Friday night here on campus we celebrated Halloween. They said they wouldn't feed us if we didn't dress up....I kind a hate being forced into things like that, but I did end up being fun.
The evening started at 4:30 with a tour of our graveyard. Yes, we do have a graveyard. It's kind of a long story, but for quite some time it we the only protestant graveyard in the country. Various and sundry people are there, including some famous ones: Flinders Petrie (minus his head), the father of modern middle-eastern archaeology; Brian Starkey, the excavator of Lachish who was murdered on his way to the opening of the Rockefeller museum; and Horatio G. Spafford, author of the hymn, "It is well." To add spice to the adventure there was a low hanging 220V live wire (duck!), soft ground, and sink-holes. It wasn't dark when we started, but the twilight was rapidly deepening by the end.
As dinner approached, various odd creatures began apearing in the dining area: a couple pirates, a fairy or two, Aladdin, a gypsy, Absolom, the Rosh Pinnah Sill (a basalt plug above the Sea of Galilee), a Greek Lady, a Roman Statesmen, the two witnesses from Revelations, and much more.
I personally came as Pippi Longstockings.
We said the normal Shabbat blessings before the meal, but the meal itself was anything but normal. We got to choose 5 things for each of our 3 courses, but everything was given odd names. For my first course I got noodles, humus, a plate, dirt pie, and juice. No fork or spoon. Yeah, one of those. It made it entertaining, though.
After dinner we finished the festivites by breaking open a couple pinatas, singing some worship songs, and then watching an eppisode of "The Office" from an earlier Halloween.
And that was Fall.
It's Spring:
Today my archaeology class and our professor, Dr. Gabi Barkai, headed off to Lachish for a field study. We've gotten some good rain lately, and as we drove along I couldn't help but notice that the fields that have been lying fallow are slowly being covered by a fuzzy green carpet.
In Montana such things are always a harbinger of spring. Here, where wheat and such things are grown in the winter (the rainy season!) I don't think it means the same thing... Still, it was fun to see little green sprouts here and there where before it had been all brown. 
We spent pretty much the whole day at Lachish. Dr. Barkai spent a number of years excavating there and used it to give us an idea of what to look for and technique and all those sorts of thing. Lachish (and the area around it) has evidence of inhabitance since the neolithic period. Most of what has been excavated is from the Iron Age, though, with everthing earlier still buried.
And what, you might ask, is the Biblical significance of Lachish? Well, to give you a summary, it's mentioned about 23 times in the Old Testament, it was conquered by Joshua, fortified probably by Rehoboam and/or Hezekiah, defeated by Sennacherib and the Assyrian army, and then was defeated again by Babylon before Jerusalem finally fell itself. It was then probably rebuild during the time of Nehemiah.
(Dr. Barkai pointing out some feature outside the gate area. W)
Lachish is especially interesting because of two archaeological finds. The first is called "The Lachish Letters." Those are 21 ostraca from around that time and contain the line that mentions Lachish and Azekah. There are debates over how to translate it and what it means. Dr. Barkai was of the opinion that it said something like "We are guarding Lachish whole-heartedly and we can't see Azekah" (implying that Azekah had fallen). It's likely that these were written before the Babylonian captivity.
The second interesting find was actually in the palace of Sennacherib in Ninevah. In his chamber there he had a relief done, depicting his siege and destruction of Lachish.
Both offer some evidence (circumstantial, but still) that this tel is, in fact, the ancient sight of Lachish.
It was a long trip, but interesting. So much to learn, so many questions...
(Here's some of our group examining the wall of the platform of the Judean palace.)
3 comments:
Pippi Longstocking is SO what I was planning on doing next year on Halloween! Let's just say we both came up with the idea at the same time. =)
Oh, and picture numero dos? I like it. ;)
Ok.
Oh, and you would. :P
Hey, I know the...granddaughter...great-granddaughter...something like that, of Horatio Spafford. Well, I actually haven't talkied to her in a long time, but she was the female counselor on my first trip into the Bob! That's really cool that his grave is there in Israel. I love that song.
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