Day 13

It's starting to get a little warm these days. 87F at 3:30pm in the shade. Seems a lot warmer. No clouds and no rain since we've been here. Lots of lawn and plant irrigation at the kibbutz keeps everything green.

Well, our old square needed cleaning up for its final photograph so I did a lot of that today. Our water pipe (incoming/outgoing?) looks neat. It's about 4 feet down.

Day 12

Things are moving dig-wise. The ceramic drain- or waterpipes were more apparent but difficult to follow. We did find 2 pipes extending out of the side of the hill into the wadi near our square. Neat. But the square is now closed.

Our team is moving across the wadi, up the hill, to a site that has a plastered wall barely sticking out of the ground. The site has a great view of the temple site and of the valley. A new square means loads of work to get it started. Pictures to follow.

We went on a tour of Golan battle sites with an Israeli veteran this afternoon. Picturesque hills with great views of valleys make great sites for tank battles, but bright sun and haze don't make for great pictures so I'll leave you with this one:

Day 11

Down we go - moved 5 tons of earth today (4 cubic meters) - found drain pipes. Looking for the road foundation. Will never find it.

John and I have had to move to a new room (don't ask) so we had a housewarming party. 'Twas a great success.



It's now 8:30pm local time and we're off to a lecture on ancient Roman religion.

Day 10 - Official Report

Hello Friends of Omrit,

The first week of the 2008 excavation at Omrit has progressed very nicely. We opened two squares near the entrance to the colonnaded way leading to the temple complex. Square supervisors Amy Fisher and Willis Jensen are working with a great group of volunteers and Omrit super-veteran Greg Stoehr is supervising the field. Our hope is to clarify the nature of the entryway, and the road leading to the temple. In addition, we want to determine if there was only one colonnade, or two. Once we have finished in these squares, we hope to move across the valley to the north in order to search for the roadway and any associated structures.

While we are not digging in the area of the temple this season, we did do some preservation work in the area west of the early shrine before the volunteers arrived. In March of this year, a visitor to the site found a fragmentary Aramaic inscription in this area. The inscription is now being analyzed and appears to date from the 4th century B.C.E. This would make it by far the earliest artifact we have cataloged. It’s relationship to other activity on the site requires further analysis. We will keep you posted as information becomes available on this interesting piece.

Our week ended with a bang, when another visitor to the site reported finding a Greek inscription in the valley north of where we are digging. On Saturday morning (5/24), our whole crew helped to remove this large stone and move it up the hillside, and secure it in the truck for transport to the storage shed. This is definitely the heaviest stone we have moved by hand at Omrit, and as you can see in the attached picture, we used ancient lifting technology to do so. We are grateful to Gavri from Kibbutz Kfar Szold who loaned us the 4 meter beam to make this move possible.

Dan Schowalter

Day 10

Not much happening today, our square gets deeper and deeper...

So here's: Moon over Omrit

Day 9

Caesarea Maritima was super. A harbour built almost from scratch over the course of 12 years by Herod the Great to honour Augustus.

We looked first at the temple to Augustus but this is in far worse condition than óur'temple at Omrit, and in fact I wasn't able to sort out the stones of the original structure from those of the later Byzantine building.

After the temple, we walked out along the breakwater to look back at the town. This gave a magnificent view across the the harbour of white buildings, dark green grass and palm trees all set off by the yellow sand of the hippodrome. Classic Mediterranean!

Later, we walked along through the hippodrome trying to imagine what it must have been like in Roman times to sit up in the stands and watch the chariot races against a background of the sea and its cooling breezes. Almost adjoining the hippodrome is Herod's palace with its swimming pool set into the rocks of the shore. Fantastic place.

After Caesarea, looked at the aqueduct which brought fresh water from the mountains into the town and then drove on to Haifa. This is a city which has expanded very much since the 60s when I was last there. we drove in past offices of Microsoft, Intel and other American hight tech organizations.

At the University visited the Hecht Museum and look at a set of exhibits relating to the Jewish Rebelliuon and its suppression by the Romans. Impressive.

Day 9

Well, Saturday continued yesterday after I blogged. We went off to Banias where a spring gushes forth from the Mount Hermon range with one of the three major tributaries of the Jordan. I'll not burden you with the Grotto of Pan but just show you a river picture. Sort of like north Georgia, only lusher.

Later last night we had BBQ cooked by one of kibbutzniks. Right in front of our room, in fact, and a good time was had by all.

