Posted on 11/20/2006 11:19:01 AM PST by blam
Last update - 00:12 20/11/2006
The largest city in the ancient world
By Ran Shapira
The Early Bronze Age temple was initially discovered at Tel Megiddo a decade ago. When part of it was first unearthed in 1996, the researchers realized this was a very impressive structure. Since then, evidence accumulated supporting the estimated dimensions: In 2000, two large column bases were excavated.
Then last summer, most of the structure was excavated, and the researchers were surprised. The temple, it emerged, was built on a larger area than had been previously assumed, and is an artful construction of excellent materials.
Based on pottery shards and carbon-14 dating of olive pits found on the temple floor, the building was constructed shortly before the year 3000 B.C.E., during the Early Bronze Age. To date, it is the largest and most splendid structure of its sort to be found in the Near East.
The directors of the dig, Professor David Ussishkin and Professor Yisrael Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University's archaeology institute, say the building and its surroundings are the earliest evidence of urbanization in the region.
Two of the compound's walls - the facade and the rear walls - are well-preserved. The front wall is four meters thick. The rear walls of the temple compound are about 50 meters long. The stones of one of the side walls were stolen back in ancient times, and another wall has been deemed unlikely to be located.
In the hall between the walls, excavators found three pairs of large, well-worked basalt stones. In the hall's center sits a pair of round basalt stones, and two pairs of squared stones lie to the sides. In addition, smaller pieces of lesser-quality limestone were discovered in the center of the hall. The researchers are uncertain...
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
GGG Ping.
could be, thats a popular name over there
There's the BCE again.
You know if they are going to revise history to suit themselves, what's to say they don't apply the same revisionism and selected interpretations in all of their work?
You know I don't like the word renaissance becasue it's a French word and maybe I don't like the French (actually I don't like some French people but alot I do like), and besides the French are Catholic, so there.
So I will change the period known as the Renaissance to 'the Reemergence' because I won't be offended. I'll have to pass it around our perpetual revisioinism committee for final approval.
Flame away if you like but don't offend me, don't you dare offend me with any of your Christian words.
Pictures?
A couple here.
Thanks.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
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Good one, thanks!
Jews have used "C.E." and "B.C.E." for a very long time-- at leat a century-- so that we can use the same dates as everyone else without professing a religion in which we do not believe. Historians and archaeologists who study the ancient Middle East adopted this practice decades ago, because they are digging in sites controlled by Jews and Moslems and don't want to offend the host countries.
BS
The gratuitous obloquy does not contribute to archaeology threads.
The year that joins BC to AD is very important historically. For someone to change it to BCE to CE to avoid offenses is disengenuous, misleading and more importantly provocative when inevitably human curiosity asks what does BCE and CE denote. In fact it is fraud as it covers up the origin of time such as 1996.
The poster who puts out such bovine excrement as it has been used for decades to avoid offending this group or that group is in fact ignoring that the usage of BCE-CE is in fact offensive as it clearly intends to render BC-AD meaningless when in fact it holds deep spiritual meaning to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
It has the same effect as if a group of non-Christians started to promulgate the Cross as the symbol of a sword rather than crucification of the Messiah. In fact, there is even a recent attempt to convince the public on tours that the sculpted stone tablets in the Supreme Court with the Roman numberals I,II,III,IV,...,X were made in reference to the first ten amendments of the US Consitution, when in fact they represent the ten commandments.
As far as archeology, it is linked with history and a time scale is a measurable framework for history. Hence, it behooves the archeologist and historian to use a time scale that is either true and accurate or if they are truly worried about offending sensitivities, they should invent their own scale that would be an acceptable standard to historians.
But they don't do this, so they commit fraud by taking a time scale with deep religious meaning and attempt to morph it into something secular; that is an offense! It smacks of a lie.
Now for the article, as I first posted, if they are so quick to accept an offending lie of a time reference, what else would they be quick to adopt and repeat and repeat and repeat until it is accepted as fact?
One thing stands out, they have all but declared the excavation as a 'temple', not a 'market', not a 'slaughterhouse', not a 'bathhouse', not a 'school' or 'shrine' but a 'temple'. Large basalt rounded stones are speculated to be altars or maybe plynths or bases of columns, but altar fits with 'temple' so you can bet altar will be used in tours.
They find animal bones and think aha! Animal 'sacrifices' because by golly it's a temple with altars. Perhaps when it was abandoned it was used by homeless nomads for centuries to eat rabbits and fowl as they transited through the valley. But no, it's a temple built in 3000 BCE!
I can see the biases emerge throughout the article that are engulfing this dig.
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