Yavneh II: The 'Temple Hill' Repository Pit

Yavneh II is the second and last excavation report on the dramatic favissa/genizah pit full of Philistine votive objects, discovered by Raz Kletter in the city of Yavneh, Israel, near the Mediterranean coast (south of Tel Aviv). The first volume, Yavneh I (OBO.SA 30, 2010) included studies on the history and archaeological exploration of Yavneh, the excavation, the stratigraphy and the interpretation of the pit as a favissae of votive objects that originate from a public temple; but especially on the mysterious cult stands, which number more than a hundred and include many stands with zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures. In the present volume we publish many additional cultic finds, including fire pans or shovels that could be used for moving hot coals and for burning incense (comparable to the biblical maḥtāh); a rectangular shrine-model (naos) with detached pillars; zoomorphic vessels; a larger sample of pottery with statistical analysis; imported Cypriot pottery; dog bones (probably related to ritual); an inscription on a bowl; fragments of worked stones (perhaps from altars); and chemical residues from juglets and chalices, which seem to indicate presence of hallucinatory and incense materials. In addition, we offer an update on the iconography of the Yavneh cult stands and a study of the larger world of cult stands in the southern Levant; criteria for identifying favissae and their appearance from the Late Bronze Age to the Persian Period in Palestine; and a concluding discussion on Yavneh, incense, and Philistine ethnicity

Understanding multispectral imaging of cultural heritage:Determining best practice in MSI analysis of historical artefacts

Although multispectral imaging (MSI) of cultural heritage, such as manuscripts, documents and artwork, is becoming more popular, a variety of approaches are taken and methods are often inconsistently documented. Furthermore, no overview of the process of MSI capture and analysis with current technology has previously been published. This research was undertaken to determine current best practice in the deployment of MSI, highlighting areas that need further research, whilst providing recommendations regarding approach and documentation. An Action Research methodology was used to characterise the current pipeline, including: literature review; unstructured interviews and discussion of results with practitioners; and reflective practice whilst undertaking MSI analysis. The pipeline and recommendations from this research will improve project management by increasing clarity of published outcomes, the reusability of data, and encouraging a more open discussion of process and application within the MSI community. The importance of thorough documentation is emphasised, which will encourage sharing of best practice and results, improving community deployment of the technique. The findings encourage efficient use and reporting of MSI, aiding access to historical analysis. We hope this research will be useful to digitisation professionals, curators and conservators, allowing them to compare and contrast current practices

David's Jerusalem: Between Memory and History

The history of David’s Jerusalem remains one of the most contentious topics of the ancient world. This study engages with debates about the nature of this location by examining the most recent archaeological data from the site and by exploring the relationship of these remains to claims made about David’s royal center in biblical narrative. Daniel Pioske provides a detailed reconstruction of the landscape and lifeways of early 10th century BCE Jerusalem, connected in biblical tradition to the figure of David. He further explores how late Iron Age (the Book of Samuel-Kings) and late Persian/early Hellenistic (the Book of Chronicles) Hebrew literary cultures remembered David’s Jerusalem within their texts, and how the remains and ruins of this site influenced the memories of those later inhabitants who depicted David’s Jerusalem within the biblical narrative. By drawing on both archaeological data and biblical writings, Pioske calls attention to the breaks and ruptures between a remembered past and a historical one, and invites the reader to understand David’s Jerusalem as more than a physical location, but also as a place of memory

Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture

Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture presents an overview of the digital turn in Ancient Jewish and Christian manuscripts visualisation, data mining and communication, edited by David Hamidović, Claire Clivaz and Sarah Bowen Savant. Readership: Scholars and PhD and master students in Biblical studies, Early Jewish and Christian studies

Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture: Visualisation, Data Mining, Communication

Publication in open access thanks to the support of the SNSF Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture presents an overview of the digital turn in Ancient Jewish and Christian manuscripts visualisation, data mining and communication. Edited by David Hamidović, Claire Clivaz and Sarah Bowen Savant, it gathers together the contributions of seventeen scholars involved in Biblical, Early Jewish and Christian studies. The volume attests to the spreading of digital humanities in these fields and presents fundamental analysis of the rise of visual culture as well as specific test-cases concerning ancient manuscripts. Sophisticated visualisation tools, stylometric analysis, teaching and visual data, epigraphy and visualisation belong notably to the varied overview presented in the volume

Deity and Divine Agency in the Hebrew Bible: Cognitive Perspectives

This thesis interrogates the conceptualization of deity and divine agency in the Hebrew Bible, focusing particularly on the problem of the relationship of divine images and representatives to their patron deities. In order to move beyond the tendentiousness of previous scholarship that addresses this problem, I employ an interdisciplinary approach that will center cognitive linguistics and the cognitive science of religion, and also include biblical criticism, archaeology, anthropology, materiality studies, and other disciplines. I begin in Part One with a methodological discussion that describes the approaches being taken and interrogates some of the conceptual frameworks that have governed the previous scholarship on the question, such as “religion” and the practice of definition. It will then move on to discuss the concepts of agency and personhood, and how contemporary anthropological research on both can help inform our interrogation of the ancient world. Part Two begins the interrogation of the generic concept of deity, demonstrating that such concepts are products of the engagement of our intuitive and reflective reasoning with our cognitive ecologies, and that they build on our everyday conceptualizations of agency and personhood. These dynamics facilitate a view of divine agency as separable and communicable, which will be demonstrated to undergird the unique relationships understood to be shared by deities and their divine images. Chapter 4 employs a cognitive linguistic lens to propose semantic bases, domains, and profiles for the generic concept of deity in the Hebrew Bible. Part Three applies the models developed in Chapters 3 and 4 to an interrogation of YHWH as a deity and of YHWH’s divine agents, such as the ark of the covenant, the messenger of YHWH, and the very text of the Torah itself. The Conclusion summarizes findings and discusses implications for further research

Computer experiments on the khirbet qeiyafa ostracon

This article presents a new theoretical framework for computer-assisted decipherment of ancient alphabetic inscriptions. This framework is based on regular expressions, a widely used computer science formalism for encoding text strings with partially unknown characters. We then present a new software called SCRYPT, which applies our framework to the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon, an important Proto-Canaanite inscription recently discovered in Israel, as a first case study. Several new anthroponymic readings for the Qeiyafa ostracon, found with the help of our software, are presented as part of that case study. The software, freely available online (www.ScryptApp.com), enables users to encode all possible readings for a given grapheme in the ostracon and provides fast automated dictionary searches for lexemes.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe