There are few ancient history exhibitions that actually lead people to take to the streets in protest – but the Dead Sea Scrolls is one of them. Last Friday a few dozen protesters took to the streets outside the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto to protest against the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. At the same timea group of supporters of the exhibit staged a counter-protest right across the street. Videos, from both sides of the protests, have recently migrated onto youtube. Its the latest chapter in a series of events that have been playing out in the city since…
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As US President Barack Obamasorts out theforeign policy mess made by his now infamous predecessor he would be well advised to brush up on his ancient history. More than 1,800 years ago, a Roman emperor, Hadrian, faced a problem that was eerily similar. He inherited a great foreign policy mess from his own predecessor Trajan. For as long as Rome had occupied territory in the Middle East (1st century BC) there had been tensions along the eastern border. The main problem they had was with an empire called the Parthians who occupied modern day Iraq and Iran. The tensions had…
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Thermopylae is the site where a group of a few thousand Greeks held off a Persian army for three days (including a desperate last stand made on Kolonos Hill, led by the Spartans,on the third day of battle). Historians still debate whether the battle was necessary, but in any event the Greeks were eventually successful in repelling the Persian invasion after a naval victory at the Battle of Salamis. This past weekend a team of Greek scientists, at a conference in Australia, announced preliminary results ofan attempt to reconstruct the landscape of the ancient battlefield. The lead investigator, Professor Konstantinos…
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Over the past five weeks two new studies have been released that are giving scholars new clues as to how leprosy became a global scourge. The first, and most dramatic, find came out at the end of May and reported on the analysis of a 4,000 year old skeleton from the site of Balathal, a Harappa site, in India. The analysis detected the presence of leprosy, making it, by far, the oldest case known. (For comparison the next oldest cases date to nearly 2,500 years ago) This study means that the troops of Alexander the Great might well have spread…
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The UCLA team creatingand updating a virtual model of Qumran, the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves, have now released free photos and videos of their work, which are now available to view and download from their website. Their project started in 2005 and has been continuing ever since,adding new archaeological information as it comes along. It includes a number of photos, and short videos which you can watch in high definition on their site, or on youtube. The main aim of the project is not to bolster any one theory on how Qumran, or the…
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Qumran excavator Yuval Peleg (YP) was in Toronto last Thursday to lecture about his recent Qumran findings. Although he had to give two back to back lectures (on the same night) he generously made some time to talk with Heritage Key. I asked him about his theory that Qumran started off as a military site. I alsoquestioned himon his idea that the Dead Sea Scrolls were deposited in the Qumran caves by refugees who were fleeing the Roman army after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Here’s a transcript of our interview: OJ: One thing I found intriguing is…
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Among the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibited in Toronto, at the Royal Ontario Museum, are two fragments which have never before been shown to the public. One of them is a fragment from Daniel. It appears to have been a popular book as archaeologists have no less than eight copies of it among the scrolls but this particular fragment has not beenexhibited until now. The other, Barki Nafshi (Apocryphal Psalms), is a series of Psalms that do not appear in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). As mentioned in my preview, photography of the scrolls is forbidden at the ROMs exhibit because…
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Aside from the Holy Grail there is probably no artefact more sought than the Ark of the Covenant. It is said to contain nothing less than the 10 commandments themselves. It vanished in 586 B.C. when the Babylonians, led by Nebuchadnezzar, destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem. Over the past year this writer has noted no fewer than three major claims, all linked to Africa, which have been made about the Arks current whereabouts: Some religious and Ethiopian media sources report that Abuna Pauolos, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia, has made recent comments that his church has…
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A Toronto Egyptologist has a new translation of the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus coming out and a new theory on how it was written. Previously the content was attributed to a great medical doctor such as Imhotep. But not for much longer. About 3,500 years ago, in an Egypt partly conquered by a foreign power, an Egyptian man with no medical training, likely a metalworker, was pressed into service as a combat medic. He prepared for his task by studying the basics of combat medicine from a swnw (a doctor) or some form of expert. He wasnt preparing to become…