Grandstanding

Or your fifteen minutes are used up.  That is what I think when I contemplate Dr. Karen King's possibly earth shattering discovery.  Dr. King claims this scrap of papyrus has Coptic writing and is from the 4th Century. 

Side note Coptic Christianity is separate from Roman Catholic/Christian and Eastern Orthodox but shares more with Eastern Orthodox.  It is a faith predominately found in Egypt.

Dr. King says this fragment refers to a woman named Mary as being Yeshua bin Yusef/Jesus's wife.  That would be a monumental upheaval to more than one billion Christians worldwide if verified.  Therein lies the rub.  Dr. King has not yet exercised due diligence in verifying the papyrus is authentic.  She has not examined the ink to see if it matches known 4th Century examples.

Until Dr. King actually does some research and investigation, I advise all Christians to treat her 'blockbuster revelation' with a Lot's wife sized grain of salt.  I fear this maybe another Hitler's diaries forgery. Or Talpiot.  If this turns out to be such a forgery, then I suggest Harvard have someone outside conduct a review of Dr. King's other research.  If they do not do that, then they will be under the same cloud as Dr. King.  That of con-artist.

Solar Energy and the end of the Harappan Civilization

I first discovered the Harappan civilization while reading H. Beam Piper's excellent short story Omnilingual.  Like many other authors, Piper was fascinated with the concept of Martian civilization.  In this story, the advanced civilization of Mars has vanished while leaving tantalizing clues.  Martha Dane is on the first Earth expedition to Mars, she had previously worked on the Harappa civilization in the Indus valley.

So when I run across stories about Harappa, I pause to think of Piper. Then I plunge into reading the newest story on this mysterious civilization that was in some ways far greater than the better known civilizations that rose alongside the Nile, Euphrates, and Tigris rivers.

After extensive use of satellite data along with years of geologic sampling where the Harappan civilization flourished, the scientists have come to a possible theory on why it collapsed.  The culprit it seems is the sun.  For several thousand years solar radiation in the Northern Hemisphere moderated the monsoon rains which allowed the Harappan civilization to reach great heights.  And then that same solar radiation caused the fall of the same civilization as the monsoon rains dwindled and the land became incapable of supporting the same population density because the land then dried out.  So the people of Harappa migrated east towards the Ganges and its more reliable monsoon rains, leaving behind a mystery that is now just a bit less mysterious.

Hawks of the Desert

Official group insignia of the 79th FG USAAF that fought in North Africa

 My friend Mut over at the Temple of Mut is working on a post detailing the widespread devastation that is occurring throughout Upper and Lower Egypt.  So I will focus on a more recent occurrence of destruction.

In February of this year an oil exploration team operating in Egypt's Western Desert stumbled across an amazing find.  Pictures were quickly snapped and then posted to a Polish modeling magazine.

Curtis Kittyhawk I somewhere in the Western Desert of Egypt.

Lost for 70 years an RAF Kittyhawk was discovered in Egypt.  At this time the exact identity of the airframe and name of it's lost pilot is unknown.  The sand has scoured much of the paint away.  Some have played with the photographs posted searching for the plane's identity.  What is known is this airplane is a P-40E-CU-1.  Six wing guns.  Ring and post site.  No fin fillet.  Intake on top of cowling.  RAF roundel has a yellow outer circle.  And there is red paint still remaining on the propeller.  All the above tid-bits have lead some to speculate this is Kittyhawk I ET574 HS-B assigned to 260 Sqn and lost in 1942 while being ferried from one airbase to another for repair.  The pilot for this mission was Flt Sgt Dennis Copping.  This is all speculation but once the media found out about this lost warrior, well it was definitely Copping's airplane.  The UK Metro even wrote on how the brave pilot tried to get the plane working again ...  with the propeller and gear box wrenched off I wonder if they even looked at the photos.  Or the CBC calling it a WWII jet fighter.

So right now the British Ministry of Defense is trying to work with the Egyptian government to preserve this airplane and and find its pilot so the story can be finally told.  They better hurry before there is nothing left of the airplane.

