Word: stagers
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...bosses did. Says Harvard's Lawrence Stager, the dig director: "I'm an old farm boy and recognized it as a bull calf immediately." Judging from the style of other pottery in the temple, he dates the figurine to about 1550 B.C. Because that is up to several hundred years before the escape from Egypt, Stager thinks the object might well have been a prototype for the calves mentioned in the Bible. It also supports the belief that the Israelites took some of their religious practices from other Canaanites...
...calf is tiny -- only about 12 1/2 cm (5 in.) long -- and it is made of bronze, and possibly lead and silver as well, rather than gold. It may have been burnished to a golden color, says Stager. The calf was probably displayed emerging from the vessel in which it was discovered. He believes the idol was worshiped not for its inherent holiness but because it was associated with the Canaanite deity El, father of the gods, or his son Baal, god of storms...
...find was doubly lucky for Stager. Not only did his team make an important discovery but it did so during a visit by Leon Levy, a New York businessman who is the dig's financial backer. Levy's reaction was to extend funding for the project, which started five years ago, for a decade...
...Stager, who directs a dig in Ashkelon, Israel, theorizes that one of the series of cultures that lived in the city--Phoenicians, Persians, Egyptians or Greeks--was especially fond of dogs. So fond that the people carved out a prime piece of coastal property for a pet cemetery, he says...
...field this summer we will have a geologist, a metallurgist, a conservationist, [a] physical anthropologist [and a] botanist. There's a continual interaction during the time we are actually digging," says Stager. More intensive artifact and lab analysis are deferred to a laboratory in Jerusalem or the Semitic Museum at Harvard. which Stager directs, he says...