Lovers of the Land today have a vast array of resources which make it possible to transport themselves there in imagination. There are CD ROMs, videos and satellite atlases. But, could any flyover give you that feeling of exactness you get when reading Smith’s Historical Geography (p.81): “There is the perspective of the Jordan Valley as you look up from over Jericho, between the bare ranges of Gilead and Ephraim, with the winding ribbon of the river’s jungle and the top of Hermon, a white cloud in the infinite distance. There is Gilead, where you ride, 2000 feet high, under the boughs of trees creaking and rustling in the wind, with Western Palestine before you. There is the moonlight view out of the bush on the north flank of Tabor, the leap of the sun over the edge of Bashan, summer morning in the Shephelah and sunset over the Mediterranean, when you see it from the gate of the ruins on Samaria down the glistening Vale of Barley?”

George Adam Smith, a Scottish Old Testament scholar, made four visits to the Land between 1880 and 1904, before the great changes which were wrought on the country by European colonists and Jewish immigrants. His intention in writing a Historical Geography was to: “give a vision of the Land as a whole” and to “help you to hear through it the sound of running history.” He certainly succeeded in meeting these aims. Some of our Israeli colleagues had memorised whole chunks of HGHL (as it was affectionately called)! Our much-missed friend and colleague, Yizhar Hirschfeld, once delighted us with a rendition of Smith’s description of Tel Gezer: “: “Shade of King Horam , what hosts of men have fallen round that citadel of yours! On what camps and columns has it looked down through the centuries, since first you saw the strange Hebrews burst with the sunrise across the hills, and chase your countrymen down Aijalon – that day when the victors felt the very sun conspire with them to achieve the unexampled length of battle. Within sight of every Egyptian and Assyrian invasion of the land, Gezer has also seen Alexander pass by, the legions of Rome in unusual flight, the armies of the Cross struggle, waver and give way, Napoleon come and go, and British yeomen come and stay. If all could rise who have fallen around its base – Ethiopians, Hebrews, Assyrians, Arabs, Turcomans, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Saxons, Mongols and English – what a rehearsal of the Judgement Day it would be!” (p.154).

But we treasure this work, not just for Smith’s unforgettable prose, but also for his erudition. His depiction is bolstered by reading that embraces the entire culture of the Middle East, much of it absorbed in the original languages. He quotes Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, Greek, French and German sources with the same facility as he does English. Herodotus steps out with the general to whom Napoleon dictated his memoirs of the campaigns in Egypt and Syria. Nasir-i-Khusrau is in there with Gertrude Bell and even some of his own Bedouin guides are quoted. But most of all it is the Hebrew Scriptures that he mines for his review of the various invasions the Land has undergone because, as he writes: “to these the pages of prophecy are as sensitive as the reedbeds of Syria to the passage of the wind and the flood” (p. 35).

It is as a preacher and teacher that he was best known. However, one of his travel companions observed that he would have made a great general, as he had both the natural gift of leadership and the commander’s eye for country. Another great general, General Allenby, consulted Smith’s Historical Geography daily (together with his Bible), using it as a kind of military handbook in the Palestine campaign of 1917/18. Indeed, the German-Turkish army was defeated by a surprise British attack in Michmash in a replay of Jonathan’s rout of the Philistines in the same place recorded in 1 Samuel 14. Both Jonathan, with his armour-bearer and the British force had to creep up the same gorge, the Wadi Suweinit, with the rocky outcrops known as Bozez and Seneh on either side, in order to reach the enemy camp. Another boon for the British Army was the fact that when their stores of water ran dry in that parched land, they were able, through studying HGHL and its original maps, to rediscover many wells whose location had vanished from local memory.

The Historical Geography of the Holy Land is a classic, not in the sense of a respected book gathering dust on a bookshelf, but as a trusty tool of the trade, stuffed into the pocket of every serious explorer of the Land from his time and since. And if you cannot make the journey, just open the book, with an atlas by your side. Every page is a picture-frame, capturing the essence of and deeply enriching our experience of that “glory of all lands.”

All quotes from The Historical Geography of the Holy Land are from our yellowed and watermarked 1966 Fontana Library Edition, Third Impression, 1973.

