It's Friday morning and we feel refreshed having slept in our comfortable beds last night. We were given a three day weekend and decided to come back to Jerusalem to do laundry and rest in the comfort of our apartment, it's only a two hour drive from Dor to Jerusalem.
The big excitement yesterday was that Don found a statue of the Goddess Nike. He was digging below a wall, found her and identified her as a statue, others thought this was just a hunk of column. She had been damaged by someone using a pick, and one of her breasts had been knocked off. They had to take out some of the wall in order to get her out safely and spent some time searching through the debris for her right breast. They didn't find it. Oh, she doesn't have a head either, but that was done a long time ago. The statue is about 3 feet high and the first statue of that size found there, little statuettes have been found, but nothing that big. She is thought to be from the Hellenistic period which would have been between 330 BC and 63 BC. Don tried to name her Goddess Bernice, but they wouldn't buy it. Shards, coins, beads, statuettes, and more pot shards have been found there.
My day washing pot shards went well.......I can do that and will the rest of the time. Shard washing takes place under big Eucalyptus trees and I do pretty much what we did at Don's dig in Jerusalem.
Pictures: #1 Workers at the dig. There are men who work too, but for some reason, most of Don and Ron's pictures show the young girls.
#2 Here she is
#3 Digging her out
#4 Don and his square captain with Nike
More later......... Shalom..........Bernice