Study in Jerusalem: Visiting Safi & Megiddo

I've been doing research at the Institute of Advanced Study at Hebrew University in Givat Ram since Nov 1. Our theme is Regional Narratives and our time is divided between weekly field trips and seminars, and doing our own research. There is a broad range of regional specialization among the different participants including Turkey, Greece, Egypt, the Canaanites, the Israelites, and the Philistines. In addition to interacting with each other, there has been interaction with fellows at the Albright and with members of the other IAS research group on urbanism. This has included joint seminars and fieltrips. We also had a mini conference in early December. I would say my teaching will have benefitted as much from being here as colleagues have been very generous with sharing information and circulating offprints, especially of items not readily available on JSTOR.

In November it was nice and green at Tell es-Safi and the bedouin tent was pitched below Area A.

Aren Maeir took us around Tell es-Safi, which is now a national park. The tell was very green - looking very different than it does in the summer.

There was also time to discuss the Goliath inscription.

A couple of days ago, Israel Finkelstein gave us a 4 hour tour of Megiddo, which included some interesting historical anecdotes about research there. Here we're near the entrance to the site at the Late Bronze Age gate.