The Dead Sea Scroll exhibit at the ROM in Toronto gives Canadians a peek at ancient history that is literally underfoot wherever you walk in Israel.
Canada’s native peoples lived with the land, and archeological sites are sprinkled across Canada’s vastness. Unlike the ancient Israelites and other locals in the Holy Land, the Canadian tribes didn’t build walled cities. Archeologists in Canada don’t get to dig for ancient towns with stone buildings and temples and the like. Sure, there are also lots of dinosaur bones in Canada, but no ancient civilizations to be unearthed, catalogued, recreated and displayed in a museum.
When you dig a subway in Canada, you dig a subway. When you dig a hole in your backyard for a pool, heck, you dig a hole in the ground and fill it in with a pool.
Not so in Israel, where just about anywhere you dig you might hit a village - or better yet, a garbage dump - from two, three or more thousand years ago. And if you think that contractors and archeologists have trouble with ancient aboriginal burial sites in Canada, the problems are more profound in Israel where some hotels are mounted on stilts or bridges have been built to go over and avoid disturbing ancient graves.
The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the ROM in Toronto is indeed very exciting. I’ve seen the scrolls here at the national museum in Jerusalem. It’s not just part of my own personal culture, they are part of western history that gives us a glimpse into our collective past.
Unlike other historical artifacts, the Dead Sea Scrolls were an easy find, since they were found in a cave. No digging, no highway bypasses needed. Just a guy climbing up a desert cliff to see what was in a hole way up there.
If the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit got you interested, or if you’re an archeology buff at heart, then a visit to Israel might be a possibility for your next vacation. You can come and participate in a real dig, and help unearth real stuff from biblical times. You too can help discover and preserve the past. In the deserts, in the hills, in the cities, in the farms and even under water, there is history waiting to be found.
Various organizations offer you the opportunity to take part in an archeological dig. Israel’s foreign ministry has a web page that lists some of the program, or you can do do your own web search to find digs you can participate in. Depending on the season you’ll either cook or be cold and wet, but remember, it’s really rare that it snows on you in the Holy Land.
In Jerusalem it’s known that any time you dig a new construction site, you may need to get permission from the Israel Antiquities Authority depending no where you dig and how deep.
One example was the road construction outside the Old City’s Jaffa Gate. In order to improve the road and access, several metres of ground were removed. The pace was painstakingly slow for the contractors and painfully fast for the archeologists. The bulldozers would remove a layer, then turn their engines off as the archeologists combed the debris, and examined the uncovered surface. As artifacts were found, they were cataloged and bagged for study. If a site was unearthed, construction stopped until the archeologists dug down and removed whatever ancient discoveries there were. Today there’s a four lane road on the location and a pedestrian overpass, and who knows what remains buried even lower down.
Not just construction sites have to be checked. The Antiquities Authority and the Israeli army are finally cooperating to educate the boys and girls in green about the valuable cultural artifacts in numerous sites just below the tank tracks and army bases around the country. Soldiers had a day of seminars last week about the need to safeguard antiquities in army bases and firing ranges.
And there’s a Canadian connection to Israeli antiquities, stemming from the relatively new north-south toll Highway 6 (pronounced KVEESH SHAYSH in Hebrew). Back in 1993-94 the Antiquities Authority surveyed the proposed route of the toll road, which was built and is still operated by the Canadian Highways Infrastructure Corporation, the same company that built Highway 407 in southern Ontario and Highway 104 in Nova Scotia.
The archeological teams scoured the highway’s route that was 86 kilometers long by 100 meters wide and found and documented 181 archaeological sites. Rescue excavations along the highway route began in 1994 before construction started and continue today with over 103 ancient sites being excavated, some more than once. On the route of the highway alone, archeologists uncovered 22 multi-level settlement sites.
Archeological sites are everywhere in the Holy Land. And Canucks are welcome to come try their own hands at uncovering history. Come on over and dig Israel!
