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Inspectors with the Israel Antiquities Authority's (IAA) Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery say they found pickaxes and other signs of looting in a cave near Kibbutz Lahav in southern Israel.

Upon further investigation, the excavators discovered a hoard of ancient artifacts. IAA officials say they don't yet know how the cave was used or why these objects were placed there, but they found several intact ceramic pots; jewelry made of bronze, shells and faience; oil lamps; small amulets; alabaster jars; cosmetic vessels; and Egyptian scarab seals that date back to the 15th and 14th centuries B.C.

"During this period, Canaan was ruled by Egypt," Daphna Ben-Tor, curator of Egyptian archaeology at the Israel Museum, explained in a statement from the IAA.

"The names of kings appeared on some of the seals," Ben-Tor added. "Among other things, we can identify a sphinx lying opposite the name of the pharaoh Thutmose, who reigned from about 1504-1450 B.C. Another scarab seal bears the name of Amenhotep, who reigned from about 1386-1349 B.C. Still another scarab depicts Ptah, the principal god of the city of Memphis."

The announcement was timed just before Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating the biblical story of the Israelites leaving slavery in Egypt. There's no solid archaeological evidence to back the Exodus as a historical event, and these newfound artifacts don't offer new insights on that front. But from these findings, historians could potentially "learn about the great influence of the Egyptian administration and culture on the inhabitants of the Land of Israel during the Late Bronze and Iron Age periods," Eitan Klein, an archaeologist with the IAA, told Live Science.

Author: Megan Gannon | Source: LiveScience [April 01, 2015]

The three were arrested and detained by Asheklon police. They appeared before a judge Saturday night, and their remand was extended.

Tel Ashkelon contains the ruins of the ancient city of Ashkelon, mentioned in the Bible as being connected to a number of important people and incidents – most famously as the home of the giant Goliath, defeated by King David in his battle against the Philistines. The city was inhabited continuously from the Biblical period until at least 1,500 years ago.

The thieves, residents of the nearby Bedouin community of Tel Sheva, were caught with heavy equipment, shovels, lights, and metal detectors, indicating that they were a professional gang that was experienced in antiquities theft. The three had broken stone covers over at least three graves, and pieces of dozens of clay jugs were strewn around their “work areas.” Officials said that the graves had been “irreparably damaged.”

According to an Archaeology Authority official, the graves were from the Byzantine period (330-1453 CE), and coffins from that period were usually made from lead. “In Byzantine pagan culture it was common for individuals to be buried with valuable artifacts and personal effects. These items are usually well-preserved inside the coffins, so thieves are generally very interested in them. Unfortunately, the damage caused by these treasure hunters means that archaeologists will not be able to examine the findings in these graves, and important questions about the cultures of these previous inhabitants of the Land of Israel are likely to remain unanswered,” the official said.

Author: Yaakov Levi | Source: Israel National News [February 01. 2015]

Morocco is home to a sizable and centuries-old Jewish community, which over time has had significant in every field, without religion being an obstacle.

The Kingdom of Morocco, therefore, has a long tradition of tolerance, even when anti-Israel sentiments in near-by countries have resulted in senseless acts of violence, like the April 2002 bombing of a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, before confirmation of jihad and al Qaida penetration in the then apparently calm North African countries.

Morocco, thanks to Hassan II and his son Mohammed VI, has always managed to escape, as evidenced by the numerous places of Israeli worship that is protected and even looked after by the Kingdom, which has also paid a heavy price to Islamist-motivated terrorism. The country does not want tensions related to religion to occur.

Attesting to this is the Passover festival, held in complete safety for thousands of Jews (who come not only from Israel, but also by European countries, United States and Canada), to celebrate the Hiloula, participate in the pilgrimage to Asjen, and visit the grave of Rabbi Amram Ben Diwan and the synagogue that was dedicated to him.

And the same happens in Moualine, with the annual pilgrimage the mausoleum of Rabbi Abraham Aouriouer, whose figure is still today respected even by non-Jews, so that the celebration is attended by the highest civil authorities and politicians of the region.

The inclusion of the synagogues in the medina restoration is a strong sign that Morocco wants to make itself even more visible with initiatives that elsewhere would cause alarm, but that in Morocco is simply the continuation of a decades-long tolerance policy.