Perfectly intact canopy after 70 years.

The canopy has now been shattered and someone has shot up the armoured windscreen.

Who knows what else is vanishing with every passing moment.  The survey crew has tried to protect the location, for example the original online photo album has now vanished, but the crew also had local guides.  And then had to report the plane to the Egyptian Army because ammo was still in the plane that the Army then went and removed.    So things have started to happen to the plane, it has suffered more damage in the past few months than the previous 70 years.  And with each piece that vanishes, perhaps the clues needed to find the lost pilot also disappears into the desert.

P-40F Warhark with Group CO Col. Earl E. Bates.  The Egyptian hieroglyphs are supposed to be the Group's number.

I will leave it to the readers to tell me if the insignia at the top or at the bottom has the hieroglyphs correct.  I wanted to include an American fighter unit in this post is to show how integral to the whole desert campaign were Curtiss' P-40s and to show the lasting impact ancient Egyptian culture has on our modern world.

Interesting footnote - The intelligence officer for 260 Sqn when Copping and his plane vanished was none other than Sir Christopher Lee who later gained fame as Dracula going against Peter Cushing as Dr. Helsing.  Or when he appeared in the Lord of the Rings.

Twelve Dreams of Egypt

It does seem the curtain on Egypt's future is closing as we speak.  The extreme Muslim Brotherhood has now said it will seek the Presidency, breaking a promise.  And the last direct link between Egypt and Ottoman Turkey, Princess Nesliash Sultan, has passed away.  Tourism at the Giza Plateau is extinct because of the political turmoil, an objective the Muslim Brotherhood had sought to destroy during the Mubarek government in order to topple him, it seems they have won this battle just when it seems they are on top politically. 
 
And the war against the Coptic Christians continues apace. Even as Pope Shenouda III was being laid to rest, the Salafists were hurling insults that remind me of Westboro and other extremists in their hatred - "We rejoice that he is destroyed. He has perished," Ghoneim said on March 18, the day after Shenouda died at the age of 88. "May God have His revenge on him in the fire of hell -- he and all who walk his path."

But there is good news on the Giza Plateau as several tombs are being re-opened for tourists.  All of them are minor tombs but I hope the writer of this article learns proper English before he publishes again.  Or I will think he is related to the sign maker in the Valley of the Kings who in 1997 created such amusing English signs as the following -

The wall is Oecorated with The Book of

the DeadBook of the

Book the Book BookBook.

pg. 178, The Lost Tomb, Dr. Kent R. Weeks, 1998

I will end with something from brighter days of modern Egypt.  Jean Michel Jarre's concert at Giza to celebrate the arrival of the year 2000 A.D. and the hope of a new age.

North Africa Is Burning

And the Obama administration is sitting on the sidelines. The United States has become a spectator as North Africa is wracked by turmoil.

How else to explain the brave Libyans who are rebelling against Qaddafi/Gaddafi/Whacko are begging for... Are you ready for this? The return of George H. W. Bush and a no-fly zone according to Nasr Ali.

While the news media is focused on the battles in Libya, the battle for the soul and future of Egypt continues. It seems Dr. Zahi Hawass has been forced from his position protecting Egypt's rich past. Archaeological sites have been plundered and even damaged, from Giza to Saqqara. Ancient Egypt has survived, but now the vandals are using heavy equipment to do their acts of destruction. If this is not stopped, it will make the looting that happened in Baghdad seem a spilled cup of coffee.

It's a Legion!

Sometimes I am amazed at how soft headed people are. But this review of The Eagle reminds me some people have brains of tapioca.

What is The Eagle about? In the second century AD sometime around or after 120AD, the Legios IX Hispana possibly left York and marched north on a punitative raid. And then vanished into the mists of time, no definitive answer has ever emerged as to their fate as the whole legion fell off Roman rolls by 160AD. We now know more of the probable fate of Crassus' lost legions than we know what happened to the IXth. Though some have tried to piece together the probable fate of the IXth in Scotland, its very much speculative and leaves wiggle room for the roofing tiles marked with the Legios IX Hispana sigil found in Holland. The movie itself and the story it is based on tells the fictional tale of a Roman centurion setting out on a quest to retreive the IXth's eagle standard, hence restoring his father's and Rome's honor.