Today we started with a trip to Caesarea Maritima, the seaport that Herod built on the Mediterranean as an entry port for his Roman friends. A beautiful place. Here's John with our buddy Paul and a crusader castle (and restaurant) in the background:

After this we went up to a museum at Haifa University. We were (very much) treated to a tour of an exhibit by its curator. The exhibit featured the Galilean aspects of the Jewish Revolt of 67-73CE. Tonight back to blog, eat and sleep.

Day 8

A half day of work today: 5am to 8:30. (Whose idea was that?) Most of our work involved this amazing inscription. It was found down the hill from temple in a small valley, a mostly dry creek bed called a wadi. So this big slab of basalt had to be moved uphill and then into a pickup. Took over 2 hours of careful work.

Then into the storehouse back at the kibbutz. This is as close as you will allowed to see the slab for a while:

It has a number of lines of inscription and mentions the emperor Diocletian, who ruled from 284 CE to 311 CE, and also his co-emperor Maximian, among others. I think this little guy is destined to go straight to the Israel Museum. (After proper study, of course.)

This afternoon we're off for a little touring in Banias. Pictures later.

Day 7

Yesterday Greta, our host here, took us on a tour of the kibbutz and gave us a little bit of its history. In 1934 a group of people, mainly from eastern Europe, formed a small community in southern Palestine. In 1942 Jewish authorities, such as they were, decided that a Jewish presence was needed along the Golan Heights and a string of kibbutzim was founded. That small community moved north to start this kibbutz. And, sure enough, in 1948 they helped make this part of Palestine part of the new Israeli state. How close to the Golan Heights is Kibbutz Kfar Szold? As close as you can get:



Up on top is a plateau, a butte if you will, that was once Syria. There are 2 residents of the Kibbutz' old folks home who date back to 1934.

Here's a picture of our square showing what we are finding: nothing! Our neighboring square has walls, columns and other fun stuff. We aren't very deep yet but the site supervisor suggests this is the 13th century level. But no remains of earlier times sticking through.



A good time to mention my schedule. The van to the site leaves at 5am, John and I get up at 4:15. We work until 8:30 when breakfast comes over from the Kibbutz. Then we continue until 11:30 when we clean up and return. Lunch is at 1pm in the cafeteria of the Kibbutz' air conditioner factory. After lunch our square team washes the pottery we found the day before and which has been soaking since. Then we're free for the day (unless there is some need to return to the site). A little reading outside in the shade, web surfing, maybe a snooze. Supper at 7:30, maybe a lecture after and bed soon after that.

Didn't get to walk the perimeter yesterday because I went back out to the site for some "compulsory" volunteer work. Today's the day.

NEWS ALERT: An inscription has been found! We've learned this afternoon that a visitor prowling around our site today (what is that all about?) found a massive basalt inscription. The honchos went kinda bat-s***. It has the greek word for Augustus in it. Yikes. More tomorrow.

Day 6

Well, archaeology-wise, we've pretty much cleaned off our top layer of dark earth and have reached a ragged layer of limestone dust. We'll see soon what lies underneath. I'll take the camera out tomorrow.

Physically I'm holding up well, somewhere in the middle. The heat and effort is affecting some of the kids and some are gung-ho workers. John and I are in the solid middle. There is a 3-mile perimeter around our gated community and I feel I can walk this hilly route today. John runs it every day in less than a half hour but won't stop to take pictures.

The picture today is from Jerusalem last week. A few times we saw large groups of soldiers just hanging out. Why? Don't know, but probably held in reserve in case GWB was attacked or something. This group was just outside the walls of the old city. Note all the spectators. We saw one woman call out to her son for a tearful mother-and-child reunion.

P.S. If you're ever traveling internationally, Skype telephone calls are great! John and I have been calling landlines in North America regularly for the last 10 days and haven't spent $5.00 yet.

Day 5

Yesterday the dig director, Dan Schowalter, showed us some of the fanciest artifacts found in previous digs. Since the temple slowly went out of business, these are not as many as one might expect. But there is some glass, marble and sculpture. And a nice sphinx that has been sent off to the Israel Museum. He thinks this is an official starting a race by dropping a cloth.

We continued to strip away the surface layer today. Lots of pottery shards but still the same rich, black, and dry upper layer. Lots of large rocks. Stay tuned. The weather has been warm but not oppressive except in the late afternoon. We cleaned the pottery that we found yesterday (and that had been soaking for a day). The asst director, an art historian who tries to decypher the architecture details of the site (and who is moving to a new job at Queens College (CUNY)), is going to give a lecture tonight.

Day 4

Real archaeology today: breaking up the ground with pick and hoe, shifting dirt and heaving boulders out of the way. By 9:30am I was looking at my watch hoping it was nearly time to knock off. By the end of the day the temperature was close on 90, I was nackered and spending less than 50% of the time working - the remainder resting.

