sobre a tabuinha cuneiforme do Museu Britânico, decifrada e publicada nestes dias, e que cita Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, um personagem babilônico, supostamente também citado em Jr 39,3, leia o post abaixo de John Hobbins.

Como qualquer descoberta arqueológica que encontra possível correspondência em texto bíblico, também esta causa polêmica. Observo agora mesmo no blogroll do Google Reader que (hoje) multiplicam-se os posts sobre o assunto!

 

Jeremiah 39:3 and History: A New Find Clarifies a Mess of a Text – John Hobbins – Ancient Hebrew Poetry: July 13, 2007

News of an exciting find has been making the rounds of the media and biblioblogdom. It seems to me that what has been missing so far in treatments of the find is sufficient background in Assyriology to understand, not the tablet, but some of the ins and outs of the biblical text it supposedly confirms (according to some), or is more or less irrelevant to (according to others). I have read the posts by Chris Heard, Claude Mariottini, Jim West, Doug Chaplin, and Peter Kirk. This post takes its own way. I trust it will be found helpful.

This is the first post in a series. For later installments go here, here, and here.

Jeremiah 39:3 is rife with textual difficulties. The correct interpretation of the names and titles contained in it has eluded biblical scholars in the past because the obvious place to go to clarify its problems, the corpus of texts studied by Assyriologists, is little studied by them.

Assyriology is a field of study the advances of which have had a very uneven impact on the study of the Bible and translations thereof. Jeremiah 39:3 is a case in point, but it is by no means the only one. It is truly a case of: the harvest is bountiful, but the workers are few.

In light of all we know about personal names and official titles of the Neo-Babylonian era, three names and three titles are discernible in the garbled text Jer 39:3 contains.[1] With names and titles given according to the pronunciation they would have had at the time, Jer 39:3 is to be understood as follows:

All of the officers of the king of Babylon made their entry, and occupied the middle gate – Nergal-šarri-uṣur governor of Sinmagir, Nabu-šarrussu-ukin the Rab-ša-rēši, Nergal-šarri-uṣur the Rab-mugi, and all the other officers of the king of Babylon.

The personal name Nergal-šarri-uṣur, the name of both the first and third official, is known from neo-Babylonian sources. Nergal-šarri-uṣur son-in-law of Nabu-kudurri-uṣur (= the Nebuchadrezzar of Jer 39:1) ruled Babylonia from 560 to 556 bce. It is possible that the Nergal-šarri-uṣur who served as governor of Sinmagir for Nabu-kudurri-uṣur (605-562 bce) according to this text in the eleventh year of King Zedekiah (Jer 39:2: 586 bce), and said son-in-law of said Nabu-kudurri-uṣur who later ruled in his stead, are one and the same person. Nergal-šarri-uṣur governor of Sinmagir also appears in a prism fragment preserved in Istanbul. The prism dates to Nabu-kudurri-uṣur’s seventh year. A fine discussion of the text of the prism fragment is provided by David Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire and Babylon in the Latter Prophets (HSS 59; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999) 92-97.

The best way to construe Sinmagir or Simmagir when used in reference to high officials in Akkadian is disputed. As Kevin Edgecomb pointed out in offline correspondence, Sinmagir appears as the name of a king in the famous Sumerian King List. The best explanation I have heard so far – and it is Kevin’s – is that ‘of Sinmagir’ is short for ‘governor of (the house of) Sinmagir.’ The phrase attested elsewhere, šanû ša sinmagir, would then mean ‘the deputy of the governor of Sinmagir.’

The personal name Nabu-šarrussu-ukin follows a well-attested pattern and was attested before the discovery by Michael Jursa of a tablet including the name. As David Vanderhooft remarked, “A certain Nabû-šarrūssu-ukīn held the office of rēš šarri under Amel-Marduk in 561 B.C.E.” (The Neo-Babylonian Empire and Babylon in the Latter Prophets [HSS 59; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999] 151). It is possible that this is the same individual named as present in Jerusalem 25 years earlier according to Jeremiah 39:3. For details of Jursa’s tablet discovery among the many that have yet to be collated and published in the mass in possession of the British Museum, go here.

The tablet includes both the name and the title “Nabu-šarrussu-ukin the Rab-rēši [short for rab-ša-rēši],” is dated to the tenth year of Nabu-kudurri-uṣur, and is, in all probability, the very same person referred to in Jer 39:3. Rab-ša-rēši (rab-sārîs, a loanword, in Hebrew) is a well-attested title for a royal official, and is often translated “chief eunuch.” Said translation, however, is considered misleading by some scholars. Discussion of the issue is not possible here.

The title of the last person to be mentioned, another Nergal-šarri-uṣur, is ‘Rab-mugi,’ another high official of some sort. The title is well-attested in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian documents. See CDA, p. 215.

It does not matter what translation of the Bible you have (I checked NRSV, NIV, REB, NJB, NAB, and NJPSV): they all contain misinterpretations of one or more names and/or titles contained in Jer 39:3. Still, it must be observed: anyone with training in Assyriology could have come to the same, basically irresistible conclusions outlined above, which I came to. If I am the first to do so, I would be surprised.

Until now, the one missing piece of the puzzle was the exact name underlying –nebu Sarsechim in MT Jer 39:3 and Nabousachar in LXX Jer 46:3. Theoretically, an Assyriologist steeped in onomastica might have come up with the correct interpretation before Jursa’s discovery of the name Nabu-šarrussu-ukin on a tablet of the British Museum. [UPDATE: David Vanderhooft, cited above, did come to this conclusion in the 1990’s. For details go here.]

