From a land far away : Egyptian(izing) amulets from Jebel Qurma, Black Desert, Jordan

This paper presents an Egyptian and an Egyptian-style amulet, recently excavated in tombs in the Jebel Qurma uplands in the Black Desert of northeastern Jordan. The amulets (a pataikos and a scarab) date to the early to mid-1st millennium BCE. It is extremely rare to find such objects in this remote part of the southern Levant. While the scarab is a Levantine product from the early Iron Age, the pataikos amulet is Egyptian in origin and may have arrived in the Jebel Qurma region of Jordan after traveling from Egypt across the Sinai or northwestern Arabia

Not so coarse, nor always plain — the earliest pottery of Syria

The site of Tell Sabi Abyad in Syria offers a superb stratified sequence passing from the aceramic (pre-pottery) to pottery-using Neolithic around 7000 BC. Surprisingly the first pottery arrives fully developed with mineral tempering, burnishing and stripey decoration in painted slip. The expected, more experimental-looking, plant-tempered coarse wares shaped by baskets arrive about 300 years later. Did the first ceramic impetus come from elsewhere?

More Seals and Sealings from Neolithic Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria

Wetensch. publicatieFaculty of Archeolog