The Joys of Museums

Today, a few of us finally made the effort to go to one of the nearby museums that has been recommended numerous times. Specifically, we went to the Pontifical Biblical Institute Museum, near the King David Hotel. It turns out that they're not generally open on Saturday, but they let us in anyway, and we even got a personal tour from Father Maurice Gilbert. It was pretty sweet. It's a small place (2 rooms, one small and one larger), but it has quite a few fairly famous pieces, as well as various archaeological remains from all time periods and from all over this region. I think I may have mentioned before how exciting it is to see things that you've learned about in class. Some of the artifacts they have we've heard mentioned in several classes numerous times, which just adds to the excitement. Many of the remains are from Teleilat Ghassul, a chalcolithic site NE of the Dead Sea, which was excavated from 1921-1929 by Jesuit Monks. Possibly the most spectacular things they found there were frescoes, beautifully preserved, on the walls of a couple buildings. Unfortunately, almost as soon as they were uncovered, they crumbled to dust. They did manage to make a replica, though, which is at the museum we visited. (There was more than one painting, as I understand, but this is probably the most famous.)

This is a fenestrated basalt pedestal. I don't recall where this one was found, but in archaeology we learned about them in conection with the Chalcolithic period around Beersheva. Of course, since Basalt is only found in the north of the country, this means that they had some level of trade going on.

Just yesterday in archaeology we talked about how during the Middle Bronze Age is was apparently very common to bury infants in large jars underneath the floor of the house. Rooms from this time have been found with up to 10 burials in the floor. We don't really know why. It's possible that there was a really high infant mortality rates and they wanted to keep the remains of the child close to home so they were in some sense still part of the family. We also know that there were times and places where human sacrifice was practiced and its possible that at least some of these infants were victims of that horrendous practice. The picture below is of a simliar infant burial from the Chalcolithic Age, found at Teleilat Ghassul.

These are connical pottery vessels from the Chalcholithic Period called "cornettes," generally considered to be drinking glasses.


These are just some cool looking figures. I don't know much about them. Quite a few of the things in the museum were also found in Egypt (maybe at Elephantine?), and these may have been among them.
Tell el-Yehudiyah ware! The first examples of this type of pottery were found at Tel el-Yehudiyah ("Mound of the Jews") in the Nile Delta by none other than Flinders Petrie. It's an interesting site for many reasons which I will not go into at this point. At any rate, this type of pottery actually originated in Palestine, but is still named after the first place it was found. It's generally dark in color, usually jugs or juglets (though occasionally shaped as animals or even people), and decorated with "holes" to form a pattern. One theory is that the jugs, which are thought to have held perfume, were shaped to imitate the fruit from whence the perfume came.


So, that was an example of the delights I experienced this morning. Facinating, isn't it? :)