12 Friday, June 4, 1982 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Holy Land Archeology Reviewed in 'Digging for God and Country' (Continued from Page 11) tions of the city. In 1867-1880, Grove raised money for the Pales- tine Exploration Fund to allow a new excavator, Warren, to survey, map and excavate in the Holy Land. Warren arrived in Jaffa with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows ready to ex- cavate the Haram-ash both in London and in Jerusalem was at a height. Rabbis, the Pasha, scholars and tourists descended the shafts to inspect the work and contribute money. A Palestine Museum was begun at the Dudley Gal- lery in London in 1869. The bizarre story of the Moabite stone, (a relic bear- ing a documentary inscrip- tion describing the victory of a Moabite king over Judah and Israel) involved suspicion, greed, intrigue, bribery and diplomatic ma- neuvering. The French, British and Germans each tried to purchase the stone from the Bedouin tribal leader, Bani-Hamideh. Suspecting that it contained a secret treasure, the Be- douins destroyed the stone by repeatedly burning it and plunging it into water to wrest from it the secret. Only fragments were left to be later assembled. Pieced together like a jig- saw puzzle, it was finally displayed in the Louvre in 1873. Mapping the Holy Land was divided be- tween the British Pales- tine Exploration Fund under Wilson, who planned to map all of Palestine, and the American Palestine Exploration Society, which planned to map Transjordan. The mapping skill of the Sharif, but the Nazif Pasha, responding to Islamic pro- tests, forced Warren to limit his work to a distance of 40 feet from the wall. Warren, not daunted, sunk shafts vertically at this limit and then bur- rowed to the wall to discover an ancient pavement 100 feet underground. 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Goldstein 25839 Southwood • 557-2566 STEVE KAY ANNOUNCES HE IS NOW OFFERING BEST POSSIBLE DEALS ON LEASING ANY CAR CALL ME PERSONALLY at 649 1300 TO LEASE OR BUY ANY CAR - FREE LOANERS — 8 LOCATIONS TO SERVE YOU • Investment Tax Credits passed through • Bend Over Backwards Service • Cash Conserving NO DOWN PAYMENT PLAN /1 Ar Villell 4 , ga A 1111 ® 'SYSTEM l P.O. Crooks Road 48099 British far excelled that of the Americans. The com- pleted British survey actu- ally defined the limits of the future country, as the Ot- toman Empire gradually crumbled and Palestine was cut away from Syria. When the British vied with the Egyptians over interests in the Suez Canal area, the British campaign in the Holy Land was eventually successful because of the ex- cellent mapping by the mili- tary engineers. Tragic Story of Antiquities Trader A lively trade in tourism and antiquities developed on the heels of the ar- cheological interst. The story of Moses Wilhelm Shapira, a Jew converted to Anglicanism, who had an antiquities shop on Chris- tian's Street in Jerusalem, ended tragically. Shapira, who had come to Jerusalem from Keiv at 26 and who had established a reputable trade in artifacts, was involved in selling sus- pected forged Moabite pot- tery containing inscriptions in letters like those on the Moabite stone. Although probably innocent of fraud, and himself a victim of the perpetrators of it, Shapira was not able to shake off the suspicion of guilt. Years later, when he was about to sell to the British Museum several ancient scrolls from a section of Dueteronomy, scrolls that had been ver- ified by experts, the charge by a French scholar that the scrolls were forged caused the British Museum to with- draw its offer of a million pounds for their pur- chase. The museum also withdrew the scrolls from a current exhibition and discredited the seller as a swindler. Shapira commited suicide. Eventually more scrolls, now called the Dead Sea Scrolls, were discovered in the same condition as Shap- ira's scrolls. But Shapira's scrolls were sold on the an- tiquities market for a few pounds and eventually dis- appeared. Silverman closes the 19th Century work with the con- tribution of Flinders Petrie, who came in 1890 from ex- cavations in Egypt to direct the dig at Tell Hesy, east of Gaza. Petrie pioneered in the field of archeology the dating of levels of excava- tion (the strata) by pieces of broken pottery, called sherds, which have been so expertly classified that they can identify the time slot of a layer. Petrie was shocked that comparative dating had not been done in Palestine to equate historical develop- ment within the country with areas beyond. Eventu- ally Petrie returned to work in Egypt leaving the site to a new director, an American named Bliss. Under him the cuneiform tablet of Tell Hesy was discovered, a