First gripe about this alleged movie review is calling the IXth a battalion. Literally speaking it is valid since a Roman legion and a battalion have similar manpower levels. Historically, its incorrect to use battalion when referring to a Roman legion. And its in the common modern vernacular to refer to Roman military formations as legions.

Second gripe is the authors worldview and their attempt to force The Eagle to fit it. The Romans were violent, well yes they were. So were the Celtic tribes that they faced. Expansionism charge? It can be argued that way, though Dr. Madden in his book Empires of Trust argued Rome expanded its borders to protect itself and its allies from foreign invasion. Or perhaps we should we say the reviewers are exhibiting signs of ethnocentrism in their writing? Well here are their own words from their review - "Though the characters are well developed and well acted, we can only give this film a partial endorsement based on its lack of value of life."

I was thinking of skipping going to see The Eagle in the cinema. But with such fluff passing for critical review, I think I shall go see it.

Obelisk Repo

If horrible snow removal efforts that cost an infant its life followed by a failure to deal with fetid garbage was not enough woe for Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, here comes something different. Egypt is threatening to take back an obelisk that has been in Central Park since the 1881 and is called Cleopatra's Needle. The reason for the threat, the obelisk is deteriorating with hieroglyphs obliberated so Zahi Hawass was prompted to write the following -

"Recent photographs that I have received show the severe damage that has been done to the obelisk, particularly to the hieroglyphic text, which in places has been completely worn away. I have a duty to protect all Egyptian monuments whether they are inside or outside of Egypt. If the Central Park Conservancy and the City of New York cannot properly care for this obelisk, I will take the necessary steps to bring this precious artifact home and save it from ruin."

This should prove interesting if New York City gives the same attention to Cleopatra's Needle and its preservation as they have given the rebuilding of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. If so, I expect the History Channel and National Geographic to have specials on the moving of an obelisk.

"A flash of gold."

That phrase brings to mind the excited discoveries of Carter in the Valley of the Kings peering into Tutankhamun's glittering tomb. Or Heinrich Schliemann unearthing that beaten gold mask at Mycenae.

In this case the story is from England and a four year old boy name James Hyatt. James and his father Jason were testing out the boy's new metal detector and they got a strong buzz. Digging down a few inches and there was "a flash of gold." It seems they have found a small gold reliquary from the 16th Century with the Virgin Mary and the five wounds of Christ on it. If this item is listed for sale and a buyer is found, this item could be worth about $4million US. The proceeds would be split between the Hyatts and the owner of the land where the item was found.

Story and video can be found here. Good show James, may your life be always golden.

History Channel Info-tainment

This past weekend caught a repeat showing of what was sold as a sensational take on the Mayan Long-Count calendar by visiting a mysterious island. I should have known better as it was short on real information and long on faux-drama. This two hour show is called Apocalypse Island and is supposed to recount the quest of a chap named James Turner.

It seems back in 1996, after coming off two years at the Palenque Mayan site in the Yucatan peninsula, Turner took a break to visit Juan Fernandez Island. After a bruising tumble and a night asleep he wakes to behold what he takes to be a monument to the Mayan sun god with a crouching jaguar behind it. So he spends the next decade plus doing research. So History Channel decides to broadcast his quest. Including way too many minutes getting from Valparaiso, Chile to the island on a small fishing boat. Along the way, they interview such heavyweights in Mayan lore as Whitley Streiber. Turner opines that a Mayan king from Palenque built the monument and his tomb, which has never been found, might be on the island. And then when they reach this monument, they clamber atop it. And thus ends two hours of your life.

Now there are lots of issues with this whole theory that I have not found addressed in Turner's web-site yet. And it seems others also have issues as this History Channel forum bears out. I will give Turner some kudos for logging in there to defend himself.

