Ten Years Ago

It is time to walk down memory lane of ten years ago when I was on my second trip to Petra and my first to dig with Dr. Hammond at the Temple of the Winged Lions.

Seated at the table are Lin Hammond the dig administrator, Dr. Philip Hammond the dig director and Eudora Struble the Field Supervisor. This picture was taken in Amman the night before drove to Petra.

Eudora was a young woman whom I met on my dig in Ashkelon in 1999 and we remain friends. She is now writing her doctoral dissertation for the University of Chicago.

Six weeks of excavation were ahead of us and they were the leadership team that kept us on track and very active.

Another Papyrus Ebers Rx

A Remedy to Regulate Evacuation

Honey

Sasa-seeds

Wormwood

Elderberry

Berries of the uan-tree

Kernel of the ut’ait fruit

Caraway

Aaam seed

Xam seed

Sea salt

Form into a suppository and put into the rectum.

I wondered when those suppositories were invented. 3400 BC! Doctors!!!

Recipes from "The Papyrus Ebers"

I received a Christmas gift from my youngest darling daughter in the form of a book about an archaeology find of Egyptian Papyrus dating from about 3400 BC. The papyrus is a book of recipes for a doctor to prescribe for various aliments of the day. I will begin to share some of them with you over the next week.

For Constipation

A Remedy to clear out the body and get rid of the excrement in the body of a person:

Take the berries of the Castor oil tree – Chew and swallow down with beer in order to clear out all that is in the body.

Some things never change! 

Future Digs

Always in my mind I am looking forward to the next dig. When and where that will be I still do not know I only know that I long to go dig in the dirt.

There is a dig in Petra that I would love to finish but it looks like it will take a very long time before another university picks up the license to dig there. As I turn 70 on my next birthday I begin to wonder if I will get that chance. I am encouraged by having worked with others who were digging well into their eighties.

Roman Fresco in Petra

In this picture you see what is left of a fresco on an inside wall of a Roman Administration Building in Petra.

The rather rough wall was covered with very thick plaster to even it out and then had wonderful paintings all over it. To colors were brilliant and the scenes enchanting. 

This was one of many that were being removed for preservation and study at Brown University. Once the fresco's are uncovered the weather would have destroyed them in short order. 

I was glad that I was there to see it in place before it was removed.

The Bible in Jesus Day

Before the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D. there was no one list of sacred books that was considered authoritative. At that time there was, as yet, no clear order between Biblical books and non-biblical books. Even though all Jews accepted the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses, as the scriptural underpinning of Jewish ritual and daily life, the scrolls show that numerous variants of even these key books existed among different Jewish communities of the day.


The Hebrew text were written on loose scrolls and not in any particular order. It would take until the fifth century AD before the biblical cannon was set.

“Excarnation: Food for Vultures”

Rami Arav argues that the site of Rogem Hiri in the Golan was a special type of Chalcolithic Age sanctuary, built specifically for the purpose of ritual excarnation—that is, exposing the bodies of the dead to vultures in order to divest them of their flesh. Photo by Duby Tal/Albatross.

This is an excerpt from an article in the  "Biblical Archaeological Review."  I have studied this process as it was used in Persia in biblical times but did not know that it was practiced in the Holy Land.
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"In “Excarnation: Food for Vultures,” author Rami Arav argues that Rogem Hiri was a special type of sanctuary, built specifically for the purpose of ritual excarnation—that is, purposefully exposing the bodies of the dead to vultures and other birds of prey in order to divest them of their flesh. As Arav explains, excarnation was widely practiced in cultures and civilizations that for one reason or another were interested in saving the bones of the deceased and not their flesh.

Archaeology shows that the Chalcolithic peoples of the southern Levant were very interested in preserving the bones of the dead. Peoples of the Chalcolithic Age throughout Syria and Palestine interred the bones of their deceased in fancifully decorated clay boxes, or ossuaries, which were often decorated with stylized facial features, including eyes, noses and mouths. Chalcolithic Age ossuaries also often have a boxy or “house-like” appearance, with a large opening in the front through which the bones of the dead were inserted."

What an interesting tradition. We have lots of vultures around here. I wonder?