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June 23, 2005
Who Drew on this Stone?
Haaretz reports that Yuval Lufan, of Kibbutz Ginosar, near Bethsaida slightly north of the Sea of Galilee, was looking for basalt stones for his own work as a sculptor when he found one that someone else had already used. It had an engraving on it. A portion of the image is reproduced below.
Antiquities Authority archaeologist Yotam Tepper, who examined the etchings, found that they show a man holding a pole, riding in a standing position on a horse or donkey. On his right is a depiction of a square object or building, capped with a dome. Below the building and the riding man is an animal, to the left of which are two more animals, one with its tail raised, the other with its tail lowered. Tepper suggests that the picture portrays a leopard attacking another animal.
This kind of find illustrates the problem of dealing with artifacts that are out of their original context. As the article says, it might be Neolithic (the fifth millennium B.C.E) and it might be Moslem Umayyad period (the seventh and eighth centuries C.E.) or just about anytime in between. My guess is that it is post Neolithic but pre Muslim. The "building" does look like it has a dome or something on the roof which I do not think is a common Neolithic feature and the depiction of a man on an animal would likely preclude the Muslim period although such images are not totally unknown from that period. But this is no more than a guess by someone who is far from an expert in any of the several disciplines that will need to be brought together to say anything meaningful about this stone. Apparently, other engraved stones are turning up in the same area.
Posted by Duane Smith at June 23, 2005 10:28 AM | Read more on Archaeology |
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