My largest issue I have with this show is, they never show how the Mayans got from Yucatan, across the Equator, and south to flyspeck islands off Chile that a guy named Selkirk got abandoned on for four years. Which explains why one island is called Alexander Selkirk Island and another is Robinson Crusoe Island. There is evidence or suggestions the Mayans made it to Florida, but no evidence is offered in the show on how the Mayans got to these islands. Unless they hopped a ride on Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki, except Thor left from Peru on the Humbolt current.

The show also pitches this hazardous trip by boat is the first time Turner has returned to these islands since 1996. As Turner's own postings in the History Channel forum shows, he has used the airstrip many times to get back to the islands and his monument. Which shows how deceitful this show is. Again it purports this is Turner's first return visit. And it endangers Turner's basic premise, this is Mayan built for the solar and Venus transits in 2012. If Turner has visited here many times, then why hasn't he taken some random debris samples from the base of his sun-god/crouching jaguar to see if there are signs of humans working the rock. Oh wait, its a UNESCO site these islands. But would it be truly hard to get permission to take a few rocks for study? Its the hummingbird that is endangered. And it seems an American millionaire, Bernard Keiser, easily got permission to search the island for lost pirate gold.

Before I forget, the whole story angle of the island being the burial place of a lost Mayan king from Palenque. How can anyone categorically state that everywhere in Palenque has been explored and no tomb has been found hence this king must be buried elsewhere? It is very strange considering only recently the Valley of the Kings in Egypt surrendered another tomb, KV-63, for study. And before Howard Carter found KV-62, King Tutankhamun, everyone in 1921 thought the valley was fully explored. I have to place this as another example of shoddy reasoning for simple sensationalism.

And again I return to the History Channel forums and Turner's own web-site where he says that what ended up on the screen was not what he wanted. That they dictated what would be shown because they did not want it to be boring. I have to wonder what kind of contract Turner signed that would prevent him from yanking his name from this show if he thought this show was truly bad since what is in the show reflects upon his professional reputation.

So overall, everyone involved in the making of this show come off as shabby and unprofessional. I have to wonder if this is the same crew that gave us Simcha and his Lost Tomb special on the James ossuary. Seems that way.

When Sekhmet Almost Destroyed Mankind

Taken from a side chapel of Sety I.

Stone carving of Sekhmet.

In the beginning mankind was grateful to Re for the benefits that he conferred upon them, and they worshipped him and supplied all things necessary for his service. After a while, however, they became tired of doing this and claimed that Re had grown old, and no need for further offerings, so supplies for the temples diminished.

Re consulted with the Council of the Gods as to what he should do, but he did it secretly so that mankind should not know what he was about to do. The gods came together and grouped themselves around Re, and asked him what he wished to say. Fist he consulted the god Nun, because he was the God of the Watery Waste and older than the other gods. Nun advised him to send his Eye against mankind. Now his Eye was his daughter Sekhmet, sometimes known as Hathor. In her form of Sekhmet she was a fierce lioness fond of hunting, and stood for thefierce rays of the midday sun. She went forth and slew man in the valley and in the desert where they had taken refuge. Then Re was sorry for mankind and called to the goddess to cease her work and come to him in peace, as mankind had been punished enough. But the lioness roared and said "I swore by my life that when I gained mastery over men it was very satisfying to my heart." Then again Re took council with the gods to see how he could stop Sekhmet's slaughter, as she was devouring mankind and wading in their blood.

The gods advised Re to give Sekhmet beer, of which she was very fond. So large quantities of beer were brewed and mixed with some Kharkady so that it resembled blood. Then when the goddess was resting this was poured upon the fields where she was about to hunt next morning, and it reached the height of four spans. And his Majesty Re said "I will protect men with this beer which I have made." And when the goddess went out at daybreak she found all the ground flooded with liquid. She admired her face in the flood, and then she drank the beer and her heart became glad, and she did not know in what part of the land she was, and because she was drunk she fell asleep and mankind was saved. And the Majesty of this god said to Sekhmet "Come in peace." Ever since that time jars of soporific beer have been prepared at the festivals of sekhmet-Hathor, and at Dendera there was a festival of Drunkeness.
- Egyptian Legends and Stories, M.V. Seton-Williams, Barnes&Nobles, 1999. Pg 22-23.

