If you like History, Mystery or Science, you should check this out. You can even join in helping give judgment on it as no science is needed to judge it's authenticity.

To bring you up to speed: Years ago an inscription was found which seemed to be the oldest mention of the "name of God": from about 3000 BC, presumably the time of Solomon.

“Belonging to the Tem[ple of the Lor]d [Yahweh], holy to the priests.”

After most experts affirmed it authentic, Israel bought it for a boatload of money. Recently, though, they gave it another look/study and reversed their opinion and called it a forgery!

Now it's big news again. Scholars met in May but came out of it split.

Whether it is a forgery or not has nothing to do with science. All agree that what we have is authentic. It is now down to where a particular break is in the incomplete inscription of the broken object:

Decide for yourself whether the partially preserved letters of the inscription go into the break or stop short of the break, whether the inscription is authentic or a forgery. The scholars were unsuccessful in doing this; at the end of the day, their differences remained. Form your own opinion. Follow the analysis and view these photos yourself: here.

For the full story on the meeting, see here.

Thanks Rick,
For the link,
I am reading it all, really fascinating...

Very interesting read Rick. Thanks for giving us something to exercise our minds with.

I have one question though,

Why is it called a pomegrenate?
I know and love to eat the natural fruit by the same name.
But archeologically this is the first I heard of it.

Why were these made and for what purpose, how were these curved so well out of ivory?

They call it pomegranate just because that's what it looks like. It is believed to have been the top of a priest's staff.

While we'd call the folk of 5000 years ago "primitive" in many ways, there are examples of intricate carvings of stone, ivory and all sorts of stuff.

I can't describe exactly how they did it except to say that it was very slow, chipping off pieces as small as sand grains at a time until they got the desired shape.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RickJ

They call it pomegranate just because that's what it looks like. It is believed to have been the top of a priest's staff.

While we'd call the folk of 5000 years ago "primitive" in many ways, there are examples of intricate carvings of stone, ivory and all sorts of stuff.

I can't describe exactly how they did it except to say that it was very slow, chipping off pieces as small as sand grains at a time until they got the desired shape.

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Thanks Rick,

About calling people of 5000 years ago "primitive", I do think they were more advanced than we are in so many ways.
"Primitive" I think is a western term for anything that is not up to par by their standards.:)

Look at the buildings of ages past, they built them without the machinery we use for building,computer designing programmes and all other equipment that make our life so much easier.

And in 1000 years time people will be saying, "look at all that architecture they designed using just electrons and silicon, makes you wonder doesnt it.."

And look how "old fashioned" we seemed only 100 years ago...

We are already deemed old fashioned by the teens of today:)

Haha so true! :p