The Ophel ostracon or KAI 190, is an ostracon discovered in Jerusalem in 1924 by R. A. Stewart Macalister and John Garrow Duncan, in the area of Wadi Hilweh (known as the City of David). It is attributed to the 7th century BCE.
The Ophel ostracon or KAI 190, is an ostracon discovered in Jerusalem in 1924 by R. A. Stewart Macalister and John Garrow Duncan, in the area of Wadi Hilweh (known as the City of David). It is attributed to the 7th century BCE.
Macalister and Duncan described the discovery as follows, referring to the 1909 expedition of Montagu Brownlow Parker: [1]
This sherd was discovered in the large cave under Field No. 9, and seems to have formed part of the dump which the Parker party deposited in that cave; its exact original provenance is therefore uncertain, though it must have come from somewhere in the neighboring tunnel, and probably not far off.
The ostracon measures 4 inches by 3 inches. The inscription, written in Pre-Exilic Hebrew, is thought to have originally been eight lines, of which five are decipherable (the first four and the last). According to a 2015 study, "virtually all scholars agree that it contains a list of personal names with theophoric elements." [2]
It is currently at the Rockefeller Museum.[ citation needed ]
The City of David, known locally mostly as Wadi Hilweh, is the name given to an archaeological site considered by most scholars to be the original settlement core of Jerusalem during the Bronze and Iron Ages. It is situated on southern part of the eastern ridge of ancient Jerusalem, west of the Kidron Valley and east of the Tyropoeon Valley, to the immediate south of the Temple Mount.
The archaeology of Israel is the study of the archaeology of the present-day Israel, stretching from prehistory through three millennia of documented history. The ancient Land of Israel was a geographical bridge between the political and cultural centers of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Gezer, or Tel Gezer, in Arabic: تل الجزر – Tell Jezar or Tell el-Jezari is an archaeological site in the foothills of the Judaean Mountains at the border of the Shfela region roughly midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It is now an Israeli national park. In the Hebrew Bible, Gezer is associated with Joshua and Solomon.
An ostracon is a piece of pottery, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel. In an archaeological or epigraphical context, ostraca refer to sherds or even small pieces of stone that have writing scratched into them. Usually these are considered to have been broken off before the writing was added; ancient people used the cheap, plentiful, and durable broken pieces of pottery around them as a convenient medium to write on for a wide variety of purposes, mostly very short inscriptions, but in some cases very long.
Khirbet Beit Lei or Beth Loya is an archaeological tell in the Judean lowlands of Israel. It is located about 5.5 km southeast of Tel Lachish and ten miles west-northwest of Hebron, on a hill 400 m above sea level.
The Paleo-Hebrew script, also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in inscriptions of Canaanite languages from the region of Southern Canaan, also known as biblical Israel and Judah. It is considered to be the script used to record the original texts of the Hebrew Bible due to its similarity to the Samaritan script, as the Talmud stated that the Hebrew ancient script was still used by the Samaritans. The Talmud described it as the "Libona'a script", translated by some as "Lebanon script". Use of the term "Paleo-Hebrew alphabet" is due to a 1954 suggestion by Solomon Birnbaum, who argued that "[t]o apply the term Phoenician [from Northern Canaan, today's Lebanon] to the script of the Hebrews [from Southern Canaan, today's Israel-Palestine] is hardly suitable". The Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets are two slight regional variants of the same script.
The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society based in London. It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem by Royal Engineers of the War Department. The Fund is the oldest known organization in the world created specifically for the study of the Levant region, also known as Palestine. Often simply known as the PEF, its initial objective was to carry out surveys of the topography and ethnography of Ottoman Palestine – producing the PEF Survey of Palestine. Its remit was considered to fall between an expeditionary survey and military intelligence gathering. There was also strong religious interest from Christians; William Thomson, Archbishop of York, was the first President of the PEF.
The Large Stone Structure is the name given to a set of remains interpreted by the excavator, Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar, as being part of a single large public building in the City of David, presumably the oldest settlement core of Jerusalem. Mazar tentatively dated the findings to the tenth to ninth century BCE. Mazar chose this particular name for the alleged structure because of its proximity to another site known as the Stepped Stone Structure. Mazar announced the discovery on 4 August 2005, and stated that she believed it may be the remains of King David's palace as recorded in the Books of Samuel. The interpretation of the remains as those of one single building, the suggested date, and the association with King David have all been challenged by other well-known archaeologists. The archaeological dig was funded privately by Roger Hertog, an American banker.
Eilat Mazar was an Israeli archaeologist. She specialized in Jerusalem and Phoenician archaeology. She was also a key person in Biblical archaeology noted for her discovery of the Large Stone Structure, which she surmised to be the palace of King David.
Gihon Spring or Fountain of the Virgin, also known as Saint Mary's Pool, is a spring in the Kidron Valley. It was the main source of water for the Pool of Siloam in Jebus and the later City of David, the original site of Jerusalem.
Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister was an Irish archaeologist.
The Samaria Ostraca are 102 ostraca found in 1910 in excavations in Sebastia, Nablus led by George Andrew Reisner of the Harvard Semitic Museum. Of the 102, only 63 are legible. The ostraca are written in the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, which very closely resemble those of the Siloam Inscription, but show a slight development of the cursive script. The primary inscriptions are known as KAI 183–188.
The Stepped Stone Structure is the name given to the remains at a particular archaeological site on the eastern side of the City of David, the oldest part of Jerusalem. The curved, 60-foot-high (18 m), narrow stone structure is built over a series of terraces. A casemate wall adjoins the structure from a northerly direction at the upper levels, and may have been the original city wall.
Ophel, also Graecised to ophlas, is the biblical term given to a certain part of a settlement or city that is elevated from its surroundings, and probably means fortified hill or risen area. In the Hebrew Bible, the term is used in reference to two cities: Jerusalem, as in the Book of Chronicles and the Book of Nehemiah, and Samaria, mentioned in the Books of Kings. The Mesha Stele, written in Moabite, a Canaanite language closely related to Biblical Hebrew, is the only extra-biblical source using the word, also in connection to a fortified place.
The Southern Wall is the retaining wall of the Temple Mount at the southern end. It was built during King Herod's expansion of the Temple Mount platform southward on to the Ophel.
The Givati Parking Lot dig is an archaeological excavation located in Silwan. It is adjacent to the City of David archaeological site. The dig was conducted by Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets of the Israel Antiquities Authority and underwritten by the City of David Foundation.
The Cave of Nicanor is an ancient burial cave located on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. Among the ossuaries discovered in the cave is one with an inscription referring to "Nicanor the door maker". The cave is located in the National Botanic Garden of Israel on the grounds of the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The Ophel pithos is a 3,000-year-old inscription on a fragment of a ceramic jar found near Jerusalem's Temple Mount by Israeli archeologist Eilat Mazar.
Dan Warner is the former Director for The Michael and Sara Moskau Institute of Archaeology and the Center for Archaeological Research, and former professor of Old Testament and Archaeology at the biblically inerrantist New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and is a co-director of the Tel Gezer Water System excavation and preservation project. He has also served various roles on other excavations at Tel Kabri, Megiddo, Tell el-Far'ah, Gerar, and Ashkelon.
The Ophel treasure is a 1,400-year-old collection of 36 gold coins and a large gold medallion discovered in 2013 on the foot of Jerusalem's Temple Mount by archeologist Eilat Mazar. The medallion is engraved with Jewish symbols like a seven-branched menorah, a shofar and a Torah scroll.