Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Archeologists find 3,000-year-old beehives in ancient city's ruins in N. Israel
The findings in the ruins of the city of Rehov include 30 intact hives dating to around 900 B.C.E., archaeologist Amihai Mazar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told The Associated Press. He sad it offers unique evidence that an advanced honey industry existed in the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.
Beekeeping was widely practiced in the ancient world, where honey used for medicinal and religious purposes as well as for food, and beeswax was used to make molds for metal and to create surfaces to write on. While portrayals of bees and beekeeping are known in ancient artwork, nothing similar to the Rehov hives has ever been found before, Mazar said...
And speaking of archaeology, if you get the History International Channel, there's a show on there worth looking for: The Naked Archaeologist. The host basically travels all over Israel examining various archaeological finds and controversies. It's entertaining and certainly light, as some of the posters on the web site complain, but I'm not sure you can expect anything else from a half hour show that purports to be about any particular issue. You're simply not going to get an in-depth look that will satisfy those with high standards. And look, one post complains about an "overt Israeli bias," so it must be good. Do check it out.
There's a video preview here.
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I'm not sure of Simcha J's bona fides as an archeologist. He's a Toronto-based film maker who made a wonderful film many years ago about the rescue of the Falashas, but since then, he's been caught up in all sorts of stuff from the "James ossary" to finding the lost tribes.