No real finds yet - too early in the process.

Spent the afternoon reading until about 5pm when I went for a run around the perimeter of the kibbutz - it was still very hot and there's a savage hill in the middle of the run which I've yet to run without a pause.

This is proving a very taxing vacation physically!!

Day 4

What have we done in 2 days of digging? Well, in our 4 meter by 4 meter square, we've cleaned off all the vegetation, all the surface rocks and dug down (with picks and hoes) about 15 or 20 centimeters. Doesn't seem like much but it's still a couple tons of dirt.

This level is not very important, too close to the surface to tell us anything. Lots of pottery shards though and lots of big rocks sticking out, some "dressed", that is, with artifical surfaces. Even a couple of column drums.

It's 12:45 and off to lunch, the big meal of the day. I get the fish!

Picture of the day: Wild Wheat with Thistles. Remember that wheat was first domesticated a couple hundred miles north of here.

Day 3

John, below, has covered the day well. We hope to find evidence of the main entrance off the main road, as it were. Lots of column drums, bases and capitals scattered around and we hope to uncover many more.

He didn't mention the civilized aspects of this dig, the first of which is the mostly paved road we travel over to get there. There's a porta-potty! There are tables and chairs for our breaks and "second breakfast", and, wonder of wonders, there's a tarp over our "square" for shade.

Day 3

This was the day we'd been looking forward to yet dreading the 5:00am start. In the event it wasn't too bad, Bill and I had packed our bags the evening before, so we just had time for a quick peanut butter sandwich and a cup of coffee before boarding the van out to the site. It was cool and only just light when we reached the site.

Imagine a wide lush valley - the Huleh valley. The hills on either side are bone dry, the grass burned yellow. On the easten side of the valley we can see Lebanon. Our side of the valley is Israeli and is essentially a part of the Golan heights. Our side is largely fenced off, as much as anything to keep us off the hills which are covered with landmines.

At our site, the work in previous years has excavated much of the two temples, and has also shown that at least in Roman times, the later temple (Temple 2) had been approached by a street lined with columns and perhaps covered over.

Part of this years work is to find the route of the street and how it crossed over a nearby shallow wadi. (valley). To this end Bill and I were assigned to different teams each of which was set to clearing all the surface grass and loose stones from a 5m square. This took most of the morning, then we set about measuring the elevations of all the larger stones embedded in the ground. Some of these left in each square were clearly part of the structures we expected to find, others perhaps just loose stones from a fill somewhere. Before beginning the excavation of the 5m squares we had to create a scale drawing of each square and photgraph each area. We'd prettty well finished this at the end of the days work. So perhaps tomorrow we'll actually begin excavations....

By the time we left the site the sun was up and the temperature into the late 80s, the bugs were active as well - small gnat like things that buzzed around your easr and sometimes bit you. Quite unpleasant!! Of course there's lots of kidding around about the snakes, scorpions and spiders said to be in the area. A prize has been offered to the person who kills the most scorpions of the whole period. So far I've yet to see my first!!

We're starting to get to know the students who are very friendly and seem an interesting bunch. Most of them seem to be in degree programs with a strong religious/history focus and I'm enjoying talking to them.

But as I write this, it's mid afternoon and the whole kibbutz is quiet - most people seem to be asleep....Bill is dozing in a chair under a tree. The temperature is well into the 90s. When it cools down a bit I plan to go for a run. It's only about 3.5 km around the perimeter fence, but there is a steep hill at one side of the kibbutz. At the top of this is a pill box facing the Golan. The perimeter fence is high and topped with barbed wire and in places razor wire as well. We have an armed guard at the gate which is manned 24/7,all this belieing the current tranquility of the place.

That's it from me, time for my run.

Day 2

Ok, first a little history. When Octavian beat Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, he became the new ruler in the eastern Mediterranean and all the sub-rulers there had to act fast. Most convinced the now Augustus of their new loyalty and none better than Herod of Judea. He built a temple, an Augusteum, to his new best buddy in about 20BCE. Josephus wrote:

So when he had conducted Caesar to the sea, and was returned home, he built him a most beautiful temple, of the whitest stone, in Zenodorus's country, near the place called Panium. This is a very fine cave in a mountain, under which there is a great cavity in the earth, and the cavern is abrupt, and prodigiously deep, and full of a still water; over it hangs a vast mountain; and under the caverns arise the springs of the river Jordan. Herod adorned this place, which was already a very remarkable one, still further by the erection of this temple, which he dedicated to Caesar.

