* Astronomy

The six-month exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls closed yesterday in Toronto, with scholars baffled by the Jordanian government's last-minute request to Canada to stop the ancient manuscripts from going back to Israel.
The request, delivered to the Canadian chargé d'affaires in the Jordanian capital of Amman, underscores the tortuous history of the region, where custody of the 2,000-year-old fragments of Jewish spiritual writings has become entangled in the politics and warfare of perhaps the world's most fought over piece of geography.
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Announcing the discovery of Biblical quotations 400 years older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Two pure silver amulets, each inscribed with multiple lines of ancient Hebrew script, have been discovered at the ancient tomb complex of Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem. The discovery is chronicled in detail by the site's principal archaeologist, Gabriel Barkay, in the 200th issue of Biblical Archaeology Review magazine.
When deciphered, the inscriptions on the two amulets reveal one of the earliest extra-biblical references to the Israelite God Yahweh and the oldest-known reference to a passage from the Bible: the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24-26, which beseeches the Lord to bless the children of Israel. The texts predate the Dead Sea Scrolls by nearly 400 years.

Source


Numbers 6:24-26 (New International Version)

24 The Lord bless you and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.

Longitude: 31°46'7.86"N, Latitude:  35°13'31.27"E

On Aug. 24, 79 A.D., Italy's Mount Vesuvius exploded, burying the Roman towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii under tons of super-heated ash, rock and debris in one of the most famous volcanic eruptions in history.
Thousands died. But somehow, hundreds of papyrus scrolls survived - sort of - in a villa at Herculaneum thought to have been owned at one time by Julius Caesar's father-in-law.
The scrolls contained ancient philosophical and learned writings. But they were so badly damaged - literally turned to carbon by the volcanic heat - that they crumbled when scholars first tried to open them centuries later.
The remaining scrolls, stored away in Italy and France, haven't been read - or even unrolled - since 79 AD.

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Malian Minister of Culture Mohamed El Moctar on Wednesday at the National Museum of Mali, launched a month-long exhibition on the manuscripts of Timbuktu, a city in the northern part of Mali, over 900 km from the capital, Bamako.

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