The Megiddo mosaic comes from what is believed to be the oldest Christian prayer corridor in the world, located in a Roman-era village in northern Israel. Israeli archaeologists discovered it in 2005 in a rescue excavation conducted as part of the planned expansion of an Israeli prison.
It sits at a historic crossroads one mile south of Tel Megiddo, on the edge of the wide, flat Jezreel Valley. The compound is surrounded by a white metal fence topped with barbed ropes and is used for the detention of Palestinian security detainees.
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On the other side of a box filled with cow dung and pottery shards, the palm-fringed site of a Bronze and Iron Age city and ancient wars is where some Christians will take up position in a decisive war between good and evil at the end of days: Armageddon.
For some Christians, especially evangelicals, this will be the backdrop to the longed-for climax of the Second Coming, when divine wrath annihilates those who oppose the kingdom of God; It serves as the center of their hopes for final justice.
The Israel Antiquities Authority said it would move in the coming weeks, after consulting with an advisory body.
“There is a total procedure that worries academics and archaeologists,” said IAA director Eli Eskozido. The organization said moving the mosaic from its original location is the most effective way to protect it from long-term structures in the prison.
Jeffrey Kloha, lead curator of the Museum of the Bible, said the resolution on the loan would be made only through the IAA.
The museum “would of course welcome the opportunity to teach our thousands of visitors about vital pieces of history like this mosaic,” he told The Associated Press by email.
On November 6, 2005, prisoners painted on a nearly 1,800-year-old decorated floor at Megiddo prison. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, Dossier)
Several archaeologists and scholars have expressed strong objections to cutting the Megiddo mosaic from where it was discovered, let alone displaying it at the Museum of the Bible.
Cavan Concannon, a professor at the University of Southern California, said the museum acts as a “right-wing Christian nationalist biblical machine” with links to “other establishments advertising white evangelical forms, Christian nationalism and Christian Zionist forms. “
“My fear is that this mosaic will lose its genuine ancient context and receive an ideological context that continues for the museum to tell its story,” he said.
Others resist the idea of moving the mosaic before finishing college.
“It’s very inopportune to move this mosaic,” said Matthew Adams, director of the Center for the Mediterranean World, a nonprofit archaeological institute involved in excavations at Tel Megiddo and the adjacent Roman legionary camp at Legio.
When asked about complaints about the Washington museum’s practices, Kloha said, “Great museums and prominent establishments committed to history preservation have faced cultural heritage issues, especially in recent years. “
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“To be clear: the Museum of the Bible is proud to have proactively initiated studies and an in-depth review of the pieces in its collections,” he added. It encourages other establishments to do the same. “
Based on other finds discovered in the excavations and the taste of the letters in the inscriptions, IAA archaeologists dated the mosaic floor to the third century, before the Roman Empire officially switched to Christianity and when followers were still persecuted. However, one of the donors who paid to customize the ancient worship space was a centurion who served in the adjacent Roman legionary camp.
The mosaic bears Greek inscriptions, a provision “To God Jesus Christ. “
Since opening in 2017, the Museum of the Bible has been criticized for its collection practices and for selling an evangelical Christian political agenda. In 2018 he had to repatriate an ancient Mesopotamian looted from Iraq and admit that several of the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls in his collection were fashion fakes. The government also seized thousands of clays and other antiquities looted from the museum’s founder, Hobby Lobby president and evangelical Christian Steve Green, and sent them back to Iraq.
The mosaic loan would link Israel to the museum. The museum sponsors two archaeological excavations in Israel and has a gallery organized through the IAA. Kloha said the museum is also planning a series of conferences with IAA archaeologists.
Evangelical Christians, whose ranks have grown around the world, have become some of Israel’s most loyal, donating giant sums of cash and visiting the country as tourists and pilgrims. In the United States, they are also pressuring congressional politicians to go to Israel.
Evangelicals, who make up more than a third of the world’s estimated 2 billion Christians, say their affinity for Israel stems from Christianity’s Jewish roots.
Some see the founding of Israel as the fulfillment of Bible prophecy, ushering in an expected messianic era in which Jesus will return and the Jews will settle for Christianity or die. state.
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Since its discovery, the mosaic has remained buried under the floor of the Megiddo criminal. But in recent years, the Israeli government has begun devising a multi-year plan to move the criminal from his current location and expand tourism around the mosaic. .
The archaeological site of Tel Megiddo is already a prime draw for evangelical Christians visiting the Holy Land. Buses full of pilgrims prevent on their way to or from Galilee to see the ruins of a biblical village and pray at the site where the apocalypse will occur. .
Neither the IAA nor the museum spoke about the exact terms of the loan proposal, but Eskozido advised nothing about the decade-long world excursion of a Roman mosaic discovered in the central Israeli city of Lod until Israel finished a museum to space it out.
Skeptical experts about the removal of the mosaic.
“Once you take an artifact out of its archaeological context, it loses something, it loses the sense of the area and the environment in which it was first excavated,” said Candida Moss, a professor of theology at the University of Birmingham and co-author of an e-book. at the Museum of the Bible.
Rafi Greenberg, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, said the proposal smacked of colonialism, where traditionally dominant powers have extracted archaeological finds from settlements.
“Although Israel never recognizes itself as a settlement, it behaves as such, which I find strange,” he said. Greenberg said archaeological finds “should stay where they are and not be uprooted and taken to another country and necessarily appropriated. “through a foreign power. “