#old jerusalem

[musicwithoutborders]

Old Jerusalem, Black Pool of Water and Sky I Chapels, 2018

[jontycrane]

Jerusalem Old City

One of the holiest and most contentious places on earth, the Old City of Jerusalem is a hugely historic area, significant to Christians, Jews and Muslims. Visiting it can be overwhelming, in terms of the maze of streets and number of people, including many tour groups. There are four main gates into the Old City, and a number of smaller gates. The Damascus Gate was the original entrance to the…

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

[blueiscoool]

1,900-Year-Old Papyrus Records Roman Tax Fraud Trial

The Greek document details a court case in ancient Palestine involving tax fraud and provides insight into trial preparations in the Roman Empire

Back in 2014, a researcher from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem rediscovered an ancient papyrus while organizing a storeroom in the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Dead Sea Scrolls Unit. Once found in the Judean Desert, the document’s script had previously been classified as Nabataean—an ancient Aramaic language—but papyrus expert Hannah Cotton knew better.

“When I saw it marked ‘Nabataean,’ I exclaimed, ‘It’s Greek to me!’” the researcher says in a statement by the university.

Cotton and a team of experts spent the next decade deciphering the 133-line text, and their findings were recently published in the journal Tyche. Turns out, the document is the longest Greek papyrus ever found in the Judean Desert, and its newly translated content is particularly unique: a Roman lawyer’s detailed notes about the trial of two men accused of tax fraud.

“This is the best-documented Roman court case from Judaea, apart from the trial of Jesus,” says study coauthor Avner Ecker, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in the statement.

Per the study, the papyrus was likely written on the “eve of the Bar Kokhba Revolt,” a second-century Jewish uprising against Roman rule. The Roman Empire had colonized Judea—the southern part of ancient Palestine—some 200 years earlier. By 132 C.E., various Roman incursions upon Jewish life, including bans on religious practices, had taken their toll: The dwindling population of Jews in Palestine revolted. The rebellion, led by a man named Bar Kokhba, was crushed by the Romans in 135 C.E., and Jews were subsequently banned from Jerusalem.

The newly translated papyrus was written after Roman Emperor Hadrian’s visit to Judea around 130 C.E. and before the Bar Kokhba Revolt, per the study. It details Rome’s case against two individuals—Gadalias and Saulos—accused of forging documentation about selling and freeing slaves to bypass paying Roman taxes.

“Forgery and tax fraud carried severe penalties under Roman law, including hard labor or even capital punishment,” says study coauthor Anna Dolganov, a papyrus expert at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in the statement.

The papyrus was written in “vibrant and direct” language by a strategizing prosecutor, advising another lawyer about pieces of evidence and anticipating objections, per the statement. The document also contains a “rapidly drafted transcript of the judicial hearing itself.”

As Dolganov says in the statement, “This papyrus is extraordinary because it provides direct insight into trial preparations in this part of the Roman Empire.”

Significant portions of the document are missing, making conclusions about the trial’s participants difficult to draw. Still, the researchers write that the prosecutors were likely “functionaries of the Roman fiscal administration” and suggest the defendants were Jews. The papyrus also makes mention of “an informer who denounced the defendants to Roman authorities.”

As Live Science’s Kristina Killgrove writes, the papyrus sheds light on the long-debated question of whether or not ancient Jewish people owned slaves. The document mentions that Saulos’ family owns multiple slaves, but whether those enslaved people were Jewish is unclear.

The trial’s location and the case’s outcome also remain mysterious. Per the study, proceedings may have been interrupted by the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Somehow, this papyrus ended up among a collection of documents stored in caves in the Judean Desert—the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were rediscovered in the mid-20th century.

As study coauthor Fritz Mitthof, a historian at the University of Vienna, says in the statement, the papyrus showcases the Romans’ governmental reach: They regulated private transactions even in remote regions of their empire.

By Sonja Anderson.

[illustratus]

The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon by Edward John Poynter

[eretzyisrael]

[i-am-aprl]

Historical photo of the day: Palestinian students at Birzeit College outside Ramallah, 1964.

Initially established as a girls school in 1924, Birzeit College would later become Birzeit University, one of Palestine's leading educational institutions today, and among the top 3 percent of universities worldwide, as of 2019 (according to the QS World University Rankings).

[amone448]

📍البَلْدَة القَدِيمة - القُّدْس

[vox-anglosphere]

King Richard I met with his knights here to launch the Third Crusade

[plstnyan]

Al-Aqsa mosque, Jerusalem, Palestine

[valkyri]

NECK TATTS! NECK TATTS!

[postcard-from-the-past]

Via Dolorosa street in Jerusalem, Palestine

British vintage postcard

[artandthebible]

Jeremiah Dictating His Prophecy of the Destruction of Jerusalem to Baruch the Scribe

Artist: Washington Allston (American, 1779–1843)

Date: 1820

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, United States

Jeremiah 36:32, NIV

"So Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to the scribe Baruch son of Neriah, and as Jeremiah dictated, Baruch wrote on it all the words of the scroll that Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire. And many similar words were added to them."

[atlasandacamera]

Nottingham, England

[blueiscoool]

2,300-Year-Old Gold Ring Discovered in Jerusalem

A gold ring set with a red gemstone, believed to be more than 2,300 years old, has been discovered beneath the floor of a Hellenistic-era structure in Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority and the City of David Foundation announced Wednesday.

The artifact was uncovered during excavations at the Givati Parking Lot within the Jerusalem Walls National Park, just steps from the site of the ancient Jewish Temple. The ring closely resembles another unearthed in the same location in 2024.

Archaeologists found both rings beneath the foundation of a large public building. A bronze earring discovered nearby supports the theory that these objects were deliberately placed.

[eretzyisrael]