On Friday a bullet casing was found on Tel Akko. This is not the first bullet to be found, and our expert, Dr Nick Pumphrey of Baker University says that he thinks it’s a British bullet; possibly a 303 from a Lee Enfield rifle. When the bullet has been cleaned this will become clearer. Jewish forces were trained by the British, and some had weapons that they had acquired in various ways, from the Mandate soldiers.
Those of you who have worked, or are working on the Area A excavations may possibly have wondered what happens at the western edge of the site, and why there is a big, overgrown hole there. This is Area AB, excavated by Moshe Dothan, and more specifically, supervised by me for three seasons in the early 1980’s.
Faience is a glassy substance often manufactured expertly by the ancient Egyptians. The process was first developed in Mesopotamia, first at Ur and later at Babylon, but faience production reached its height of quality and quantity in Egypt.
Some of the greatest faience-makers of antiquity were the Phoenicians of cities such as Tyre and Sidon who were so expert in making glass that it is thought they invented the process. The Egyptians created works of art which still intrigue and fascinate people in the present day.
We will consult with the experts to discover who this bead was made by.
Among the most famous of faience statuary is the blue hippopotamus popularly known as “William”, currently on exhibit and treated as a mascot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, NY, USA. William was one of a pair found in the shaft of the tomb of the steward Senbi II who served under either Senusret I (c. 1971-1926 BCE) or Senusret II (c. 1897-1878 BCE), both of the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom.
Poor people in Egypt, could seldom afford faience, while wealthier people often owned Shabti dolls made of the expensive substance. The colors of the faience were thought to have special symbolism. Blue represented fertility, life, the Nile river on earth and in the after-life, green symbolized goodness and re-birth in the Field of Reeds, red was used for vitality and energy and also as protection from evil, black represented death and decay but also life and regeneration, and white symbolized purity. The colors one sees on the Shabti dolls, and in other faience, all have very specific meaning and combine to provide a protective energy for the object’s owner.
Our little bead is worn, and so it’s hard to tell what colour it might have been, but we do know that it must have been owned by someone of wealth and possibly power.
Nevan Carling, a student of Trinity College, USA found a small ceramic horse’s head on the Tel, and won Find of the Day.
There are so many horses in Akko. You see beautiful Arab horses pulling carts in the streets of Akko, there is a beach called The Beach of the Horses where horses are taken to swim, and the team has found other horse-related artefacts on the tel in the past. Akko has a rich equestrian heritage.
According to Professor Martha Risser of Trinity College, one of our ceramics experts, this horse head is a bit different. “It has been made out of two slabs of clay, pressed together and is hollow. This is a completely different construction to other finds, where we’ve seen a more solid form. This is the finest one so far, I think.”
How was it used? Who made it? What is its significance in the layer?
Each find raises as many questions as it answers. Watch this spot for further information as it is revealed.
Pottery washing has commenced at the Nautical College in the afternoons. Students and staff sit under the trees and wash the finds of the morning. It’s not the most exciting job, but it can be a lot of fun to enjoy the fresh air, chat and listen to music while you scrub.
Today our ‘Imma’, Rachel Merhav joined in the fun, eating popsicles and observing the goings on in the pottery washing yard.
After a day of orientation, the students have all gone to bed anticipating the first day’s dig tomorrow. The sandbags will be coming off, the trowels and buckets will be at the ready and Tel Akko 2017 will have truly begun!
This season at Tell Akko, I, with the aid of colleague Liora Horwitz (National Natural History Collections, Hebrew University) resolved a mystery from the 2015 season. Near the end of last season, a gigantic claw (see pic) — the Akko Claw — was excavated from Nick Pumphrey’s area, QQ3. I was mystified, and took it to the Hebrew University, comparing it to birds of prey, crocodiles, sea turtles and other creatures. I also compared with an ostrich. None of these things fitted ‘my’ bone quite right, not even the ostrich. I mulled this over all year long during the off season, sending the picture to various stumped archaeological and paleontological colleagues. I was even starting to ponder the reality of Near Eastern mythological creatures out of desperation — how about a griffon? Maybe a roc (I have images of a B movie version of Sinbad and the Seven Seas ingrained in my head – I saw it as a kid, and I recall that some of his sailors were taken away by such a giant bird).
This season, Liora Horwitz visited the tel, and brought with her (knowing of the problem) a set of modern ostrich claw bones. We looked, but weren’t quite satisfied. Liora borrowed the archaeological claw to study it further in Jerusalem. There, she noticed, under a microscope, that it had been somewhat polished and cut a bit here and there. The ostrich was very close morphologically and so it must be an ostrich – there is no other bird in the greater Eurasian-African region of that size. A subspecies of ostrich used to inhabit Israel and neighboring countries, and many years ago I identified Roman-era ostrich bones from the site of Caesarea (a site to Akko’s south).
The skeleton which Liora and I were able to compare the Akko Claw with was the sub-Saharan variety, but perhaps some of the difficulty we had in identifying the bone as ostrich were due to subspecies differences. Next step will be to drop by either Harvard’s natural history museum or that of the UK, a couple of the only institutions that house skeletons of the ostrich which formerly inhabited this region, Struthio camelus syriaca. Unfortunately I’ve no plans to be in either place anytime soon: anyone heading in those directions and have room in their suitcase for an ostrich claw?
In the past, evidently, intrepid hunters or the wealthy who could employ them could eat ostrich. Today in Israel one can order ostrich steaks in upper echelon restaurants. Ostrich. It’s the other red meat.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
And it’s hot! The 2017 Season is starting off on a real high. Temperatures are soaring and the humidity is set at around 97%. The average temperature for this time of year is 31 degrees, but it seems we have 34 this year. Students arrive tomorrow…
Staff and students are beginning to gather for the 2017 Season at Tel Akko in Israel. We’re all looking forward to a wonderful month of study, exploration, adventure and, of course, archaeology! The IDF Naval College at Akko is our host again this year, and we are sharing it with some Sea Scouts, who add a lot of noise and colour to the dining hall! Follow this blog to see what finds we have and what mysteries we uncover. The first dig will take place on Monday 17th of July, when our daily diary blog will follow them up Tel Akko for videos and photographs. Welcome to friends old and new!
