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December 2023
Vol. 11, No. 12
Ten Exciting Discoveries in Near Eastern Archaeology in 2023
By Jessica Nitschke
In 2023 archaeologists and researchers continued to push the limits of the discipline and provide new insights into the ancient world. Here we include some of the highlights of those efforts: ten compelling discoveries and breakthroughs either made, announced, and/or published in 2023 (in no particular order).
1. 5000-Year-Old Jars Full of Wine, Sealed and Intact (ca 3000 BCE, Egypt)
A German-Austrian mission headed by Dr Christiana Köhler discovered hundreds of sealed jars containing wine from the Tomb of Queen Meret-Neith (ca. 3000 BCE; Dynasty 1) in the royal necropolis at Abydos. Together with a large quantity of well-preserved grape pips, the discovery has much to tell us about the early history of wine-making. In addition, study of the 41 subsidiary tomb chambers for courtiers and servants has revealed that they were built over different periods of time, challenging the oft-repeated assertion that royal servants in Dynasty 1 were victims of mass human sacrifice at the time of the sovereign’s death.
2. Inscription Linking the Kingdom of Sheba to King Solomon (c. 10th century BCE, Israel)
A short but intriguing inscription dated to the 10th century from Jerusalem has finally been deciphered, further affirming cultural ties between Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Sheba — ties that have been romanticized in later religious texts through the legend of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. The ceramic jar fragment containing the inscription was discovered in 2012 during excavations of the Ophel in Jerusalem, an area just south of the southern wall of the Temple Mount. Scholars originally thought the inscription is Canaanite, but have struggled to decipher it. However, this year, Dr. Daniel Vainstub published a study arguing that the inscription is actually Sabaean, a language spoken at the time by people in southwest Arabia, which was under the control of the Kingdom of Sheba at the time. According to this interpretation, the inscription describes a quantity of ladanum, one of the four ingredients needed for incense mentioned in the Bible. The vessel was produced in the Jerusalem area and the inscription was made before the vessel was fired, thus pointing to the presence of a Sabaean speaker in Jerusalem in the period of King Solomon. Alas, we are still waiting for archaeological evidence for the Queen of Sheba herself.
Read the paper and see a photo of the inscription in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology
3. The Oldest Building Plans Drawn To Scale (c. 5000 & 6000 BCE; Jordan, Saudi Arabia)
A team based at CNRS (Lyon) published a new study revealing two scaled drawings from SE Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia, dated to 7000 and 8000 years ago, that depict nearby neolithic “kites”: humanmade mega structures composed of long walls (sometimes 5km long!) that converge towards an enclosure where animals were trapped by hunters. There are very few plans, maps, or models that predate the emergence of writing; according to the study, these two drawings are the earliest yet uncovered. They represent an aerial view of these massive structures at scale, thus providing early evidence of complex visualization of space and design. According to the researchers, “such plans may have been used for enhancing collective hunting strategies with these mega-traps”.
4. A New Contender for World’s Oldest Surviving Book (Egypt, ca. 260 BCE)
This modest papyrus fragment (15x25cm) was taken from the wrapping of a mummy from the necropolis of Hibeh (Egypt) in 1902 by the Grenfell and Hunt Expedition and transferred to Graz University in 1909 in exchange for the city’s financial support of the project. This year, while doing some routine work on the papyrus collection, conservator Theresa Zammit Lupi noticed that the fragment had traces of binding thread, sewing holes, and a centerfold indicating that it was not part of a roll, but from an actual book (defined as a work with pages glued or sewn together along one side; a book made of papyrus sheets is often referred to as a “codex”). This fragment — a tax account for beer and oil, written in Greek and dated to ca. 260 BCE — predates the previous earliest known books by about 400 years, thus upending what we thought we knew about the invention of the book.