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MK Nisim Ze’ev (Shas) said the matter was a very serious one. “The Jerusalem Municipality is allowing complete abandonment of territory and assets,” he said. “The Arabs are trying to conquer the Land of Israel in every possible way. If we do not wake up to their conniving ways we will find ourselves before a gaping chasm. We need to plow the area and take down all of the fictitious tombs.”

Hopefully, the un-dead in the fake tombs will not be so powerful when their un-existing remains and their rough stone enclosures will be removed.

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11th Annual Archaeology Conference
CITY of DAVID Jerusalem, Israel

Wednesday September 1, 2010
From 4:00 pm visit new excavation sites in the City of David
The City of David

18:30  Gather in the City of David, Area E

19:00  Opening Remarks

Ahron Horovitz, Director of the Megalim Institute
Representative of the Israel Antiquities Authority
Guy Alon, Israel Nature and National Parks Authority

19:15
First Session - Chair: Prof. Aaron Demsky
Prof. Jodi Magness
Archaeological Evidence of the Sassanid Persian Invasion of Jerusalem

Prof. Zohar Amar, Dr. David Illouz
The Persimmon in the Land of Israel

Ms. Sara Barnea
The History of the Mapping of the Jewish Cemetery on the Mount of Olives

20:40 Break

21:00
Second Session - Chair: Dr. Hillel Geva

Dr. Doron Ben-Ami, Ms. Yana Tchekhanovets
The Givati Parking Lot – Roman-Period Discoveries and Finds

Eli Shukron, Prof. Ronny Reich|
The excavation between the stepped Shiloah Pool and the interior face
of the damming wall at the southern end of the Tyropoeon Valley,
Jerusalem

Prof. Ronny Reich, Eli Shukron
The Large Fortification Near the Gihon Spring in Jerusalem, and its

Relationship to Wall NB Discovered by Kathleen Kenyon

22:00 Estimated end of conference

Entrance is free, but spaces are limited (there is no advance registration)
It may be cold at night so dress accordingly

Parking is available in the Mount Zion Parking Lot and the Givati
Parking Lot (for a fee)
Public Transportation: Buses 1, 2, 38.

HT: Joe Lauer

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One of the first lessons I was taught during the MA course in the Conservation of Ancient Buildings at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies of the University of York, UK, was that one NEVER uses ordinary Portland cement in the repair of ancient buildings. It prevents ancient walls from “breathing” and eventually causes the collapse of these walls. The Waqf’s continued use of modern building materials in the repair of these bulges and other walls is the equivalent of putting a time-bomb in the walls of the Temple Mount.

Hershel asks himself the question about the remaining scaffolds: “They’ve been there now for several years. How much longer?” I can’t aswer that question, but I am sure that the unsightly repairs won’t be there for ever, for the ancient Temple Mount walls keep absorbing, not only the normal amount of rain water, but also the added amount of water that runs off the new paving that was laid at the southern end of the Temple Mount and that was also sealed with Portland cement. When ancient walls can’t breathe, they eventually collapse.

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Five stages in the Way of the Cross

The traditional Via Dolorosa or Path of Sorrows was fixed by monks in Western Europe in the eighteenth century and a devotional procession along this route is still led by Franciscans every Friday. In fact, the streets upon which Jesus walked lie about 10 feet below the level of these thoroughfares. By contrast, The Way to Golgotha is firmly based on Scriptural and archaeological evidence, with the claims of the two alternative sites for the crucifixion clearly evaluated.

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The culmination of the life’s work of Anson Rainey, probably the world’s greatest authority on Semitic languages, together with Steven Notley, a notable New Testament scholar, this book contains learning more typical of nineteenth century scholarship, coupled with twenty first century presentation. Its prototype was the seminal Macmillan Bible Atlas, by Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, first brought out by Jerusalem’s Carta publishers in 1968 and which covered numerous aspects of the Biblical period.

