This past month stories about an ancient ring, an ancient shipwreck, and the identification of ancient Assyrian army camps hit the news. Here are the top three reports in biblical archaeology from June 2024.
3. 2,300-Year-Old Gold Ring Discovered in Jerusalem
A small gold ring with a red garnet gemstone was recently discovered in the Givati Parking Lot excavations in the City of David National Park. The ring dates to the Hellenistic era and was likely made for a child. It was constructed of hammered gold leaves attached to a metal ring base. During the Hellenistic era trends in jewelry changed, with people preferring gold with inset stones instead of the earlier style of decorated gold. The artifact indicates that some of the city’s elite lived in this area of the City of David 2300 years ago.
NEWS LINKS: https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-803824
2. Late Bronze Age Canaanite Shipwreck Discovered off the Coast of Israel
The world’s oldest deep-sea shipwreck was recently discovered in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea by an energy company surveying the seafloor ahead of a gas field development. The ship sank approximately 3300 to 3400 years ago 56 miles (90 km) off of the northern coast of Israel and lies at a depth of 1.1 miles (1.8 km). A robotic submersible was used to investigate the shipwreck and bring up two jars, which have been identified as typical Canaanite storage jars from the Late Bronze Age. Organic material was taken from the jars and has been sent to the Israel Antiquities Authority laboratories for residue analysis. The cause of the shipwreck is unknown, but it may have been caught in a storm or sprung a leak on its way to one of the Phoenician port cities of Tyre, Sidon or Byblos. The discovery demonstrates that mariners in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC could sail in the middle of the sea, out of site of the shoreline, contrary to what many scholars previously believed.
3. Scholar Claims to Have Located the Camps of the Assyrian Army at Lachish and Jerusalem
In the most recent issue of the journal Near Eastern Archaeology (Vol. 87, no. 2), in an article entitled, “The Trail of Sennacherib’s Siege Camps,” Stephen C. Compton claims to have located Assyrian siege camps at Lachish, Jerusalem and other locations. Compton compared details in the famous Lachish reliefs from Sennacherib’s palace with the landscape seen in early aerial photos prior to urbanization and identified the oval-shaped camp the Assyrians used in 701 BC when attacking the city. He also discovered that this site had pottery sherds from the eighth century BC, but had no evidence of occupation before that, nor for hundreds of years afterward. Compton also noted that the Arabic name for the site was Khirbet al Mudawwara, meaning “The Ruins of the Camp of the Invading Ruler.”
Compton then noted an oval-shaped site near Jerusalem on a hill named Jebel el Mudawwara (“The Mountain of the Camp of the Invading Ruler”). He believes this site to be the Assyrian camp used during the siege of Jerusalem in the days of Hezekiah, and he further identifies the location with the former city of Nob, based on Isaiah’s description of the Assyrians stopping at Nob when they attacked Jerusalem (Is 10:24–32). This hill is now called Ammunition Hill due to its use as a British ammunition depot in the 1930’s.
Based on evidence from these two Assyrian camps, Compton has identified other oval-shape sites that use the toponym Mudawwara as Assyrian military camps from Sennacherib’s campaign in 701 BC, which is described in the Bible (2 Kgs 18 –19; 2 Chr 32; Is 36 –37).
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