Jewish Life Reviewed in Latest Cables and Letters

The Bible came to life here yesterday with the opening of an exhibition of finds made recently by the Palestine Exploration Fund.

On display are articles dug up from Herod’s Temple of Augustus, which is revealed as a building that makes Poussin’s Biblical and melodramatic imaginings seem understatements. Other exhibits include the brilliant discoveries made among the walls of the ancient Israelitish capital of the ninth and eighth centuries B. C., where Omri, Ahab and Jezebel, Jehu and Jeroboam reigned.

The explorers, digging for three years in Samaria under the sponsorship of the Fund, Harvard University, the British School of Archaeology in Jerualem and Hebrew University, have discovered what is claimed to be part of Ahab’s “House of Ivory.”

IVORY OBJECTS SEEN

Many originals and photographs of ivory carvings found in this building, which is mentioned in the Book of Kings, are included in the exhibition. Among the objects displayed are carvings of Egyptian gods, of the Cherubim, human-faced sphynx with wings, of palms and of lilies. These were used generally as inlay for furniture and wainscoating. This show of luxury inspired the Prophet Amos, in Jeroboam II’s reign, to inveigh against the people of Samaria who loll on ivory couches.

Here beside them are the cosmetic pots such as Jezebel would use, with green and blue paint stains in some of the reservoirs. In another place are what the authorized version of the Bible, in describing Solomon’s Temple, calls “lily chapiters.” Archaeologists call them “proto-Ionic capitals,” quite evidently the Phoenician ancestors of the Ionic order. Indeed, the appointments of Samaria and its Israelitish buildings are in all sorts of ways reminiscent of Solomon’s Temple specifications. So extensive has been the digging that the photographs and plans are even more interesting than the exhibits. They unite in a clear picture of Samaria when the Kings of Israel reigned.