Climate History

This is interesting bit of news. A village submerged in the English Channel for the past 8,000 years off the Isle of Wright has been discovered. And just in time it seems, some bits are dangling over a cliff. It seems back then there was a land bridge linking England and France, alas the rising sea levels at the end of an ice age submerged this land bridge and thus this village.

Which reminded me of Dr. Ballard's expedition in the Black Sea back in 1999 and 2000. From about 12,000 years to about 7,000 years ago, there was a dam keeping the Black Sea a fresh water lake. That natural dam broke, flooding the Black Sea with saltwater from the expanding Mediterranean. The water had to go somewhere with an Ice Age melting down after all. It is from this flooding of the Black Sea that some theorize the Great Deluge stories of Gilgamesh and of Noah came from.

Of course from reading Dr. Hoffman's book, we also see cycles of desert and rain in Africa. One such cycle happened at the time the last massive ice age was ending. And then there were the land bridges linking Asia to North America that brought migrating bands of human beings.

With all this past evidence of Earth going through extreme climatic cycles, one wonders how the heck it is the fault of humans for this much disputed rise in temperature that has so many in a dreadful fret? I am now reminded of the Permian Extinction where 95% of all living things went extinct. First over tens of thousands of years land species went extinct. Then there was a quick die off of marine species. And finally a further land species extinction. In the middle of the marine die off there was an extremely rapid rise in C-12 which stumped scientists until they realized the Siberian magma flows managed to raise the atmospheric temperature by over four degrees Celsius which meant the frozen methane trapped in the seabed could be released quickly and thereby leaving the C-12 evidence and raising the Earth's atmospheric temperature a further four or five degrees Celsius. Twas a miracle any life survived that, but a cow-sized creature did and from that animal all species that came later can trace their lineage.

The Black Mummy Part II

From reading Dr. Hoffman's book, Egypt Before The Pharaohs, I stumbled across this interesting paragraph that could sink which culture beget which culture that this show on the Science Channel is based around.

The site they are talking about is called BS-14 located in the Libyan Desert. Now before someone goes 'a-ha!' about this Libyan Desert, Dr. Hoffman is using the accepted nomenclature that calls the desert[Sahara] to the west of the Nile the Libyan Desert.

... ostrich eggshell and the bones of a horselike creature (possibly Equus asinus - the wild ass) make it, along with Arkin 8, one of the few and most important Lower Paleolithic sites in Egypt. The presence of ostrich eggshell recalls a custom employed by the contemporary bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, who use these objects as water canteens on hunting trips into the desert, while the equid bones may suggest the late Acheuleans had migrated out onto the grassy plains of the Sahara during the Abbassia Pluvial, or rainy period. This pluvial, which prevailed for nearly 30,000 years between about 120,000 and 90,000 years ago, succeeded a 400,000 year drought and in its wake sent late Acheulean peoples out onto the former wastes in search of large grazing animals. - page 57.

Of course the type of humanity at the time of the Abbassia Pluvial was transitioning from Homo Erectus and that of Homo Sapiens Neanderthalis. What is also established though is a cycle of lush pastureland and barren wastes with humans going with the flow.

For foreign cultural contamination, there are other places to think about besides the central Sahara. Like the delta city of Maadi was a major crossroads for trade and ideas between 3600BC and 3000BC. Like several houses built in a style seen in Palestine, underground houses. - page 201.

In Lower Egypt, trade and metallurgy set the tone at strategically located sites like Maadi, while in Upper Egypt social status, burial, public ritual, and display dominated the Naqadan world view. - page 212.

Upper Egypt is where the scientists in the show about the Black Mummy suggest the Saharan culture first impacted Nile culture. But is it the Saharan's who professionally mummify a child of seemingly no social import while the Naqadan's seem to go in the opposite direction.

On page 218 we see Dr. Hoffman offering support for at least some of the scientists surmises of Saharan culture impacting Egyptian culture. Namely it is from the sand dwellers of the Libyan Desert that the dwellers of the Nile River learned farming, cattle pastoralism, and long distance trade.

