Shabbat Shalom

It’s finally the weekend and we are all saying “shalom!” to the shabbat… it’s great to get a good rest. Although we are enjoying the dig, some more than others, we are counting down to the day we return home to the U.S. Today some of us forfeited sabbath rest for a trip to Petra in Jordan. Some of us pretty much spent the day sleeping and others swam at the pools. Since it is sabbath, the kibbutz isn’t serving dinner to us. Instead they gave us food and charcoal for a barbecue. So as I write this post I am sitting near the stream that flows near the kibbutz waiting for the coals to heat up enough to thoroughly cook our kabobs. It’s a beautiful evening and we are getting a rare breeze.

As an update on the dig, we have been unearthing lots of pottery, bones, and flint. After we wash and sort everything, it all goes to Hebrew University in Jerusalem to be examined more thoroughly and sometimes tested and carbon-dated. The big finds we have had in our area (area D) have included some pottery that originally came from Cypress, a lot of architecture that will help us understand what we are excavating, and a beautiful copper piece that Mandy and Justin found. The copper piece we found is an almost fully intact pin for a toga, about four inches long. The other group from Asbury Seminary which is digging in Area C have found a really cool mini-altar that was for small sacrifice or burning incense. Area C is also where the apiary, the man made bee-hives, was discovered last year–the only Iron age bee-hives ever excavated. Tel Rehov is a very unique tel, not just because of the bee-hives but also everything else. Though the pottery is normal, the architecture, the city lay-out, and the buildings are all unique among all the tels in Israel. We can’t tell what ethnicity these people were yet. Were they Canaanite or just unique Israelites or what? We don’t know yet but we will tell you if we find out.