Last time I talked about the earliest evidence of human activity on Malta. Over time, other groups would come. The Phoenicians arrived around the 8th century BC. Phoenicia was the coastal lands north of ancient Israel roughly compromising modern-day Lebanon. They were a sea-faring people, venturing across the Mediterranean. Solomon got cedars from them to build the Temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 5). He also sailed with them, bringing in exotic items from afar (1 Kings 10:22). Phoenicia established a city in northern Africa called Carthage. After Phoenicia was taken out by Assyria, Carthage rose up to dominate the western […]
Category Archives: Travel
Arrival on Malta
Land! After two long weeks trapped in a storm aboard a rocking ship, it must have felt great to finally be back on the ground. The Apostle Paul and the others traveling with him had endured a very rough voyage. In the end, their ship ran aground and was torn apart but everyone made it ashore. But where were they? They had made it to the island of Malta. This is where my latest journey began. Flying in to Malta’s airport, we felt some sympathy for Paul and his companions as we endured some rough turbulence on our way in. […]
A Three Hour Tour
Waves. Wind. The churning sea. Imagine waking up for the fourteenth day in a row in the midst of a storm that has been battering a ship. Not a modern cruise liner but a Roman grain vessel. The crew has worked tirelessly this whole time, simply trying to keep it all together (physically and mentally). Any hope of controlling the vessel has long past. They just have to wait and see where the winds take them. Sailors have always had this aura of being tough. You have to be in order to battle such elements. Ancient ships stayed close to […]
The Journey to Rome
After all this had happened, Paul decided to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. “After I have been there,” he said, “I must visit Rome also.” Acts 19:21 Rome. What does that name conjure up in your mind? To those living around the Mediterranean in the first century AD, it represented the power ruling their world. Caesar ruled from Rome. It was a system that either served you, making you rich and enabling a good life. Or you were an oppressed people that had been conquered and heavily taxed, simply trying to eek out an existence. Or you […]
Tent Specifications
Celebrate this as a festival to the Lord for seven days each year. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come; celebrate it in the seventh month. Live in temporary shelters for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in such shelters. Leviticus 23:41-42 The festival of Sukkot (tablernacles/booths) is upon us again! It began Monday. I’m typing this from within my sukkah (singular of sukkot). When I was in Israel this summer at a place called Neot Kedumim, I wandered around an area they have of various sukkot. The sages decided what made for […]
The Cover Up
As the dig came to a close, we had one final task on our last day: cover up what we found. One of the problems with archaeology is that it’s inherently destructive. You can only dig something up once. Sometimes, an exposed area is left for people to see. Other times it is buried again to preserve it. Our area was in between those extremes. First, we took some large rolls of material to cover over the major pieces of our area, steadying it with rocks and the jute bags that lined around our excavated area. Normally, this would be […]
Hard Rock
I’ve talked about digging up pottery and bones. Is that all? There’s more to find than that! There are a plethora of rocks to find, too! Rocks are numerous in Israel. Generally what survived was made out of rock, which was (and continues to be) a plentiful building material in Israel. However, not all rocks are useful. We dug through plenty of rocks which were not of any interest. Such rocks were called “floating”, meaning they were floating in the dirt and not attached to anything. We ended up with a sizable rock pile by the time the dig ended. […]
Bone Head
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. Ezekiel 37:1-2 Last time I wrote about digging up pottery. That isn’t the only thing we found during the dig. I frequently found bones, too. Why are bones useful to find? Let me give you a few examples! Bones show what […]
Pot Head
“Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground.Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’Does your work say, ‘The potter has no hands’? Isaiah 45:9 I dug up a lot of pottery at Tel Dan. Some sherds (broken pieces of pottery) are small while others are large. The most important pieces are those with distinctive attributes, like handles, bases, or rims. Most body pieces aren’t distinctive enough for good analysis. Why is pottery so important? Pottery is used to date what […]
Dirty Business
An archaeological dig involves, well, lots of digging. We have been moving a lot of dirt out of Area T1 at Tel Dan. Some of it goes to sifting, but most of it is dumped in a nearby pile (we do look through it while digging, but I’m sure plenty has been missed). We’ve been searching for an Assyrian wall that was assumed to go through the area because it was mapped in other places. The dig was a total of four weeks long and I was part of the last two. Watch the progression of our excavation! (Click for […]