Archaeologist's Report: Nazareth, Israel

Excavating with Dr. Richard Freund

Editor's Note: Dr. Freund, internationally recognized archeologist, has sent the first installment of promised updates of his winter excavations in Israel. We will post Dr. Freund's notes in short batches, verbatim, as they come to us directly from the Holy Land.

"The Jesus Boat" courtesy walkingmaryswell.com

17 December 2012
2:00 a.m.

It is now day 10 of our archaeological projects in Israel and I wanted to report on what the progress has been...

Professor Maha Darawsha of the University of Connecticut  and I have worked together on many archaeological projects but none have been more personal then the excavations in Nazareth. This year we began on Saturday night, after the end of Shabbat, on Dec 15th in the midst of one of the biggest public celebrations in recent memory in Nazareth. Because we are working in a store open for the tourist trade we begin after the festivities and all of the stores are closing.

The project (also with the University of Haifa) is a religious trifecta with Muslims, Christians and Jews working to unearth a missing chapter from Nazareth's ancient history. Maha is from a prominent Muslim family in the suburbs of Nazareth and she is married to one of the leading scholars writing on Nazareth, UHart Professor Hazza Abu Rabia, who teaches in the Greenberg Center. The work brings science, history, art, culture, politics, religion and anthropology together in a way that simply does not happen in a campus in Connecticut. As I write, staff member Nick Jaeger is creating a website that is already live of his daily site,  Walkingmaryswell.com and our scientific site for "Diggingmary'swell.com" that will go live before Christmas to show the world what "a private university with a public purpose"  can do all over the world.

Courtesy of The Greenburg Center

Today, as I write this we are excavating the basement of a store in Nazareth at one of the holiest locations for Greek Orthodox Christianity, the Church of the Annunciation by Mary's Well. The shop, aptly called "Byzantion" after the center of the Greek Orthodox church, is a small shop  hung with icons and religious illustrations. The Christmas tourists and shoppers are all in their homes and we are in a bathhouse structure which may indeed date back thousands of years. Core-samples from the floor are being sampled for Carbon 14 dating and the excavation of the section will continue every night until Dec 19th.

On Monday morning at 11 am (after getting a few hours of sleep), Dec 17th we will start a new Nazareth project at the Church of the Annunciation with the Greek Orthodox Church and the Municipality of Nazareth.

These collaborations are important because they provide international connections, but we are also continuing work on a television documentary on our work here with public television producer, Gary Hochman. Gary, a science editor at Nebraska ETV made the NOVA special, "Ancient Refuge in the Holy Land" on our Cave of Letters excavations and is making a documentary "Hidden Holocaust" on our work and the excavations of Ben Gurion University at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland.

This is installment one of our work. Much More to follow.

Richard Freund, Director
Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies
University of Hartford