In Casablanca, as reported by La Vie Economique, a tender was launched for restoration of the Medina as well as the restoration of the Ettedgu synagogue, including its garden and surrounding area.

Also to benefit from the restoration are many other places of Israeli worship, including Benarrosh, Beth Elohim and David Hamelekh synagogues popular for the faithful, as well as tourists interested in history and art.

Source: ANSAmed [March 12, 2015]

Based on such images and conversations with some looters whose confidence they gained, archaeologists try to follow the trail of stolen pots and other artifacts to traders and buyers. They hope to get a better understanding of the black market and perhaps stop future plunder.

It's sophisticated detective work that stretches from the site, not far from the famed Dead Sea in Jordan, to collectors and buyers the world over.

The aerial photography detects spots where new looting has taken place at the 5,000-year-old Fifa graveyard, which can then sometimes be linked to Bronze Age pots turning up in shops of dealers, said Morag Kersel, an archaeologist at DePaul University in Chicago. Kersel, who heads the "Follow The Pots" project, also shares the data with Jordan's Department of Antiquities, to combat looting.

On a recent morning, team members walked across ravaged graves, their boots crunching ancient bones, as a tiny, six-bladed flying robot buzzed overhead. In recent years, drone use in archaeology has become increasingly common, replacing blimps, kites and balloons in surveying hard-to-access dig sites, experts said.

Chad Hill, an archaeologist at the University of Connecticut who built the drone, piloted it over a part of the graveyard that had not been mapped yet. The drone snapped photographs that allowed Hill to see in great detail how looting altered the landscape.

"We can see the change through time, not just of `a huge pit has been dug' but where different stones have moved," Hill said. "It's a level of resolution of spatial data collection that's never really been possible until the last couple of years."

As the drone's batteries ran low, Hill overrode the automatic pilot and guided the landing with a remote control. Flipping the drone on its back, he checked the camera, nodding approvingly at the afternoon's work.

The cemetery in Jordan's Dead Sea plain contains about 10,000 graves, part of the vast archaeological heritage of the region.

It looks like a moonscape as a result of looting, with about 3,700 craters stretching to the horizon and strewn with shards of skeletons and broken ceramics. Looters typically leave human remains and take only well preserved artifacts.

"I spend my days stepping on dead people," said Kersel, picking up a broken shell bracelet, presumably from ancient Egypt.

An underlying cause for looting is high unemployment, said Muhammed al-Zahran, director of the nearby Dead Sea Museum. "Looting happens all across the region," he said.

In Jordan, unemployment is 12 percent, and it's twice as high among the young.

Yet stolen antiquities rarely enrich local looters, said Neil Brodie, a researcher at the University of Glasgow's Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.

Rather, the profits end up in Europe or America, Brodie said, describing high markups as the artifacts move from looter to middleman, dealer and then customer.

Brodie studied looting at another site in Jordan, the ruins of the early Bronze Age community of Bab adh-Dhra, though without the help of drones.

He estimated that diggers were paid about $10,500 for 28,084 pots that were subsequently sold in London for over $5 million, sometimes marketed as "Old Testament" artifacts.

An artifact that later sold for $275,000 was initially traded for a pig, Brodie's research showed. And he also found that a dancing Hindu deity bought for about $18 sold eventually for $372,000.

Some of the artifacts stolen from Jordan's sites, including tombstones, end up in neighboring Israel, said Eitan Klein, a deputy at the Israeli Antiquities Authority's robbery unit.

Kersel, from the "Follow the Pots" project, said looters told her they sell their goods to middlemen from the Jordanian capital of Amman or the southern town of Karak. She said the trail stops with the shadowy middlemen, but that she can sometimes pick it up on the other end, by comparing the looting timeline with what eventually ends up on the market all across the world.

In addition to monitoring the cemetery, Kersel also teaches local workshops on profiting from antiquities legally, including by making and selling replicas, to discourage robbing graves.

Yet, looting will be difficult to stop as long as demand remains high, she said.

"People don't ask the sticky questions about where artifacts come from," said Kersel, standing inside a robbed grave in Fifa. "They just want to own the piece regardless of what kind of background the artifact has, and that is what causes people on the ground to loot."

Author: Sam McNeil | Source: The Associated Press [April 03, 2015]

But the 2,500-year-old treasures from present-day Iraq have become part of a thorny archaeological debate over how to handle historically significant relics thought to have been dug up in the fog of war by Mideast antiquities robbers.

