My recent posts have focused on the biblical text and ways to access
it online. Here I will turn to the material culture from the ancient
environs in which the Bible developed. My focus is oriented more toward
resources for digital publication and teaching. I will highlight a
select few sites with great resources for bringing the Bible’s ancient
environs more to life, as well as some ideas for using the material you
find there.
The number of resources for accessing realia of the ancient world
online is both substantial and increasing. Nonetheless, I am
consistently surprised by how few people incorporate them into their
courses and presentations. More shocking is the degree to which
educators fail to appropriately source and cite the digital images and
resources in their materials. Ultimately, it makes sense to access
images or other resources from those who house them without relying on
sources like Wikimedia Commons. I don’t mean to disparage Wikipedia or
Wikimedia Commons (in fact, this Wikipedia site
on artifacts related to the Bible provides an excellent overview of
relevant artifacts). But why use that when you can incorporate resources
from their original online repositories without any penalties or
difficulty?
Reliable sites provide descriptions of how to use their digital
objects. Usually, it is as simple as referencing the owner of the
copyright. Honestly, academics should model appropriate behavior
regarding intellectual property and demand that students and colleagues
follow the established legal norms. The best way to do that is by
example.
After that homily, let’s consider some digital resources to bring the
relevant material culture closer and how to incorporate these into our
work. I will mention two types of media here. First, the most obvious:
digital photography.
Many museums have begun placing images and descriptions of items in
their collections online. Often these are topically oriented, making
finding relevant artifacts easy. The Louvre houses an important collection of artifacts from the ancient Near East, with highlights compiles here. This collection contains, for example, a site about the Mesha Inscription
including a photo. The photo can be easily embedded in a website or
blog by directly linking its URL instead of downloading the photo and
uploading it to your site’s server. (Accessing the URL require
right-clicking the photo to open it in a new browser tab.) Here’s the
image, embedded via its URL:
Embedding the URL makes using it a cinch. This method also works to
insert images into PowerPoint presentations. In PowerPoint, clicking on
the “Insert” ribbon, the “Pictures” button, and then “This Device…”,
opens a dialogue box. In the “File name” query you can paste the image’s
URL. Then click on the arrow next to “Open” and select “Link to File.”
Hitting Enter/Return should add the image to the PowerPoint.
Inserting and Image via URL in PowerPoint.
Reducing the presentation’s file size is the upside, but there are
two downsides: displaying the image while presenting requires an
internet connection and changes to the link could remove or replace the
image. To assuage these issues, use “Link and Insert” instead of “Link
to File.” This will embed it in your presentation, but increase the file
size of the presentation. However you link it, don’t forget the correct
citation!
The most obvious place to look for resources related to the material cultures related to the Bible is the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. They have compiled a ready resource for anyone interested in the intersection of “Archaeology and the Land of Israel,”
that extends from the paleolithic period to the Islamic era and the
crusaders. Again one finds links to images of the individual artifacts
that can be embedded, like these orthostatic lions from Hazor (again,
linked via URL).
However, there is a second method of viewing materials in the Israel Museum. You can virtually tour the Israel Museum with an internet browser or through the “Arts and Culture App”
produced by Google (available in the Play Store). Using these, you can
view the artifacts virtually as presented in the museum. Both versions
are touch-screen compatible and the app uses the device’s gyroscopes to
make the experience more immersive. Viewing artifacts as in the museum
can provide more background and contextualize items among culturally or
chronologically cognate artifacts. For example, the aforementioned lions from Hazor can
be found surrounded by other pieces from the Bronze Age (only when
viewed in the this way does the reference to “the one on the left” on the image’s page make any sense).
Screenshot: The Hazor Lions at the Israel Museum virtually.
The British Museum
provides similar features on its website and in the “Arts and Culture”
app. The website provides first-rate images of numerous objects with
easily accessible copyright and usability information linked to each
images. For access, click on “Collection” on the homepage and then
search for the object. Searching for the “Cyrus Cylinder,” for example,
leads to the beautiful image below. Clicking on the link “Use This
Image” in the bottom-right corner of image’s page leads to a page with
download options and information about using the image.
Touring the museum digitally
can be used as a fun break or reward within courses. In my recent
gamified course on Israel’s history, students could unlock bonus
content, including a virtual scavenger hunt for relevant items in the
British Museum. Below, one sees what the Cyrus Cylinder looks like in
that context, a context with more information about ancient Persia and
its culture.
Screenshot: The Cyrus Cylinder, at the British Museum virtually.
Finally, I would like to mention the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem. Their website provides access to a closed temporary exhibit, By the Rivers of Babylon,
with interactive elements. This preserves the exhibit and makes it
accessible to visitors in spite of its having concluded. (A permanent
exhibit that now features much of it remains unavailable online.) This
presentation thus overcomes both geographical and temporal limitations,
opening the experience to a wider audience for a longer time. However,
the Bible Lands museum does not provide access to photos of their
collections and is, like the Louvre, not available in the “Arts and
Culture” app.
I hope you find these resources and ideas helpful. I’d love to hear your ideas as well!
The AWOL Index: The bibliographic data presented herein has been programmatically extracted from the content of AWOL - The Ancient World Online (ISSN 2156-2253) and formatted in accordance with a structured data model.
AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State University
AWOL began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. I moved it to its own space here beginning in 2009.
The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.
The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.
AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.
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