Learn more here: https://mummybook.uni-graz.at/en/
5. Cache of Astonishingly Well-Preserved Roman Weapons (c. 1st-2nd centuries CE, Israel)
Israeli archaeologists announced the discovery of a cache of Roman-era weapons, including four swords, wooden sheaths, and a pilum (spear), hidden away in an isolated cave north of ‘En Gedi near the Dead Sea in Israel. Three of the swords are Roman spatha swords, which are long swords, while the fourth is a shorter ring-pommel sword. Both types are typical of the swords used by Roman soldiers in the region, and are in an exceptional state of preservation. They were found as part of themed in 2016 to systematically document caves across the region in an effort to put an end to the looting of the region. Dr. Eitan Klein, co-director of the project, has suggested that the swords may have been taken from the battlefield and purposely hidden by Judean rebels for reuse. Researchers hope to pinpoint the date through further study.
The discovery has been published in a preliminary article in the volume New Studies in the Archaeology of the Judean Desert: Collected Papers.
6. Breakthrough in Archaeomagnetic Dating
An international team of researchers published precise archaeomagnetic results from 32 inscribed baked clay bricks from various sites in Iraq. How does archaeomagnetism work? Very simply, when the bricks were heated, the iron oxide grains in the clay recorded changes in the earth’s magnetic field that can be measured by a magnetometer. The bricks sampled in this study happen to be tightly dated to the reigns of 12 Mesopotamian kings through their inscriptions. Thus, the results of the study have dramatically enhanced the potential for archaeomagnetic analysis as an absolute dating technique for common materials that are made of fired clay. The research also assists in studying fluctuations in the earth’s magnetic field, including the mysterious Levantine Iron Age geomagnetic Anomaly (LIAA), a period of high magnetic field intensity from ca 1050 to 550 BCE.
7. Statue of Buddha Discovered in Red Sea Port (c. 90–140 CE, Egypt)
A Polish-American archaeological mission, co-directed by Dr. Steven Sidebotham and Dr. Mariusz Gwiazda, uncovered a high-quality, standing statue of Siddhartha Gautama, aka The Buddha, in the Red Sea port of Berenike in the southeast coast of Egypt, which they have dated to c. 90-140 CE. Made out of imported Anatolian marble and perhaps carved locally, the statue was found in the forecourt of the city’s main temple (which was dedicated to Isis). Fragmentary parts of other statues of Buddha, made of local gypsum, were found on the site in 2019; this piece is of very fine workmanship and constitutes the most visually impressive evidence so far of the presence of Buddhism in the ancient Mediterranean world.
Read the press release from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology
8. Amorite Travel Phrasebook (c. 1900–1600 BCE, Iraq)
Researchers have made breakthroughs in our understanding of the elusive Amorite language (a Semitic language spoken in Bronze-Age Syria) following their study of two cuneiform tablets from Iraq. Dr. Manfred Krebernik and Dr. Andrew R. George determined that the tablets are bilingual Amorite-Akkadian texts, in which certain Amorite phrases are described in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian. One passage provides a list of Amorite gods, listing the corresponding Mesopotamian gods. Other passages include phrases about blessing a king, performing sacrifice, and setting up a meal. Thus, the tablets seem to be a sort of phrasebook or travel guide for Babylonians traveling to Amorite-speaking regions. The study has provided new vocabulary and grammatical insights, contributing greatly to our rather poor knowledge of the Amorite language. It should be noted that the tablets are unprovenanced; it is thought that they were removed from Iraq in the 1980s, making their way to collections in the US through unknown means.
For more information and pictures: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-near-eastern-world/ancient-amorite-language-discovered/
Read the research article in Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale (subscription only)
9. Hundreds of Roman-Era Forts Discovered Through Old Spy Satellite Imagery (2nd–6th centuries CE, Syria and surrounds)
Researchers from Dartmouth College led by Dr. Jesse Casana used declassified images from the CORONA and HEXAGON spy satellite programs to identify 396 unknown Roman-era forts. The research shows that hundreds of forts extended over a large area in a general east-west trending line from western Syria to the Tigris River in Iraq. The results challenge previous assumptions that Roman forts in the region followed a north-south line along the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire, and were intended primarily as a defensive measure. Rather, the authors argue that the distribution of the forts suggests that they were intended to support a “system of caravan-based interregional trade, communication and military transport”.
10. Severed Hands from Ancient Avaris (c. 1640–1530 BCE, Egypt)