Experts in cuneiform writing, one of the world's earliest scripts, say the collection of 110 cracker-sized clay tablets provides the earliest written evidence of the Biblical exile of the Judeans in what is now southern Iraq, offering new insight into a formative period of early Judaism.

The tablets, though, also tell a murkier story, from the present era, according to scholars familiar with the antiquities trade - a story of the chaos in Iraq and Syria that has led to rampant pilfering of rich archaeological heritage and a rush of cuneiform tablets on the international antiquities' market.

The collector who owns the tablets on display this month at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem, insists they were purchased legally, decades before that looting began. However, an ancient history scholar familiar with the artifacts disputes that.

Leading U.S. museums have pledged not to exhibit unprovenanced artifacts that have surfaced in recent decades, as part of an effort over the last decade to discourage illicit antiquities trafficking. But cuneiform inscriptions have emerged as a notable exception, with some arguing these relics would be lost to history if they did not make it into scholarly hands.

"We are not interested in anything that is illegally acquired or sneaked out," said Amanda Weiss, director of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem.

"But it is the role of a museum to protect these pieces," she added. "It's what we are here for."

The plundering of antiquities in the war-torn Middle East has become a primary concern for the archaeological community, and some archaeologists even compare satellite images of sites in Iraq and Syria to moonscapes, after antiquities robbers went through them.

Archaeologists claim the Islamic State extremists and militants from other groups are funding their activities in part through illegal trafficking of antiquities, and authorities worldwide have been taking action to try to stem the flow.

What first sparked awareness of the issue, archaeologists say, was a deluge of cuneiform artifacts on the Western antiquities markets after the first Gulf War in 1991.

In the years that followed, archaeologists estimate that hundreds of thousands of small clay tablets with cuneiform inscriptions made their way into the hands of dealers. Many contained incrustations, indicating they were "fresh out of the earth," said Robert Englund of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative.

An American scholar of ancient Jewish history familiar with the tablets on display in Jerusalem said they were purchased on the London antiquities market at the time when cuneiform artifacts were flooding the market, a strong indication that the items were looted. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a potentially illegal activity.

London-based Israeli collector David Sofer, who loaned the cuneiform collection to the Bible Lands Museum, denied any foul play. He said he purchased the tablets in the United States in the 1990s from a person who obtained them in public auctions in the 1970s.

Sofer said a few tablets from the collection were displayed in a New York museum and a Los Angeles museum in 2013, and their import and export in the U.S. was properly reported to U.S. authorities. He would not name the two museums, or the person who sold them to him.

"These things would be lost, and wouldn't be recognized for what they are" if he hadn't bought them, Sofer said.

As common as cuneiform tablets are, few have been as celebrated as those on display in Jerusalem.

The tablets fill in a 130-year gap in the history of the Judeans exiled to Babylon after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in the 6th century B.C., said Laurie Pearce, a cuneiform expert from the University of California, Berkeley.

The earliest of the tablets, which have dates inscribed on them, is from just 15 years after the destruction of the First Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and the inscription suggests the displaced Judeans were more quickly absorbed into the Babylonian society than previously thought, said Pearce, who studied the collection.

The tablets include administrative documents such as land agreements, showing the Judeans were "integrated almost immediately," she added.

The Jerusalem museum says the tablets likely originate in today's southern Iraq, and reference common Judean names, including Netanyahu, the last name of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The topic of cuneiform artifacts still roils the archaeological community.

The American Schools of Oriental Research, an academic research association, bans scholars from publishing articles on artifacts illegally excavated or exported from their country of origin after 1970, when the U.N. adopted its policy against antiquities trafficking.

But in 2004, the association made an exception, allowing publications about cuneiform artifacts that have no record of how they were unearthed - under the condition that Iraqi antiquities authorities give their consent and that the artifacts are eventually returned to Iraq.

The exception was made because the esoteric wedge script writings are so valuable to historical study, said Eric Meyers of the association.

The policy is now again a point of contention in the field. Over the past year, scholars at the association have debated changing the policy again, with most experts leaning against publishing articles on cuneiform artifacts as these objects continue to hit the markets, Meyers said.

"It is a crisis in the region," he said.

Author: Daniel Estrin | Source: The Associated Press [February 12, 2015]