Bible scholars knowledgeable in Assyriology are rare birds. The reverse is also true.

In all probability, as said before, the ‘Nabu-šarrussu-ukin the chief eunuch’ of Jer 39:3 and the ‘Nabu-šarrussu-ukin the chief eunuch’ of Jursa’s tablet are one and the same person. For an identical conclusion, see Kevin Edgecomb’s comment to Chris Heard’s post. To suggest otherwise is a function of pre-understandings brought to bear on the text.

On the one hand, it is sensible to expect that in a case like Jeremiah 39, names and titles may have become garbled in the course of the textual transmission. In fact they have, big time. On the other hand, it is reasonable to expect that said names and titles nevertheless go back to reliable sources, oral or written. Jeremiah 39 is a pretty straightforward narrative, with theological and nationalistic biases by all means. But there are no imaginable theological or nationalistic reasons why an author would have invented names and titles for the high officials of Nebuchadnezzar’s army who presided over Jerusalem’s destruction.

Jursa’s tablet clarifies a mess of a text in the Hebrew Bible. For an identical conclusion, see Kevin Edgecomb’s comment to Chris Heard’s post. To suggest instead that it clarifies nothing at all, or that there was nothing to be clarified in the first place, just “confirmed” or “proven right,” misses the boat.

UPDATE: see now Chris Heard’s new post, which aligns nicely with the above, and Peter Kirk’s second comment here. SECOND UPDATE: Charles Halton’s comment below and another post by Chris Heard. THIRD UPDATE: Kevin Edgecomb’s post, which includes a helpful review of an excellent book by John H. Walton. FOURTH UPDATE: offline, Kevin Edgecomb has convinced me that ‘of Sinmagir’ is to be understood as ‘governor of Sinmagir.’ I have modified my post accordingly. Here is a summary of his argument.

Bibliography: CDA = A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian (ed. Jeremy Black, Andrew George, and Nicholas Postgate; SANTAG 5; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000).

If saying her name will truly secure her place in eternity, then Hatshepsut has nothing to worry about…

Como o nome Hatshepsut está em todas as bocas… logo a rainha egípcia não tem o que temer. Seu lugar na eternidade está garantido.

Hatshepsut reinou no Egito no século XV a.C. e era da Décima Oitava Dinastia.

 

Leia mais em Yet more re Hatshepsut, no Egyptology News, de Andie Byrnes.

 

If saying her name will truly secure her place in eternity, then Hatshepsut has nothing to worry about. However, I’ve added this page because it deals not only with the identification of the mummy, but also addresses other issues

A civilisation that flourished more than 3500 years ago still fascinates us. Dr Sabry Khater is well versed in Egyptomania. The head of the Egyptology sector of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities knows the power of our fascination with ancient Egyptian culture and how it helps drive some five million tourists to Egypt each year.

“People get crazy about Egyptology. They like to see more discoveries, more mummies, more gold and treasure. It’s like an adventure for them to come to Egypt.”

. . . .

In charge of all Pharaonic and Greco-Roman sites, Khater is responsible for both restoration and excavation. His focus today is putting in place management plans that balance the needs of tourists with preservation. Besides flash floods and a rising water table that threatens tombs that have survived 4500 years, his biggest headache is tourists exhaling – specifically inside tombs and temples where their moisture erodes the plaster and paint of murals. That’s led to limiting visitor numbers and rotating which tombs are open to the public.

Equally challenging is the eviction of villagers from historic sites. In Gurna on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor – the site of the Theban necropolis – bulldozers moved in last year to start dismantling the houses of about 2000 families living over the tombs.

A notícia é do fim de junho, portanto não é tão nova assim. Contudo, visite os sites indicados para ver as fotos. Pois, embora descoberta em 1903, só agora foi identificada a múmia da rainha egípcia Hatshepsut.

Belas fotos no site do Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretário Geral do Conselho Supremo de Antiguidades do Egito.

E as notícias e comentários no blog Egyptology News, de Andie Byrnes, de Londres, Reino Unido.

O colóquio sobre arqueologia e política com Terje Østigård na lista Biblical Studies, previsto para terminar hoje, foi prorrogado até dia 27. Aviso de Jim West, moderador da lista.

Isto porque o tema suscitou uma conversa bastante interessante e os participantes precisam de mais tempo para trocar idéias.

A lista de discussão Biblical Studies vai promover de 17 a 23 de junho um colóquio online com Terje Østigård a propósito de seu livro

Political Archaeology and Holy Nationalism: Archaeological Battles over the Bible and Land in Israel and Palestine from 1967-2000. Göteborg University: Gothenburg, 2007, 165 p.

O livro está disponível online em formato pdf na página do autor.

Para o debate sobre a chamada “arqueologia bíblica”, confira aqui.

Den Verrückten sage ich nur Verrücktes. Ao doido, doideiras digo.

Inspirado por Guimarães Rosa em Grande Sertão: Veredas, é o que penso que devo dizer destas falas do professor William Dever.

Que falas? As que estão na reportagem Archeology prof takes digs at some fellow academics.

Publicada pelo The Jewish news weekly of Northern California, com data de 1 de junho de 2007.

Se o link eventualmente parar de funcionar neste incerto jornal, confira a presepada do Dever aqui.