As for the pottery this show is all agog over and it seems to show these archaeologists as the ones who did 'discover' the link. Alas Dr. Hoffman scuttles this by recounting the excavations at the VIth Dynasty site of Armant by Oliver Myers in 1935 who found Saharan pottery at this Nile site and identified it as Saharan pottery. - page 229.

Still Dr. Hoffman's book offers a cautionary note least we truly jump on this bandwagon.

..our best evidence for the cultural changes that took place on the deserts of northern Africa between about 7000 and 4000 B.C. are not provided by stone tools and potshards but by the spectacular rock art of the Sahara which suggests a slow transition from hunting to cattle pastoralism between 7000 and 6000 B.C. - page 233.

I am still reading through this book gleaming more information. I think I will end with this part since it bears on the Sahara witnessed by the child who became the Black Mummy.

Even if the impetus for the new pastoral way of life came from the Middle East, it soon caught on throughout North Africa, moving swiftly across the grassy savannas, and being adopted by native peoples, who only a few centuries before, had wandered as hunters into this land. - page 237.

I think when it comes to the Nile Valley and the influence of the Libyan Desert is still open to debate and interpretation. Just as how much influence the Sinai and Palestinian cultures also impacted Egypt in its early formative days is also open to debate.

The Black Mummy

Science Channel has an hour long program on archaeologists trying to understand the mystery around a child mummy found in the central Sahara that dates more than 5,000 years ago. It does a fairly decent job of postulating how the central Saharan culture, as it waned due to a climatic shift that set the Sahara back to desert, might have influenced the Nile culture in respect to mummification, cult of the cow, and even a carving showing a dog headed human. Normally my red warning flags go up over this kind of archeology due to an early encounter with a book called Black Athena that asserted all that is Western Culture was borrowed/stolen from black African culture.

As I said, this show does try to make sensible linkages between this Saharan culture and the culture of the Nile River. The sophisticated method of mummifying a child and the Egyptian method of mummifying their dead is one of their arguments of a linkage. There is a bit of a problem, the child it seems was an average child of no great social standing while in Egypt to be mummified meant you had to be royal or high up in the Pharaohic bureaucracy like a governor to rate such a burial. Cult of the cow or bull is another tenuous link since the Minoans worshipped the bull and so did such Greek city states as Mycenae along with the Egyptian Apis Bulls. And the Masai are still firmly a tribe who's lifeblood is tied with the fate of their cattle. The final attempt at linkage is the infusion of central Saharan style pottery into Nubia about 6,000 years ago. Yes it seems pretty strong evidence of a link, except when one remembers the Nubians imported from the Egyptians later on the concept of the pyramid as a mausoleum method of burying their dead. So this link is also tenuous.

Now one way for these archaeologists to truly sew up, as a slam dunk, this theory that the Saharan culture influenced the evolving culture of the Nile is to do a survey of all the pre-Menes sites to see if these concepts like mummification existed then, before this documented influx of decorated Saharan pottery into the Nile valley. But this show does not make any such assertion. What are we left with after fifty years of research is only a possible explanation of the observed facts, but we are no closer to an actual resolution.

Anyway I am digging through Dr. Michael Hoffman's book Egypt Before The Pharaohs to see if I find any corroboration or further refutation of this show's premise.

Cameron's Fraudumentary

Discovery Channel is going to run a show on March 4 purporting to be the lost tomb of Jesus. They ask us, the readers, to make our own judgement on the authenticity of the find.

I would say their assertion this is the tomb of Jesus, of his mother Mary, Mary Magdelene, Matthew, and Judah is very slim. So slim as to be almost transparent.

Lets look at the inscriptions. If these were truly ossuaries for a Jewish family, then why is Mary's name, in Aramaic Miriam, Latinized to Maria? And another is in Greek? It does not make sense at first glance.

Next they compared the patina on the ossuaries to the James ossuary. Patina is akin to a film the limestone builds up over time on the exposed surfaces, it bonds with the limestone. They found the patinas to match and that there is a space in the Talpiot Tomb where the oddly shaped James ossuary could have fitted.

