Jug that contained the hoard and close-up of hoard before conservation. Photo by Gabi Laron, Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Posted on 03/22/2014 6:31:28 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Today the location is known as Tel Abel Beth Maacah, an archaeological site that has been identified by biblical scholars as the likely location of an ancient city that, at one time, may have had important Aramean connections. It is mentioned a number of times in the biblical account, including the battle related to the revolt against David by Sheba ben Bichri. In the early 19th century BCE it was conquered by Ben-hadad of Damascus, and by the Neo-Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III in 733 BCE. Scholars suggest that it may have been at one time the capital of the Aramean kingdom of Maacah.
The site is historically important for its strategic location, controlling the roads leading north to the Lebanese Beq‘a, northeast to inner and northern Syria and into Mesopotamia, and also west to the Lebanese/ Phoenician coast. But despite this location and the prominence of the imposing mound containing its remains, the site has never been excavated until now. Early surveys were conducted in 1973 by William G. Dever of the University of Arizona, yielding evidence that suggested that the site was occupied from Early Bronze Age (third millennium BCE) up to the time when the city was destroyed by the Neo-Assyrian monarch Tiglath-pileser III in 733-32 BCE, but pottery from the Persian, Hellenistic, Roman-Byzantine, Arabic, and Ottoman periods was also found. A small Arab village occupied the site until 1948, and its remains can still be seen today.
(Excerpt) Read more at popular-archaeology.com ...
Jug that contained the hoard and close-up of hoard before conservation. Photo by Gabi Laron, Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
nice how they’re digging, discovering so much there.
but it sure seems our ancestors spent 90% of their time making clay pots, doesn’t it? Pots, pots, pots, and more pots.....in all of these excavations....clay pots...
(I guess we can’t blame the ancestors, they didn’t have the benefits of Hollywood, internet porn, and lying political speeches to entertain them....)
Broken pottery shards must have been really common as the ancient Athenians used them (ostrakons) to vote with. they would scratch their vote on the shard and drop it in the box.
Sounds a lot more trustworthy than voting machines.
There sure weren’t any hanging chads.
No hanging chads. But a lot of hanging shards?
Clay pots were the microchips of their day.
Their clay pots are our micro- chips of today, since most of their pots are all broken up into chips when we find them.
Oh you gave a mild but very pleasant LOL on that one. God bless you.
“Palestinians” nowhere in sight.
Check behind your local grocery store for the number of cardboard boxes they go through, then add beverage cans and bottles to that number.
Container choices at that time would have been pretty limited, and pottery lasts a long time buried in the dirt :)
Ceramic vessels don’t bounce well.
Clay pots remain when lots of other things decay into dust; also, the contents of the pots were more important at the time, and those were consumed, then the pots reused to hold water (in an arid climate, such as this) and whatever else, or discarded.
In fact, one reason many of those ancient amphorae have pointed ends is to prevent reuse, basically, planned obsolescence. The people making the pots and selling the pots didn’t want pots making a return trip or two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Testaccio
Those clay vessels were also chamber pots-I read in a textbook years ago that those potshards were also used to denounce those who had done something outrageous/scandalous by scratching the name of the perpetrator on a bunch of shards and dumping them on his/her doorstep in the dead of night-the symbolism being that person is being shunned/not fit to be pissed on...
Apparently, clay pots were the aluminum cans, wine bottles, Tupperware and toilet fixtures of the day.
I knew it. Bush stole the election there too... [laughs]
Finding that hoard of silver sure put a smile on his face!
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