We are at Panium, the cave where the Greeks had a shrine to the god Pan, now called Banias. Or at least our site, where the Augusteum is being excavated, is 2 miles from the cave. And the kibbutz is a further 2 miles away. We went to visit this morning and are pretty much free now. The new arrivals have to recover from jet lag, though these kids seem pretty hardy...

The site was discovered 10 years ago after a fire cleared away the brush and "dressed" stones were seen peaking out of the ground on the top of a hill. In the last ten years much has been exposed. You'll get a complete story of what has been found over the next few weeks! As well as details of my co-workers.

Day 1 redux

Met our noble leader at the airport and two students from Carthage. He waited for other arrivals and we traveled north with the students and another staff member in the dig's truck. All arrivals (there are about 15 of us) met for a hot dog supper tonight and we're off to an orientation at the dig tomorrow.

The Kibbutz is an island of greenery in a fairly barren landscape. John and I share a standard motel room with a kitchen. And wireless. Our room is the one on the end:

Day 1!

We're at the Ben Gurion Airport now, it's about 2 pm, we're waiting for our fellow diggers to arrive from Chicago. We just spent $30 for a sandwich and drink which appals us both. Then off for a 3 hour drive to the northern tip of Israel and Kibbutz Kfar Szold.

This morning on the drive over we stopped at the Arab village of Abu Ghosh to visit the crusader "chapel". Soon after it was built, it was taken over as an muslim school. 600 years later or so, in the late 1800s, the Ottomans gave it over to a French religious order. There was a French mass in progress when we entered which even I found a little inspiring.

Day -1

Bill mentioned our second frustrated attempt at visiting the Israel Museum, what he didn't mention was the way in which the whole road had been cleared so that George preceeded by half a dozen motor bikes, and in a convoy of 15 other vehicles could sweep through majestically while the rest of us were held back by police and army. There were no cheers from our group as he passed indeed when we were released by police I heard one woman remark "now we are a free people. As we hiked towards the museum we came across a group of about 50 or 60 soldiers armed to the teeth - just waiting for something to happen. Each day we've seen dozens of heavily armed police and soldiers; yesterday we actually saw a young couple in Tee shirts and jeans each carrying a sub-machine gun!!

Anyway the Islamic Art Museum was great - so sucks to you, George! We saw some beautiful Persian miniatures of religious subjects with intricate arab calligraphy, together with very beautiful pottery and glass with comples geomatric designs. I enjoyed this a lot.

After picking up our car we set off to meet my friends at a traditional Palestine restaurant. We ate outside starting with an array of salad dishes, including homus, toasted lumps of goat cheese, taboulet, a spicy chilli dish and many more. I followed this with a huge piece of leg of lamb served with rice. Delicious.

My friends who had been in the area for the last five years talked about their disgust at the way the Palestinians were treated. I expect we'll see something of this first hand if we go to Bethlehem with the group.

After luch, drove back home, lay round, drank and read. This is the life!!

Day -1

Our last full day here. In the morning we walked the 2 miles to the Israel Museum. Yesterday we had a wasted $50 cab ride because the museum was closed. After fruitless exploring all options our cab driver got us to the door but to no avail. I guess GWB was inside. So we pilgrimed our way down the Mount of Olives instead.

Today, on our way, we were stopped for a half-hour until a 50 car caravan passed, including 3 big black limos bearing small American flags. A bad omen. Sure enough the biggest museum in Israel was closed again. We doubted GWB was getting culture. Maybe Laura.

So we showed them: we hiked over to the Islamic Arts Museum.

Then off to the Hertz office in the suburbs since the street of the in-town office was closed due to security. We have wheels! We're off to the airport tomorrow to join our incoming crew with a stop at a crusader church in Abu Ghosh on the way.

A late lunch today with a friend of John's who is with the Canadian diplomatic mission to the West Bank. Already fascinating. He and his wife live in East Jerusalem and seem to have as little to do with the Israelis as possible. He works in Ramallah and she teaches in a Quaker school there. I'll try to impart a bit of conversation in later blogs but I made a big mistake: I told them about this blog so I can only hope they don't read it! (The beer we drank, brewed in the West Bank, has the motto: Drink our beer. Taste the revolution!) They promised us a great restaurant meal in Ramallah when we return if it can be arranged. Today we ate in an upscale palestinian restaurant just across the former Green Line. And today had a different perspective.
Didn't take my camera today so here's a picture of John in front of the restaurant where we ate yesterday. Our Canadian diplomat suprised us today by the confirming the great reputation of Abu Shukri's hummus: