The Rosetta Stone<\/b><\/p>\n
Traveling with the French army when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 were 175 scientists. They studied known sites as well as previously unknown places. Their research resulted in a 24-volume publication that became the foundation for the modern field of Egyptology. Their most important discovery was made in 1799, near the village of Rosetta. Here French Army Captain Boussard found a stone monument written in three different languages. Later captured from the French by the British, this monument, now known as the Rosetta Stone, ended up in London\u2019s British Museum.<\/p>\n
The monument\u2019s top 14 lines are written in hieroglyphs, Egypt\u2019s oldest script; then 32 lines of Egyptian demotic (a cursive form of hieroglyphs); and finally 54 lines in Greek. The Greek was easy for scholars to read\u2014it was a decree by Memphis priests in 196 BC honoring Egyptian King Ptolemy V. At the time, no one could read the other two scripts.<\/p>\n
In 1822, Frenchman Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Champollion recognized that the monument contained the same decree in three languages. Going from Greek to demotic, and from demotic to hieroglyphics, Champollion could finally read the entire monument. It became the key to unlocking our understanding of hieroglyphics, ancient Egypt\u2019s first written language. This, in turn, led to the translation of many Egyptian texts that corroborate and illuminate Biblical history. GAB<\/p>\n
(For further information, see \u201cReading the Rosetta Stone,\u201d pp. 20-35 in The Story of Writing,<\/i> by Andrew Robinson, London: Thames & Hudson, 2001.)<\/p>\n
The Law Code Of Hummurabi<\/b><\/p>\n
The Law Code of Hammurabi was discovered in 1901 by archaeologists in Susa, Iran, where it had been taken as booty by the Elamites, most likely when they raided Sippar in northern Iraq in the 12th century BC. It is made of diorite in the form of a boundary stone. The 2.3 m (7.5 ft) high stela is bou now on display in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The Babylonian king Hammurabi (standing, left), who ruled ca. 1792\u20131750 BC, receives a scepter and ring from the sun god Shamash (seated, right), the god of justice, in a ceremony commissioning Hammurabi to write a code of laws. Below the scene, inscribed in cuneiform, are a prologue, a listing of 282 laws, and an epilogue. Of the numerous law collections recovered from antiquity, Hammurabi\u2019s is the longest, most polished and most comprehensive. Some 50 documents are known that 5 record all or part of the laws, prologue and epilogue of the composition. They range from those contemporary with the time of Hammurabi through the middle of the first millennium, and come from a number of sites.<\/p>\n
Hammurabi\u2019s code deals with civil matters such as marriage and divorce, inheritance, property, slaves and debt, as well as criminal matters such as murder, theft and assault. Biblical law is more similar to the laws of Mesopotamia, such as Hammurabi\u2019s code, than the social system of Egypt. In particular, Mosaic law finds its closest comparisons to Semitic codes of the early second millennium BC.<\/p>\n
The similarities between the Israelite legal system and ancient Near Eastern legal texts attest to the antiquity of the Biblical materials. Biblical law, however, is unique in that it is part of the covenant with God and a failure to covenant with God and a failure to obey the law was an offense against God. In addition, Mosaic legislation paid special attention to the rights and needs of the poor and underprivileged as compared with other ancient Near Eastern legal systems, which tended to favor the interests of the rich. BGW<\/p>\n
(For further information, see Samuel Greengus, Biblical and ANE Law, pp. 242-52 in The Anchor Bible Dictionary<\/i> 4, ed. David N. Freedman, New York: Doubleday, 1992.)<\/p>\n
BSpade<\/i> 17:4 (Fall 2004) p. 128<\/p>\n
Contributing Authors<\/b><\/p>\n
Gary A. Byers is a staff member of the Associates for Biblical Research and administrative director of ABR\u2019s excacation at Marion Fischel is a reportes with the Jerusalem post.<\/b><\/p>\n
Joseph L. Thimes is a retired dentist and a student of ancient Egypt. He has published numerous articles on jewelry, plants and history.<\/b><\/p>\n
Gordon Franz is a Bible teacher who has engaged in extensive archaeological research in Israel and the Mediterranean World. He is a former field trip instructor at the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem and presently team-teaches the Talbot School of Theology\u2019s Bible Lands<\/b><\/p>\n
Bryant G. Wood is a director of the Associates for Biblical Research and director of ABR\u2019s excavation at Khirbet el Maqatir.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Rosetta Stone Traveling with the French army when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 were 175 scientists. They studied known sites as well as previously unknown places. Their research resulted in a 24-volume publication that became the foundation for the modern field of Egyptology. Their most important discovery was made in 1799, near the village … Continue reading “GREAT
\nDISCOVERIES IN BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}