Before the Torah shrine was a second mosaic panel, this one containing the image of a Torah ark, evoking the biblical ark of the covenant, flanked by seven-branched menorahs from which lamps were suspended for additional light—apparently a mirror image of the synagogue furnishings before which it was laid. Stone arks and large menorahs have […]
Forty-seven years after the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 B.C.E. and deported many of the people to exile in Babylon, Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, who had conquered the Babylonians and ruled most of the then-known world, allowed the Jews to return to their ancient homeland. They returned in waves. Sheshbazzar, […]
Drawings of the Na’aran (Ein Duq) Synagogue (after Louis-Hugues Vincent, “Un sanctuaire dans la région de Jericho, la synagogue de Na’arah,”. In his famous compendium of biblical sites in the Holy Land, the great fourth-century church father Eusebius of Caesarea includes an entry for “Naarah ([mentioned in] Joshua 16:7). In the [region of the biblical] tribe […]
The Greek inscription below the menorah, a Jewish version of Psalm 136:25 (Psalm 135 in the Septuagint), was published in Berlin in 1943, with minor mention of the lampstand. The place and date of publication may or may not be relevant; epigraphers often disregard the artifacts upon which their inscriptions appear. More important, though, is […]
Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World, 1996, “Ancient Synagogue Bema,” built from spolia and facsimilies of artifacts from various synagogues in Israel. Foreground: the Meroth synagogue mosaic. Left: model of the Beth Alpha synagogue.
Menorah panel discovered in the synagogue of Andriake. The iconography of the menorah—spirals beneath each branch, palm frond and citron to its left, and a shofar to its right—is clearly Jewish and fits with the other menorahs with curls from Nicaea, Sardis, and now Andriake in Lycia. Stephan Westphalen, writes, “[t]he menorah plaque was reused as a […]
Menorah plaque from the Priene Basilica. The German caption below translates: “Seven-armed candelabrum from the large church.” This marble menorah plaque was discovered at Priene in the Grossenkirchen and published in 1892. It was found in the church.
Sculpture of Augustus with a cross superimposed on his forehead, Ephesus Museum. At Ephesus, crosses were added in a very public way to the forehead of Augustus, transforming the emperor into a Christian penitent.
Christian graffiti in the Temple of Artemis at Sardis. Closer to Laodicea, the Temple of Artemis at Sardis is covered with similarly carved crosses.
Column drum fragment inscribed with a menorah and a superimposed cross, Laodicea. This fragment, which was published in a brief note by the excavator, Celal Şimşek, in 2006, was discovered in the ruins of Nymphaeum.