Archaeology Odyssey

See T.J. Wilkinson, “Excavating the Land of Sheba: Archaeology Reveals the Kingdoms of Ancient Yemen,” AO 04:06.

In another inscription from Ashurbanipal, “the inhabitants of Bit-Ammon” are said to give the largest tribute of all the nations in Palestine, suggesting the wealth of the Ammonites at this time.

The German scholar Ulrich Hubner has proposed that this “city of the waters” was located down below the Citadel, near the later Roman forum, where excavators have found pottery dating from the eighth to the sixth century B.C.E. However, maintaining the city’s water supply that far from its defenses would have left its inhabitants exposed and vulnerable to attack.

The modern revival of the city began a little more than a century ago, when Circassians from east of the Black Sea were relocated to the area by Ottoman authorities. In 1921 King Abdullah made Amman the dynastic seat of the Hashemite family. Since then, the city has grown into a thriving metropolis of more than 2 million people.

Citations are taken from Gary Beckman’s Hittite Diplomatic Texts, Second Edition (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999).

E.C. Krupp, “Sacred Sex in the Hittite Temple of Yazilikaya,” AO 03:02.

Interestingly, the only Late Bronze Age inscription found at Troy was written in Luwian, a language closely related to Hittite and attested in western Anatolia. See Birgit Brandau, “Can Archaeology Discover Homer’s Troy?” AO 01:01.

All quotations from Thomas Hoving are from a series of articles published from June 29 through July 16, 2001, in the online magazine www.artnet.com.

This transaction took place just before the UNESCO treaty of 1970 banning the importation of unprovenanced artifacts was signed.

See Hershel Shanks, “The Great MFA Exposé,” AO 02:02.