Archaeology Drawings : Russian Avant-garde Gallery

For many years Tatiana has worked in archaeological drawing for several leading archaeologists in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa. Her drawings accompanied their discoveries in journals and periodicals published in Israel and abroad.

It all began when my mother was accepted to work in Israel Museum in Jerusalem, for the renown archaeologist Ruth Amiran (you may learn more about her at the Brown University website, Wikipedia, Jewish Women's Archive, or just by doing a search), in the early 1980s. I used to visit the museum several times a week and grew to know everybody in the archaeological department. The process of matching pottery pieces and then painstakingly restoring ancient pots and jugs was fascinating to discover and participate, for a while.

Then we moved to a different city, and Tatiana began doing this work from home, for several arachaeologists, one of them - the world famous Dr.Gabi Barkay (you may learn more about him at the Wikipedia website, or by doing a search). She would receive cardboard boxes full of indistinguisahble (to my eyes) pottery shards, black lumps of corroded metal, ancient terracota oil lamps or aquaduct elements - and feel this exalted wonder at their age and history. What I, as a teenager, saw as a boring lump of matter, she perceived thousands of years worth of human history in the land of Israel. I know now that she was right.

Then Dr.Gabi Barkay has brought to her one of his most famous finds: small silver plaques containing the priestly benediction from the Book of Numbers. To me they looked like pieces of crumpled metal foil, but they filled my mother with rapturous delight. She respected and admired Dr.Barkay very much, reverred him for his unorthodox and rather daring methods to pursue his hunches where other archaeologist were stumped by difficulties. This extraudinary find was published in the journal "Cathedra", number 52, in the summer of 1989. Below, I bring some of the drawings from this issue, kindly provided by Yad Ben Zvi publishing, since I do not have the issue. The article appeared, naturally, in Hebrew. You may find some more on it here.

The Ketef Hinom site has yielded a lot of amazing material, and it has been published in various sources. I bring drawings from some of them below.

In addition, I wanted to give you an idea of what this process looked like, and I have chosen a number of her raw pencil drawings, sketches, which were done and then transferred to the pen and ink versions published in periodicals.

Any additions to this page shall be announced in the What's New page and the Newsletter (see Archive).

Published Drawings

Cover of Journal "Cathedra. History of the Land of Israel and Its Settlement", #52, Tamuz 5739 (July-August 1989). Yad Ben Zvi publishing, Jerusalem.
In the circle hands are seen unrolling the silver scroll announce the central article.

First page of article "Priestly Benediction on Silver Plaques from Ketef Hinom in Jerusalem" by Gabi Barkay.

Priestly Benediction on Silver Plaques from Ketef Hinom in Jerusalem" by Gabi Barkay. Journal "Cathedra. History of the Land of Israel and Its Settlement", #52, Tamuz 5739 (July-August 1989). Yad Ben Zvi publishing, Jerusalem.
The two rolled scrolls, four views.