Inscriptions are visible on ceramic pottery shards, known as “ostraca,” which researchers believe date to the earliest phase of the Bible’s compilation.
Israel Finkelstein, Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin et al.
Top Archaeological Finds Expected in 2016
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Egypt will likely offer promising finds in 2016. King Tutankhamun's tomb will be under the spotlight as recent investigation suggests the western and northern walls of the 3,300-year-old burial may hide two secret chambers. According to Egypt's Minister of Antiquity Mamdouh al-Damaty there is a 90 percent chance the tomb of King Tut contains such chambers. Damaty made the announcement last November at the end of a radar-based investigation. The non-invasive search followed a claim by Nicholas Reeves, a British Egyptologist at the University of Arizona, who first speculated the existence of the chambers, arguing that one contains the remains, and possibly the intact grave goods, from queen Nefertiti. She was the wife of the "heretic" monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten, Tutankhamun's father. Will archaeologists try to access the hidden chambers? Their attempt may lead to what Damaty called "one of the most important finds of the century." Radar Finds Secret Chamber in King Tut's Tomb
www.HIP.Institute / Philippe Bourseiller
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The noninvasive technologies applied to King Tut's tomb will be widely used this year in another ambitious project. Called Scan Pyramid, the investigation is carried out by a team from Cairo University's Faculty of Engineering and the Paris-based organization Heritage, Innovation and Preservation under the authority of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. The project aims to scan the largest pyramids of Egypt in order to detect the presence of any unknown internal structures and cavities. The technique could lead to a better understanding of the pyramids' structure and how they were built. The project uses a mix of technologies such as infrared thermography, muon radiography, and 3D reconstruction to look at the inside of four pyramids, which are more than 4,500 years old. They include Khufu, or Cheops, Khafre or Chephren at Giza, the Bent pyramid and the Red pyramid at Dahshur. One particularly remarkable anomaly has been already detected on the eastern side of the Great Pyramid, also known as Khufu or Cheops, at the ground level. Much more is to come -- the first results are expected in the first months of the year. Striking Anomaly Found in Great Pyramid
www.HIP.Institute / Philippe Bourseiller
View Caption + #3: Last year a study made an
extraordinary and controversial claim : Stonehenge was basically a second-hand monument from Wales. It would have stood there hundreds of years before it was dismantled and transported to Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. The research indicates that two quarries in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire, in southwest Wales, are the source of Stonehenge's bluestones. Carbon dating revealed such stones were dug out at least 500 years before Stonehenge was built -- suggesting they were first used in a local monument that was later dismantled and dragged off to England. "Stonehenge was a Welsh monument from its very beginning. If we can find the original monument in Wales from which it was built, we will finally be able to solve the mystery," Mike Parker Pearson, director of the project and professor of British later prehistory at University College London said. Researchers have been using geophysical surveys, trial excavations and aerial photographic analysis to identify the ruins of a lost, dismantled monument. The results of such research promise to make the headlines this year. "We think we have the most likely spot. We may find something big in 2016," Kate Welham, of Bournemouth University, said. Stonehenge First Built in Wales, Study Claims
University College London
View Caption + #4: In early December,
the Colombian government announced they had found the holy grail of treasure shipwrecks -- an 18th-century Spanish galleon that went down off the country's coast with a treasure of gold, coins and precious stones now valued between $4 billion and $17 billion. The multibillion-dollar ship, called the San Jose, was found off the island of Baru, near Cartagena. The vessel was part of Spain's only royal convoy to bring colonial coins and bullion home to King Philip V during the War of Spanish Succession from 1701 to 1714. The San Jose was trying to outrun a fleet of British warships off the island of Baru on June 8, 1708, when an explosion sent it to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. She was reportedly carrying 600 people, chests of emeralds and tons of silver, gold and platinum. The shipwreck has been at a center of a decades-long search that also involved a legal battle with the Seattle-based Sea Search Armada, or SSA, a commercial salvage company that claims it first discovered the wreck's location in 1981. Moreover, Peru has argued that any treasure recovered from the San Jose should be considered a Peruvian national patrimony. As more legal fights will likely occur, new expeditions to the wreck in 2016 are expected to recover the much disputed treasure of gold and emeralds. Multibillion Dollar Shipwreck Found Off Colombia
Colombian Culture Ministry
View Caption + #5: One of the most promising discoveries last year was
an oval-shaped structure unearthed in the Tuscan town of Volterra. Archaeologists believe it represents the most important Roman amphitheater finding over the last century. The foundations of the colosseum, which is oval-shaped like the much larger arena in the heart of Rome, might date back to the 1st century A.D. Amphitheaters like these were used during Roman times to feature events including gladiator combats and wild animal fights. The archaeologists estimate the structure, which mostly lies at a depth of 20 to 32 feet, measured some 262 by 196 feet. Only a small part of it has been unearthed during a small dig survey. New finds are expected this year as a full-scale dig is launched. Gladiator Colosseum Found in Tuscany
Paolo Nannini
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Many of the earliest texts of the Bible were written by at least 600 B.C. in the ancient Kingdom of Judah, located in what is now the Southern Levant, new high tech research on correspondence from the period suggests.
The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, help resolve a longstanding debate over whether the first major phase of biblical text compilation took place before or after the destruction of Judah’s capital city, Jerusalem, in 586 B.C.
The new research concludes that early sacred texts of the Torah, known in part to Christians as the Old Testament, were written shortly before that fateful event, when Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and forcibly exiled the people of Judah.
Are there times when the two overlap, when fervent belief in science functions much like devout faith?
DCI
“Several (biblical) texts refer to events which best fit the reality in the years just before the fall of the Kingdom of Judah,” senior author Israel Finkelstein, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, told Discovery News.
For the study, Finkelstein, lead author Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin and their team used novel image processing and computer analysis to investigate 16 inscriptions from the desert fortress of Arad, located west of the Dead Sea. The inscriptions, which are correspondence concerning military matters, date to 600 B.C. and were made by putting ink script on ceramic shards.
“This was a common practice at the time,” Finkelstein explained. “We know this from other Judahite forts, both in the Negev (the south) and the Shephelah (the west). Most of the inscriptions deal with mundane issues, such as orders to send commodities to or with army units.”
In this case, the inscribed shards -- known as ostraca -- contain military commands regarding the movement of troops and provision of wine, oil and flour among the men. One mentions “the king of Judah” and another “the house of YHWH,” in reference to the Temple in Jerusalem.
Faigenbaum-Golovin and colleagues Arie Shaus and Barak Sober focused their analysis on who wrote the correspondence. They determined that six individuals of varying military ranks created the ostraca.