Israel

2021.04.30 - Royal Purple Dye Unearthed on Textile Fragments in Israel

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Royal Purple Dye Unearthed on Textile Fragments in Israel

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Archaeologists in Israel have discovered small fragments of preserved purple fabric. Carbon dating places its creation around 1000 B.C. Purple is a color that has long been associated with royalty and is mentioned in the Jewish and Christian Bibles, including in garments worn by King David, King Solomon, and Jesus.
“The gorgeous shade of the purple, the fact that it does not fade, and the difficulty in producing the dye, which is found in minute quantities in the body of mollusks, all made it the most highly valued of the dyes, which often cost more than gold,” says lead author Naama Sukenik, a curator of organic materials at the IAA in the research statement.
The fragment was unearthed during excavations at a site in Timna, 220km south of Jerusalem. The research, published in PLOS One, was undertaken in a collaboration between the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), Tel Aviv University, and Bar Ilan University.
“The colour immediately attracted our attention, but we found it hard to believe that we had found true purple from such an ancient period,” says study co-author Erez Ben-Yosef, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University, in the statement.

Animal-based purple dye manufacturing methods in antiquity

Derived from the bodies of mollusks, the dye used on the wool fibers was extremely valuable in the ancient world. Previous excavations had found the color on mollusk shells and pottery fragments, but not on fabrics. This animal-based dye was very difficult to extract, and required a specialized chemical process to create, which lasted days.
The sophistication and knowledge required to manufacture the dye was so specialized that it’s another indicator that this color was reserved only for those of the highest status.
Archaeologists have been working to discover tangible evidence from the reign of King David, as it’s of special importance for all three of the big monotheistic faiths. The fact that the people in that region at the time would have been nomadic has made this difficult, however, as the displays of wealth would not have been through great palaces or monuments.
“Archaeologists are looking for King David’s palace. However, David may not have expressed his wealth in splendid buildings, but with objects more suited to a nomadic heritage such as textiles and artifacts,” says Ben-Yosef.
2019.10.13 - New Technology Enlivens Old Find - Reading Unreadable Dead Sea Scrolls

Archival Work, Book Repair and Restoration/ Digitization/ History

How New Technologies Enliven Old Finds

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It takes an expert eye to decipher old and damaged manuscripts, but even that is not enough sometimes. Recently, multispectral technology has aided researchers of the Dead Sea Scrolls to read ink invisible to the naked eye and pinpoint previously unknown texts.

First stumbled upon by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 and then thoroughly excavated by archaeologists throughout the 1950s, the Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of texts (mainly of manuscripts and fragments) spanning the third century BCE to the first century CE. Together, they offer the most exhaustive glimpse into the world of Second Temple Judaism. They have been extensively researched for many decades, reshaping our understanding of Judaism as it looked at the time of their authorship. 

Most impressively, this investigation dealt with texts, which, while uniquely well preserved because they happened to remain in large clay jars in sealed caves, were notoriously difficult to work with. Scholars had to draw on knowledge of ancient literary and religious works, philology, and linguistics to reconstruct full texts from the fragments and impartial scrolls that remained. For all of their success, some manuscript fragments were so worn by age that the ink had become indecipherable to the naked eye. It seemed that nothing could be done to discover what they had originally said. 

That is, until recently it seemed that way. At the international symposium commemorating the 70th anniversary of the first discovery of the scrolls, a team of researchers at the Dead Sea Scrolls Project presented their efforts to decipher some of these fragments using multispectral imaging. It employed a range of different lights to enhance the chemical compositions in the manuscript itself so that the ink invisible to the naked eye stands our more boldly. Initially designed for capturing images in space, it allowed the researchers to uncover the existence of a unique scroll not found in any of the other caves, as well as cast light on an old debate about the number of copies of the Temple Scroll in cave 11.

Check out this article for more information about the discovery, as well the article in the Times of Israel, which features quotes and context on the discovery from the researchers.

2019.05.15 - Line 31 in the Mesha Stele is Restored, Confirming a Biblical Story

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Line 31 in the Mesha Stele is Restored, Confirming a Biblical Story

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It was traditionally thought that the missing letters on line 31 of the Mesha Stele, an inscribe Moabite stone dating around 840 BCE, referred to the “House of David” until a group of archaeologists published an article last week disproving that reading. Experts agreed that the Mesha Stele describes how the god of Moab assisted King Mesha in rising against the kingdom of Israel that had conquered Moab. The stone is written in Old Hebrew Script detailing events that coincide with the third chapter of the second book of Kings. The 31st line contains a couple of clearly defined words followed by the Hebrew letter ב / bet; the first letter of an unknown name that must logically follow the previous words.

In the latest article about the stone, three issues were raised about the traditional reading of the stone. One of the concerns was why Mesha would call the enemy by this term “House of David” when he could simply refer to the proper noun Omri, King of Israel? Another question was about chronology, where there was a fundamental contradiction. There is no proof that the weak 9th-century BCE Kingdom of Israel occupied Moab. In fact, Kings 2 chapter 3 details a failed campaign by the Kingdom of Israel and Judah to conquer Moab.

Once the previous reading was debunked, the researchers revisited what the name in line 31 could be. They noticed a vertical line following the three letter space after the bet, signifying the end of a line. Going through the short list of 4 letter names that start with a bet, the researchers decided that Balak King of Moab makes the most sense. Mesha included the king Balak in the stone to give authority to the biblical story of Balak, who sent Balaam to curse the Jewish people. The story of Balak and Balaam was transcribed from oral recitation much earlier than the inscribing of the Mesha Stele meaning that the reference to Balak was with purpose and has significant importance to the contents of the Stele.

Further reading: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/figure/10.1080/03344355.2019.1586378

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