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The Israel Museum has put together a new exhibit (up until October 25th) about two lesser known stories: settlement of the Canaanites in the eastern part of the Egyptian Delta during the Middle Bronze Age (circa 1800–1550 BCE) and their development of the first consonantal alphabet from Egyptian hieroglyphics and consequently, Egyptian rule over Canaan for 350 years during the Late Bronze Age (circa 1500–1150 BCE). Canaanite, Semitic-speaking workers in Egypt modified hieroglyphics, where one symbol represents a word (this is similar to the Chinese writing system which has always intrigued me) into Proto-Sinaitic, also known as Proto-Canaanite as it spread from Sinai to Canaan. The text above is in this script and says פרעה בכנען/Pharaoh in Canaan (from right to left like the Hebrew, note the ר/resh is a drawing of a head/rosh, ע/ayin word for eye is an eye, נ/nun is a snake/nahash). This historical chapter overlaps with the familiar biblical narratives of Joseph, the children of Israel and Moses in Egypt.

The exhibit displays 680 artifacts mostly discovered in Israel, with some objects borrowed from other museums. Objects were found at Bet Shean, Jaffa, Timna and Hazor, popular sites to visit but not usually for Egyptology.

Quartzite sphinx of Thustmose III, 1480-1425 BCE

King Amenhotep IV/Akhenaton, 1353–1336 BCE, Yellow stone

Inscription in hieroglyphics from gate of Egyptain stronghold, Jaffa,
from time of Ramses II (considered by some the Pharaoh of the Exodus), 1279–1213 BCE

Offering table from Egypt, limestone with hieroglyphics with name of Ramses II

Ramses III, only life-size statue of a pharaoh made and found in Israel, in Bet Shean, 12th century BCE, Basalt

Photograph on left: Dan Kirzner, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

A 3300 year old anthropoid sarcophagus was exposed containing the personal belongings of a wealthy Canaanite (possibly an Egyptian Army official) at Tel Shadud, Jezreel valley, 13th century BCE

Lids of anthropoid sarcophagi, Deir al-Balah, Gaza, 13th century BCE

Hathor mask
Photo © Eretz Israel Museum Tel Aviv, by Leonid Padrul-Kwitkowski
Mask of Hathor, Solomon’s Pillars at Timna, 13-12 century BCE, Faience

A major temple to Hathor, the Egyptian patron goddess to miners, constructed by Seti I was found at the copper mines in Timna valley. Of all the deities in the Egyptian pantheon, Hathor made the greatest impression on the Canaanites.

Another temple with inscriptions was discovered in Serabit el-Khadim in Egypt, where turquoise was mined in antiquity, in an expedition led by British archaeologist and Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie. If you’re interested in visiting his grave, Petrie is buried in the Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

For those who are unable to visit the Pharaoh in Canaan exhibit at the museum, there is an excellent audio-visual tour available at http://www.imj.org.il/en/audioguides/pharoah/. Enjoy!

Emperor Hadrian returns to Jerusalem

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The Roman emperor Publius Aelius Hadrianus returns to Jerusalem after almost 2000 years as the Israel Museum brings together for the first time the only three bronze images of Hadrian that have been found. These portraits are in the Rollockenfrisur style, popular in the Roman provinces and characterized by nine curls which evenly frame the face and are rolled to the left.

Hadrian in bronze, photo by Eli Posner

The head on the left is from the Louvre, provenance unknown. The second head on loan from the British museum was found in 1834 in the River Thames below a bridge. The third on the right is from the Israel museum collection, actually a head and torso found at Tel Shalem, the camp of the Sixth Roman legion in the Bet Shean valley. Also check out the 6 fragments of a three-line inscription in Latin (11 meters wide) also found at Tel Shalem on display in the Archaeology wing, presumably part of a monumental triumphal arch commemorating the suppression of the Bar Kochba Revolt.

Hadrian Torso

Approximately 160 portraits of Hadrian have survived, mostly in marble and you can find images on the Internet or see a good selection of them (73) at the Following Hadrian site.

So having met Hadrian, what can we understand about the man?
According to some “with his abundant energy, keen intellect, and wide-ranging interests, Hadrian is considered one of the Roman Empire’s more enlightened rulers.” When Jewish sources mention Hadrian it is always with the epitaph “may his bones be crushed” (שחיק עצמות or שחיק טמיא, the Aramaic equivalent), an expression never used even about Vespasian or Titus who destroyed the Second Temple.

There is a difference of opinion among scholars about the cause of the Bar Kochba Revolt and the exhibit leaves the debate undecided. Hadrian visited Jerusalem in 130 CE and found the city in need of rebuilding from its destruction in the Roman Jewish War (66-73 CE). One narrative suggests that at first Hadrian was sympathetic to the Jews and set out to rebuild the city and even the Jewish Temple. It is not clear whether building a foreign, Roman city with a pagan temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount, the holiest site to Judaism, was the cause of the Bar Kochba Revolt or whether the Revolt pushed Hadrian to obliterate Jerusalem, in place and name, and build Aelia Capitolina.

Hadrian built temples to various Roman gods, a temple to Venus at the traditional site of Jesus’ burial, the holiest site to Christianity. He built a temple to the Hellenistic god Zeus Hypsistos on Mount Gerizim, the site holy to the Samaritans.

Whatever your politics, the exhibit reverberated for me as a commentary on contemporary Israel and the Palestinians.