The premise of this latest title is set forth in the blurb: “The Land of Canaan, the Land of Israel and early Roman Judea are treated as the southern part of the Levant, and as the focus in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean history. The Levant is the land bridge between Asia and Africa, between Greco-Roman culture and the coasts of Arabia. As such it has seen the influx of peoples bringing new blood and initiatives to the life of the region. It has also suffered the conquerors’ heel as ancient empires sought to dominate this geographical hub of communications and commerce. The historical experience of the southern Levant, well documented in the Bible and in many inscriptions from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia, has become enshrined in Jewish/Christian tradition … It is therefore more than a land bridge between different cultures. It is a bridge of faith.”

The Sacred Bridge‘s main distinguishing feature is that it utilises the languages of the written sources to cast light on the Bible and its geography. Biblical texts are considered side by side with the other ancient Near Eastern sources, Egyptian, Akkadian, West Semitic and Greek. The use of colour coding makes a book with so many academic features more accessible. References are printed in red, original texts in light blue, with their translation in dark blue. It is very moving to read Lachish Letter No. 4, which bemoans the fact that the fire signals of Azekah, the only other fort remaining in Judah against Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign could no longer be seen from Lachish, in the original. There are very few books in the popular domain in which this is possible.

Produced by Israel’s best-known cartographic publishers, its maps, needless to say, are excellent and we have used them extensively in our work for a new digital Bible. On numerous occasions while mapping journeys, we were struck by the inevitability that Biblical characters chose to go by a certain route because of historic connections. An example of this would be the fact that both King David and Jesus crossed over the Brook Kidron after their betrayal. With the help of this magisterial volume, you too will be able to “pass through” Bible lands, as did the Hebrews (whose name literally means “passer through”), and absorb the lessons embedded in these singular places.

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Several pieces of the world’s oldest and largest unsolved jigsaw puzzle, a 2,200-year-old map of Rome made of thousands of marble fragments, could be unearthed next year following construction work for a new metro line near Rome’s majestic forum area.
“This is a unique occasion to excavate the Forum of Peace, where the map once stood,” Rossella Rea, director of the Colosseum, told the Italian financial daily “Il Sole 24 Ore.”
Carved into marble slabs around  210 A.D., during the rule of the emperor Septimius Severus, the map was originally hung on a wall in the Templum Pacis (Temple of Peace), which stood in the middle of an enclosure called Forum of Peace.
The wall still survives today in a building near the 6th-century Church of Santi Cosma e Damiano. Rows of holes where the map was attached using bronze clamps can still be seen.

Surviving wall of the Temple of Peace. Bronze clamps were fixed in the holes of the wall to keep the marble slabs in place

Reporter Rossella Lorenzi mentions the fascinating connection with the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD:

The centerpiece of the Forum of Peace was indeed the temple. Built in 71-75 A.D by Vespasian, the Temple of Peace celebrated the brutal pacification of the Jews and the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
Tons of gold, silver trumpets and gold candelabra were plundered from the Jerusalem temple and paraded through Rome’ streets in triumph.
The moment was captured in a frieze carved into the Arch of Vespasian’s son, Titus, which clearly shows the menorah, the seven-branched temple candelabra that was the symbol of ancient Judaism, being exposed through the streets.
Between 75 A.D. and the early 5th century, the treasure, which helped finance the building of the Colosseum, was put on public display right in the Temple of Peace.
Although it is unlikely that fragments from the treasure are unearthed, the archaeologists hope to bring to light other precious remains from the Forum of Peace.

Marble pieces from the Forma Urbis Severiana - the Plan of Rome in about 210 AD

HT: Joe Lauer

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The report tries to draw a historical parallel with the Temple Mount that stood in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago:

Two thousand years ago, stone bridges connected the Jewish Quarter directly to the Temple Mount, saving the high priests the long trek down and back up.

There was actually only one bridge, namely the Bridge of the Priests that was constructed over Wilson’s Arch between the Temple Mount and the Upper City – now the Jewish Quarter. The other arch, Robinson’s Arch, carried a stairway down to the street along the Western wall:

Despite the fact that the exit of the tunnel will be located about 1,000 feet to the west of the Temple Mount, according to this report the Arabs are, predictably, against it.

The purpose of the underground elevator “would greatly improve access for visitors in wheelchairs or those with other disabilities, who now have to contend with several flights of stairs”, but the Arabs claim “that the area in front of the wall could be used as a base from which to attack the mosque compound.” Even helping disabled people in Jerusalem is looked upon as suspicious by the Arabs.

