Archaeology Lecture

February 4, 7:30pm - 9:00pm
Doris Duke Theatre Honolulu Academy of Arts

Dr Andrea Berlin

NEW LIGHT ON THE PERIOD OF THE MACCABEES: EXCAVATIONS AT TEL KEDESH

Since 1997, the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota have conducted excavations at Tel Kedesh, the largest tel site in Israel's Upper Galilee. Literary sources identify the inhabitants as Phoenician, and suggest that the site was a simple farming town. Two third century B.C.E. papyri record an Egyptian official's visit to purchase flour and take a bath. I Maccabees cites a battle between Jonathan the Hasmonean and Demetrius II in 143 B.C.E. that ended at Kedesh, on account of which the town's Phoenician inhabitants fled. The Michigan-Minnesota project was conceived in order to investigate rural Phoenician life in the Hellenistic period, and especially the inhabitants’ interactions with neighboring Jewish towns. Further excavations have allowed the reconstruction of imperial control in this region from the Persian period – after the return from Babylon – through the time of the Maccabees, and provide new insight into political and social interactions between Jews, Phoenicians, and Greeks in second century BCE Palestine.


Ticket Information
free

Event Sponsor
LLEA, Archaeological Institute of America, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Robert Littman, 808-956-4173, littman@hawaii.edu

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