Hadrian’s built a wall to protect empire	Israel built a security/separation wall
Keys of Jews who fled their homes to desert , never to return	Keys taken by Arab refugees who fled their homes in 1948
Jews revolt against Roman authority	Arab intifada against Israeli authority
Bar Kochba writes that Jews of Tekoa who don’t follow his directives will have their homes destroyed	Destruction of homes of Arab terrorists
Although a military man Hadrian actually withdrew from territory for peace	Israel should withdraw from territories for peace

So once you have met Hadrian at the museum, in the flesh so to speak, what sites are there associated with Hadrian? As your guide, I can take you to these sites and explain the connection:

Roman gate under Damascus gate, Bab el Amud
Roman square with column and statue of emperor
Cardo and secondary cardo from Aelia Capitolina
aesclepion expanded into a large temple to Asclepius and Serapis
Ecce Homo arch, actually Roman gate to forum
Two vaults over Struthion pool to lay street
Lithostratus, Roman street
Holy Sepulcher site, Roman temple to Venus built by Hadrian
LEGIO X FRETENSIS stone outside Jaffa gate
quarry in Ir David excavated by Weill that was used for stones to build Aelia Capitolina
Caesarea, city and port rebuilt by Hadrian; second aqueduct from Taninim spring
Temple on Mount Gerizim

Gustav Bauernfeind and Orientalism

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Orientalism refers to the depiction or imitation of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers and artists, and can also imply a sympathetic stance towards the region. Since the 1979 publication of Edward Said‘s book Orientalism, the term has arguably taken on a pejorative meaning, becoming shorthand for prejudiced views towards cultures of the East. Said claimed that “every European (and similarly American), in what he could say about the Orient, was . . . a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.”

Luckily for Gustav Bauernfeind (born in Sulz am Neckar, Germany 1848 – died in Jerusalem, 1904 and buried in the Templer cemetery on Emek Refaim Street; on his tombstone is the first verse of Isaiah 43 …I have redeemed thee, … thou art mine!) he lived before Said’s volley against Europeans who were sharing their impressions of the exotic Orient.

Bauernfeind was a German Orientalist painter, illustrator and architect. After completing his architectural studies at the Polytechnic Institute in Stuttgart, he studied painting. He first visited the Levant from 1880 to 1882, living and working in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. He became interested in the Orient and returned repeatedly, moving to Palestine in 1896 with his wife and son and settling in Jerusalem in 1898. For a time, Bauernfeind lived upstairs in the house at 6 Cremieux Street named for the French statesman and founder of Alliance Française that was inhabited by August Bienzle, blacksmith, who did most of the ironwork of the German Colony.

German Colony, aquarelle by Gustav Bauernfeind

An album of Bauernfeind’s watercolor paintings of the German Colony was presented to the German Kaiser Wilhelm II when he visited Jerusalem and the German Colony in 1898.

Bauernfeind’s work is characterized primarily by architectural views of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. His oil paintings, of cityscapes and recognized holy sites, are meticulously crafted, intricately composed and almost photographically accurate, at a time when travel photography was already becoming popular. During his lifetime he was the most popular German Orientalist painter but fell into oblivion after his death. Since the early 1980s, Bauernfeind has been gradually rediscovered, with his paintings appearing at auctions and garnering high prices.

In 1992 his oil painting The Wailing Wall was sold at Christie’s in London for €326.000. When the painting was auctioned at Sotheby’s in London in 2007 it fetched €4.5 million. Note that there is no mehitza (separating the area into men and women sections), this happened only after 1967.

In 1997, another oil painting of Bauernfeind, The Port of Jaffa, was sold at the Van Ham Kunstauktionen in Cologne for 1.510.000 DM, thus becoming the most expensive 19th century painting ever sold in Germany.

If you are interested in exploring the various German Colonies, in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Haifa where the German Templers settled in the late 1800s contact me for a guided tour.

A Look into Loggia at Herodium

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At the Herod exhibit at the Israel museum there is a room that is a reconstruction of the loggia, the VIP box from the Herodium theater with its colorful panels on the lower part of the wall and above on light-colored plaster, unique paintings in secco, trompe de l’oeil views through an open window. Secco is a technique that requires less artisan skill and used when time is short as in the approaching visit of Marcus Aggripa in 15 BCE. In secco paint is applied on top of dry plaster whereas in fresco the paint is added while the plaster is still wet. The fresco technique requires skilled craftsmen who have to work applying small areas of plaster, smoothing it and then adding the mineral pigments.

The loggia at Herodium is not accessible to the public, room is enclosed by a wooden structure and a team of conservators are working to protect the delicate secco painting. Last week while guiding at Herodium I found the door open and was able to look in for a moment. Hence the photos below were taken in a rush, using my iPhone – since few images of the loggia have been shared I offer them for viewing here.

Two things struck me: 1) Through holes in the plaster you can see that the lower panels have two layers of paint and plaster implying that the walls were redecorated, probably for Marcus Aggripa’s visit. In talking to Dudi Mevorah, curator at the Israel museum, the outer layer is not fresco but a covering done in secco.

2) There are delicate paintings still on the upper section of the wall that are being conserved in place. The painting on display in the museum exhibit is a painstaking reconstruction of thousand of tiny pieces of paint found on the floor of the loggia by museum staff. You can view it at http://israel-tourguide.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/secco-loggia.jpg

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Category Archives: Art

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