HT: Joe lauer

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The more we read, the more the city of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel stepped out of the shadows and into our comprehension. We were cool university students no longer, when we perhaps did not appreciate the richness of the Library of the Academy in Arnhem or Dublin’s splendidly domed National Library. We hungered to understand the lessons that the past of our adopted country could teach us.

Reading Jerusalem Revealed, when it came out in 1975, was an epiphany, making sense of the results of the explosion of excavations that had become possible after the 6-Day War. We carried single volumes of Josephus around in our pockets, seeking his contemporary witness to the ancient city we were trying to build up in our minds. We scrutinised the tractates of the Mishnah, some of which were written by rabbis who had observed the ritual of the Temple prior to its destruction in 70 A.D. Each book stood out like a milestone and we felt that we were becoming the sum of the books we had read. We must remember that because of the unprecedented opportunities in archaeology at that time, there was a flowering of works reporting on the dramatic new discoveries. Kathleen remembers comparing the books that were appearing then, with the single book, Kenyon’s Archaeology in the Holy Land, that was recommended for her course on this subject in University College Dublin in the early 70′s!

Now we live in Cardiff, Wales, far from the enticements of the Bodleian and British Libraries. However, due to our drawings being printed in numerous publications and the requests for book reviews we receive, we have managed to amass our own extensive private library. We can truly say that our books transport us every day to the Land, allowing us to live a life unfettered by sea or border crossings. In our book-lined space, we can explore Jerusalem’s Gihon Spring, walk around the destroyed city walls with Nehemiah or bring in our boat to harbour in first century Capernaum – all without leaving our chair.

Despite the dominance of Google, we are often asked to recommend books to our readers. For that reason, we hope to regularly post reviews of publications (and occasionally movies or software) we consider useful, defining and illuminating. Look under the Recommended menu for reviews of works that will stand the test of time!

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By Anshel Pfeffer, August 12, 2010

Tons of rubble was removed from under Temple Mount by the Muslim authority that oversees the site

An investigation into the failure of law enforcement agencies to prevent what is alleged to have been an attempt to wipe out Jewish history on Temple Mount 11 years ago looks set to cause widespread controversy.

The publication of the report into the removal, by night, of 6,000 cubic metres of mud from beneath the Al Aqsa Mosque by the Muslim Wakf authority that oversees the management of the mosque compound, has been suppressed for months by the government.

The dirt was dug out to make way for a new underground mosque, but Israeli archaeologists and politicians claim that another motive of the Wakf and the Islamic Movement – which financed the work – was to remove evidence of Jewish history from the site where the two temples of Jerusalem stood.

The excavation and building was carried out without any official permit from the planning authorities. Belated intervention by the Justice Ministry, spurred on by a rare petition signed by politicians, writers and archaeologists from the right and the left, brought the digging to an end, but it was too late.

Thousands of volunteers have been sifting ever since through the hundreds of tons of dirt, dumped in a valley east of Jerusalem, unearthing rare remnants of the Temple Mounts from all ancient periods of Jerusalem, going back to the Bronze Age. Among them were fragments and coins from the First and Second Temples, and relics of the Persian, Babylonia, Maccabean, Herodean, Roman, early Christian and Byzantine eras. The work is of questionable historic value as the rules of archaeology mandate that findings should be recorded in their original location, but is still ongoing.

Meanwhile, for the last three years, the Comptroller’s Office has been conducting an investigation into the way the Israeli government, the police and Jerusalem City Hall have relinquished control of the sacred site.

“The conclusions are clear,” says one source who has seen the report, “Israeli law ends at the gates to the Temple Mount.”

The reason for this is the same motive that has caused the government to try and suppress the report for the past few months, previous attempts to enforce Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount have provoked widespread Palestinian violence, as did the visit of the opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, in September 2000, which sparked the second intifada.

“On the one hand, no government wants to be seen as impotent,” said a security official in Jerusalem, “but they prefer keeping the status quo on the Temple Mount to another intifada with all that entails. Even when the report finally gets out, the government will do everything in its power to play it down.”

HT: Joe Lauer

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