There was much excitement when the James ossuary first surfaced because it purported to have had the remains of Jesus' brother James. At first the ossuary was deemed authentic until it was shipped back from being displayed in Canada and was damaged during this exhibition. It turns out the collector who had the ossuary, a Mr. Oded Golan, had, for twenty years, been running an antiquities forgery ring with the ossuary being the latest scam.

Here is Dr. Rochelle I. Altman's conclusions on the inscription found on the James ossuary:

If the entire inscription on the ossuary is genuine, then somebody has to explain why there are two hands, two different scripts, two different social strata, two different levels of execution, two different levels of literacy, and two different carvers. They could also explain where the frame has gone.
The ossuary itself is undoubtedly genuine; the well-executed and formal first part of the inscription is a holographic original by a literate (and wealthy) survivor of Jacob bar Yosef, probably sometime during the Herodian period. The second part of the inscription bears the hallmarks of a fraudulent later addition, probably around the 3rd or 4th centuries, and is questionable to say the least.

Now lets go back to the Talpiot Tomb, it was found in 1980, looked over, and generated no excitement. As Dr. Altman says the patina on the James ossuary is genuine so combined with the Cameron program's findings, it does place the ossuary in the Talpiot Tomb where probably some of Mr. Golan's associates snuck in and swiped the oddly shaped ossuary because this ossuary's inscription read 'Jacob son of Joseph.' And just a little while later the world is treated to a media sensation, the James ossuary where the patina surrounding the inscription was missing.

Now we have an answer as to what kind of family we find in the Talpiot Tomb, not the family of a carpenter. But as Dr. Altman says in his study of the James ossuary, a wealthy mercantile family from the Herodian Period. That would easily explain the Latin and Greek names found in a family tomb, better business opportunities via marriage. After all Jerusalem was the crossroads of the Roman Empire where one could meet Jews, Canaanites, Greeks, Romans, and many others.


Post Script. This is what I get for writing too fast, overlooking something vital. From Haaretz comes this lovely tid-bit. Mr Oded Golan entered into evidence for his defense photographs of the ossuary sitting on a shelf in his home. Ready for the other shoe? The pictures reportedly date to 1976, four years before the discovery of the Talpiot Tomb. Or as ABC says the tenth ossuary Gath cataloged, IAA 80.509, and that is now missing, is the James ossuary? This is the true crime of Oded Golan and his accomplices, they muddied up history in order to make money. And with this murkiness, the foundations of Cameron's show becomes even shakier.

Or perhaps the Lost Tomb of Jesus is a last gasp by Simcha Jacobovici to claim legitamacy? Simcha was involved in the media blitz surrounding the James ossuary with his 2003 documentary James, Brother of Jesus and has featured the Talpiot Tomb in his Naked Archeologist TV series without breathing a word of the links to the James ossuary or as the family burial tomb of Jesus. Now he is involved in, guess what, Cameron's Lost Tomb of Jesus. Jacobovici's academic vitae is a BA with Honours in Philosophy and Political Science with an MA in International Relations, he is not an archeologist.

The more I look around, the more dirty the water is and more suspect the assertion that this tomb belongs to the New Testament Jesus and family. A rich mercantile family still fits the few known facts better than what Cameron and Jacobovici are saying.

Update March 3 2007
If anyone wants a different but throrough take on how weak Cameron and Jacobovic's arguments are, then please click on Extreme Theology. Also check out the comments.

To cast further doubt on things, Dr. Tabor, who wrote the ABC article I quoted saying an ossuary was missing from Talpiot Tomb, might be in extreme error. But why should I be surprised since Dr. Tabor is invovled in the making of Cameron's film so has a vested interest in pushing this idea.

Again thanks to Extreme Theology comes this article from the Jerusalem Post. Dr. Amos Kloner, who excavated Talpiot in 1980, on if this could be the tomb of Jesus.

It makes a great story for a TV film. But it's completely impossible. It's nonsense. There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb. They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle class family from the 1st century CE.