document from the .14th Century BCE disclosing an Egyptian control of Canaan: Archeology had begun to write history. The Germans under Kaiser Wilhelm II entered the field of bibli- cal archeology with a dig at Megiddo led by Schumacher with a crew of 150 laborers, as the Deutsche Palestina Ver- ein was formed. The Germans organized the laborers efficiently with five male diggers to 15 women carriers and bonuses for finds in the 10-hour day. Archeology had become an industry. When digging in the Glailee unearthed the syn- agogue at Capernaum, Germay firmly established itself in the Middle East with scholarship backed by money and political influ- ence. The Kaiser and the Sultan cemeted a bond of friendship. U.S. Influence Starts in 1900s The Americans, mean- while, had established in 1905-1910 the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem supported by universities who each con- tributed $100 for the pur- chase of the building. .G.A. Reisner, a trained archeologist, was chosen by Charles Eliot Norton to ex- cavate Sebaste in Samaria, while Jacob H. Schiff gave the money to Harvard for a Semitic museum and $50,000 for the excavation. Reisner had already been committed to return to Egypt, and the German Schumacher was chosen to lead the dig, which un- covered a stairway to a temple to Augustus, along with mosaic floors and an altar with impe- rial sculpture. When Reisner returned, how- ever, he had to move all of Schumacher's dumped debris to uncover the walls of the city. Reisner discovered more than 60 ostraca (pottery fragments with inscrip- tions), with Hebrew cursive script shedding new light on daily life with records of tax payments on wine and oil, and with names of persons who had lived in the ancient city. In his penultimate chap- ter, Silverman describes the frantic attempts by the Britisher Montague Parker to locate the treasure of Sol- omon's Temple by reopen- ing subterranean passages under the Temple Mount in a dig directed by a clair- voyant in London. By brib- ing the local official to allow him to dig on the Haram- ash-Sharif secretly at night, Parker, when discovered, caused a riot that nearly cost him his life. The final chapter covered the preparations for war in the Holy Land with the British, French and Rus- sians allied against Ger- many, Austria and Turkey. In 1913, with war clouds gathering over the Near East, two British ar- cheologists arrived in the Negev to participate in the mapping of the wilderness — Leonard Woolley and T.E. Lawrence. The last piece to the puzzle map of Palestine was completed — from the upper Galilee to the Gulf of Aqaba. The British Palestine Explora 7 tion Fund maps were ready to be used by army intelli- gence at the outbreak of war. The Jewish Palestit Exploration Society was formed in Jerusalem shortly before the war and in 1920 began exca- vations near Tiberias in the Galilee. The Jews themselves had entered the field of archeology, and they have continued to discover and interpret their own history. Silverman himself is evi- dence of how a Jewish scholar can bring impartial research techniques to bear in uncovering the fascinat- ing history of this excava- tion fever. His scholarly notes complete the book, which can be criticized only for ending so soon. Born in Boston and edu- cated at Wesleyan Univer- sity, Silverman has studied at the Institute of Archeol- ogy of Hebrew University for his graduate work. He subsequently has worked as a field archeologist for the Department of Antiquities and Museums of Israel. He has excavated at Akko with the University of Haifa. It is to be hoped that Sil- verman will continue his historical survey of excava- tions in Israel with the sub- sequent digs from 1917. to the present. Support Group Plays Important Role at BGU NEW YORK (JTA) — Support groups in the United States for Israeli universities can legiti- mately be considered a commitment to a goal of global significance, accord- ing to Robert Arnow, president of the American Associates of Ben-Gurion University. Such support groups are standard components of the educational scene for many universities in many coun- tries. Ben-Gurion Univer- sity has similar support groups in Australia, Swit- zerland, South Africa and Britain, Arnow said. Arnow stressed the uni- versity's accomplishment-- in desert reclamation, sc tlement and developmen. which have worldwide sig- nificance. He cited the university's Jacob Blaustein's Desert Research Institute as the only one in the world where scientists study all aspects of human settlement in a desert environment. Re- search includes ecology, flora and fauna, water, climatology, energy, ag- riculture and economics. , Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.