Week 6 was special as the Bar Mitzvah of Eli Freund, the son of the co-director Dr. Richard Freund, was celebrated at the site. At mid-morning all the staff and volunteers joined the Freund family, their friends from the USA and Israel at the meditation spot overlooking the magnificent Ginosar valley, the Sea of Galilee and the expanse of the lower Galilee. Volunteers came as they were; in their dirty clothes from a morning of working in the various loci at the site. The service was beautiful and Eli performed fabulously singing his portion of the service while performing this rite of Jewish 13 year old boys. See the picture below of Eli at the Bar Mitzvah with his parents.
It was also an exciting week for archaeology. The area next to the Roman bastion got down to about -174.5 meters (below sea level), the lowest level recorded at Bethsaida. For a reference, the sea of Galilee is nominally -210 meters and the area of the road where we have been digging is about -170 meters. The bastion area is completed for now and Dr. Arav brought in a back hoe and leveled the area east of the outer city wall (where rubble had been thrown during previous sessions). The back hoe driver found a beautiful piece of amphora handle which has the name of the winery from Cyprus (see pic below left).
We were very fortunate to have had the well known scholar, Dr. James Charlesworth with us for the last 10 days. His knowledge was greatly appreciated while digging out the ancient street which leads from the north to the main city gates. See his picture in the photo gallery. Just to the west of the street, between the outer and inner city wall, 2 interesting finds showed up. The first was a spindle whorl and the second was a beautiful Egyptian scarab; both found in the bottom of a fairly large broken iron age vessel. See the picture below of Eli working on it. The scarab (2nd from right picture) is decorated with hieroglyphics and covered with faïence (Egyptian blue). Dr. Arav believes that is a very important find and its probably from the 12th century BCE. He expects to determine the meaning of the hieroglyphics in the near future.
Dr. Carl Savage arrived from Drew University and set up his station behind (west) of the city gate and chambers. This is at the Roman level where he has been excavating for the last 2 seasons. Besides finding a couple of coins; a cache of 8 Roman nails was discovered (see pic at bottom right).
Pictures can be enlarged by going to the photo gallery & clicking on the desired picture.
Note : Interesting archaeology blog - http://archaeologydigs.blogspot.com/