We visited Christ Church inside Jaffa Gate on Sunday morning.
We walked through Hezekiah’s tunnel.
A group of Jews ready to enter Temple Mount
Western Wall, where people come to pray.
Mount of Olives. A Jewish cemetery covers much of the slope. There is a Jewish tradition about being first in line for the resurrection.
Southwest corner of Temple Mount. The tumble at the bottom of the wall is from the Roman destruction in 70 AD, left where it fell. Notice where an archway was attached to the wall. A street with shops was inside the arch and a bridge to the temple was on top of it. This corner was the place of the blowing of the shofar, according to an inscription found below.
The men’s section of the Western Wall. The arch in the corner is known as Wilson’s Arch for the archeologist who discovered it. There’s a spacious prayer room inside.
Dome of the rock. Mount Moriah, threshing floor purchased by David, Solomon’s Temple, Second Temple, all here. A holy site for both Jews and Muslims.
Just inside the Eastern Gate, over there…
Muslim family feeding pigeons next to the Dome of the Rock
Some of the stones in the first step may be repurposed from Hezekiah’s temple platform, which was a square 500 cubits by 500 cubits.
Dr Stripling is taking us on a bus tour today. We visited the Opus Reticulatum, a retaining wall for a palace of Herod here at Banias Spring (known as Caesarea Philippi in the New Testament era). This is a recent discovery. Frankie was part of the finding and uncovering.
There are two parallel walls.
Banias Spring is one of three springs that feed the Jordan River. The water is from the melted snows of Mount Hermon.
Here you can reach out and touch Lebanon.
Golan Heights
The trail to Banias waterfalls
Banias Waterfalls
The fortified Israelite city at Tel Dan
Here’s where the king would sit in the gate. This is inside the outer gate. Gates were for justice, economics, worship, security.
Large area for commerce between the outer and inner gates.
The golden calf worship site that Jeroboam set up in Dan.
This large rock is either “tumble” or part of the Roman era wall. To remove it we broke it into pieces and carried them out.
While excavating to find the northeast corner of the monumental building I ran into a lot of pottery pieces, or potsherds. Can you find any in the picture?
We went up on the flying saucer tower for a group photo. I took this wide view of our work areas from there.
The wet sifting station provides opportunity for those who are not as physically able to do the digging. Frankie Snyder, who found the lead tablet in Mount Ebal, supervises this area.
Instead of definitively finding the northeast corner, we unearthed three complete pottery vessels. We bagged the vessels separately so they can be reconstructed.
Here’s Frankie doing wet sifting.
Here’s a flint blade I found today.
Here’s how I left it at the end of the week. I was able to excavate to the second course of stones near the end of the wall. I had to stay away from the buried pottery. We think we’re near the corner. More excavation in our quarter square and the one adjacent will bring more clarity. The later structures repurposed stones from the original building, making a complex puzzle.
A section of the northern wall was removed and another built over it. We removed the later Roman era wall. Now we want to find out if the original wall extends beyond this area. We really want to find the corner of the monumental building.
Ellen made a number of good finds in our area today. Three coins and a piece of jewelry. We’re digging the Roman era layer.
Here’s a coin. I’m not allowed to publish pics of our best stuff.
Here’s the new square we started today to find the corner of the monumental building.
Thursday, MAY 29
This morning we continued our quest to find the wall and corner. We are working inside a 2.5 meter by 2.5 meter square.
I spent some time dry sifting. Here’s a nice pottery handle I found. Reading pottery styles is one of the most reliable methods of determining the age of a layer.
At the dry sifting station we dump gufas of dirt onto a suspended screen and shake it.
Then we pick through what’s left, looking for pottery, bones, flint, or other objects. We bag the remainder and send it to wet sifting.
By end of day we made significant progress. We’re seeing a promising outline of a wall. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have some solid conclusions on the cornet, and from that, dimensions of the monumental building.
Some of us took time to see the red heifers kept at Shiloh. They are Red Angus, and came from Texas. They are kept in anticipation of performing the purification sacrifice described in Numbers 19.
On Thursday, May 23, Andrew, Ruby and George flew to Israel via Athens, Greece. Ruby will be helping on a kibbutz for a few days; Andrew and George are volunteering at an archeological dig at Shiloh. They were there before, in 2023.
Arriving at Ben Gurion Airport. We had the weekend free to visit friends and explore Jerusalem before going to Shiloh.
We visited Jonathan and Charlene Hollinger Friday evening and Saturday. We plan to visit them with our tour group in October.
We’re in Abraham’s neighborhood. We wonder what the climate and land were like. He must have had more rainfall than today. The layer with the holes is a softer sand that birds can nest in.
Zion (his name) gave me a trim. Then offered to take us to the yeshiva. He said they have 10,000 students, including from America.
The yeshiva consists of multiple buildings here in the Haredi section of Jerusalem. They study out loud in small groups. The room was quite noisy, to me.
Zion says they can recognize their hats and don’t need names in them.
Walking toward Jaffa Gate to enter the Old City.
Visited Moshe at his Shorashim Shop,
and Udi at his studio.
Monday, MAY 26
Breakfast, then ready for the day.
We’re at Shiloh ready for orientation.
“Archeology does not change the Biblical text; Archeology illuminates the Biblical text.” – Dr Scott Striplin
I’ve been assigned to work on a wall of the “monumental building.” We expect the building is the stone structure that was built to house the tabernacle. The tabernacle was at Shiloh for more than three centuries. If current analysis is correct, the wall we’re excavating is the northern wall of the holy place. Ellen Jackson, with her metal detector, visited our area three times today. On her first visit she found a coin where I was excavating.
I’m digging a trench along the wall to expose a couple of courses of stone to confirm it is part of the building. I’m below the first course. We work slowly and carefully to recover any artifacts. We found a good bit of pottery inside the building and very little outside.
Ellen zeroing in on an object. We record the elevation where it was found.
Archeological music. The oldest known preserved hymn with musical notation. It dates to 200 AD, found in northern Africa. It is trinitarian, naming Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We sang it (in English).
Tuesday, MAY 27
Today started out cloudy, and was generally much cooler than yesterday’s 96 degrees.
I finished out the section of wall I was clearing yesterday.
Each “gufa” of soil that goes to the sifting station is labeled with the square number, locus, and pail number. The floppy buckets are called gufas. Archeology tools in Israel are generally referred to by Arabic terms.
George found a nice pottery handle.
Sand bags are used to delineate and protect the squares. I did some sand bag replacements today.
Our team found a flint blade in dry sifting.
I found a cute little scorpion.
There’s a Roman era wall intersecting our more ancient wall. We’re trying to clarify what is original wall, and ultimately find the northeast corner of the monumental building. I hope we find it this week. Otherwise, I won’t be there for the discovery.
Roman era Jews built these storage silos inside the ancient building site. The builders were apparently oblivious of the historical significance of the site. I guess we’d call the storage pits “Shiloh silos” or “silos of Shiloh.”
At Shiloh we used the normal excavation method of working in 5 meter squares. We “drain the bathtub,” taking down the level of the square in a uniform fashion, unearthing pottery pieces and other objects inside the square.
In addition, they have a full-time metal detectorress, Ellen Jackson. She usually finds several coins per day around the site. When she comes to your square, you remove all the metal tools and vacate the area. Usually it’s time for a water break.
One of the unique features here is the emphasis on sifting. All of the dirt, minus the rocks, from the square is sifted. The team on dry sifting finds additional bones, flint, pottery, etc. The small pieces left in the sifter screen are then bagged in mesh bags.
The bags from dry sifting are then wet sifted. Additional small objects, including coins and scarabs, are found using this method. Julia and I first learned about wet sifting at the Temple Mount Sifting Project back in 2019.
We had a great week if digging and sifting. We’ll stay in the land for a couple days of exploring.
We’ve been on the dig for two days now. We’re enjoying it immensely. We start with breakfast at 4 AM and on the bus by 4:59. The trip from Jerusalem to Shiloh is through some amazing countryside.
We’re a onsite erecting shade cloth by 6 or earlier. We find about 2,000 pieces of pottery per day. Today we found a sling stone just outside the city wall. We’re working in a Bronze Age layer. George helped discover a wall.
We have lunch at 10:30. We stop digging at 1:00 PM. We wash the pottery, then stop at the gift shop for refreshments. The buses depart at 2.
With dinner at 6, we went exploring this afternoon. We went through Damascus Gate and did some shopping in the market. We visited Udi at Blue and White. We stopped by Moshe’s shop to say hello. We were going to take pictures at the cardo painting but the room was full of IDF soldiers.
We arrived in Tel Aviv on Saturday morning. George and Caleb are traveling with me on this archeological trip. We are participating in the dig at Tel Shiloh for a week. We spent most of the day setting in, resting, and eating.
Next day we joined a group of the dig people on a bus tour. Our first stop was Beit She’an.
After a lunch stop we visited the Harod Spring. The spring flows from a cave. This is the site of Gideon’s army being reduced to 300. The main point of this story is not that the 300 best men were chosen, but that the battle is the Lord’s.
We also visited Tel Jezreel. We saw a winepress, and thought about Naboth’s vineyard. The Tel was mostly unidentified stones, with nothing reconstructed.
Margaret said she planned to take us around the four other active dig areas in Megiddo next week. Some of us were staying for only the first week, so we did a mini-tour during our last break. Above, Area Z is digging next to the Solomonic Gate to find walls in the area. Caleb was working in this area.
Area K found a human skull. They were on the perimeter of the tell.
Area X found some interesting items, including a gold earing from the Assyrian period.
Area S was digging into the Bronze Age.
I took some final photos of “my” dig site in Area R. We had found a lot of interesting pottery pieces and the bathtub piece. Some orangish and blackened areas gave hints of mud bricks. Was it the floor we were looking for, or material from a collapsed wall? I’ll need to leave it to others to find out.
We enjoyed participating in the expedition. It was hard physical work at times. But the opportunity to participate in discoveries, learn from experienced archeologists, and interact with others interested in the past made it a worthwhile experience.
Each day we ride the bus to Tel Megiddo, arriving at 5:00 AM. We climb the steep walkway to our dig site. We pass through the Solomonic Gate before the sun is up. In the picture above you can see the empty trailer waiting for our buckets of excavated dirt.
We’re digging up bones, pottery, and even what might be a piece of a bathtub. The sun has risen a million times on Megiddo since this stuff was last used.
The first job upon arrival is to raise the shade cloth.
By the time the sun comes up the dig work is well under way.
By breakfast time at 8:30 we had the first trailer load ready to go. We’re doing faster digging in some of the loci with fewer artifacts.
What interesting things might be just below this surface? We’re still looking for a floor, but so far we haven’t found one in this locus. Finkelstein is pretty sure we found a connecting wall to the original “monumental wall” that brought their interest back to this site. He believes this may be an administrative building for Megiddo.
