Nothing new in the lifestyles of people living in the Holy Land whether it was 4000 years ago in Biblical times or today.

Obviously Biblical people didn’t always wear sandals and cotton or linen tunics. Elijah in fact wore a hairy mantel a.k.a. a fur coat.

The first serious winter storm began Friday, December 10, 2010, dropping much-needed rain on the north but so far leaving Jerusalem with only a trace of precipitation and bringing blinding sandstorms to the northern Negev and the capital city.

Heavy rain and fierce winds pummelled countries across the Middle East on Sunday, December 12, 2010. killing a woman in Lebanon, sinking a ship off Israel’s coast and prompting Egypt to close its largest Mediterranean port.

It whipped up sand storms in Egypt and Jordan, while in the Syrian capital of Damascus, snow blanketed the streets for first time this winter. Schools sent students home early and children ventured outside to play. Heavy rain and strong winds battered cities along the Mediterranean coast. Syrian authorities closed their main port of Tartous.

Egypt shut down the port of Alexandria, the country’s largest, as well as another in Nuweiba. Authorities stated steady rain appeared to play a role in the collapse of a six-story textile factory in the northern Egyptian city of Alexandria. One person was killed, and as many as 40 people were trapped under the rubble, a security official stated, warning that the casualty figure could rise.

In Jordan, the Weather Department urged citizens to avoid valleys because of the threat of flash floods. Police stated dust-laden winds reaching up to 55 miles (90 kilometres) per hour obscured road visibility and forced the closure of major highways in the eastern desert linking Jordan with neighbouring Iraq and southern roads leading to the ancient city of Petra, a major tourist attraction.

A police statement said low visibility caused a 10-car pileup in a district south of the capital Amman, which left 16 people injured. Amman airport reported up to two-hour delays in domestic and international flights as a result of the dust storm.

In Lebanon, heavy rains flooded the streets in Beirut and snow forced some road closures in remote mountain towns. A woman died Saturday night when an uprooted tree fell on her car in the northern port city of Tripoli.

The storm also caused delays in incoming and outgoing flights from Beirut airport and heavily damaged four small training planes parked on the tarmac, flipping some and ramming others into a nearby electricity pole on Saturday. The storm, which caused temperatures to plunge to below freezing in some places, ended weeks of unseasonably warm and dry weather across the region that caused dozens of forest fires in Lebanon and helped feed a massive blaze in Israel that destroyed thousands of hectares of forest.

Off the Israeli coast, a Moldovan cargo ship sunk in stormy weather Sunday about 7 miles (11 kilometres) near the port city of Ashdod. The Moldovan vessel, carrying more than 3,000 tons of metal, was headed towards Ashdod when the ship‘s captain reported water entering the ship, which was rocked by 30-foot high waves in gale force winds of more than 100 kilometers (65 miles) an hour.

The Israeli Navy and Air Force rescued a crew of 11 Ukrainians whose ship began sinking in a savage winter storm Sunday morning on the Mediterranean Sea eight miles west off the Israeli port of Ashdod. An official from Israel’s shipping and ports authority, Yigal Maor, stated the vessel’s 11-member crew scrambled onto lifeboats and were helped by a nearby Taiwanese ship. Some of the crew had jumped into the sea, but no one required medical care.

A Turkish ship also is waiting for help after reporting that it is running out of fuel.

Elsewhere in Israel, rain and hail battered the country while strong winds toppled trees and traffic lights, snarling traffic, flooding streets and knocking out electricity to hundreds of homes. Local media reported that a pier at the ancient port city of Caesarea collapsed, a breakfront at another beach cracked and towering waves washed over the shore of Eilat, a desert resort.

The strong winds broke windows throughout the country and ripped hundreds of trees from their roots, which fell in the street and damaged vehicles. In Tel Aviv, a pier was wrecked, and the heavy winds and rain destroyed several stores and restaurants. Thousands of residents of metropolitan Tel Aviv were temporarily without electricity because of falling branches.

By Alegre Savariego:

In the past (up until very recently) gender roles were extremely specific and therefore one can assume that the archaeological find reflects something about the user or the owner of the object itself.

Through the objects that are uncovered in excavations, cosmetic containers, small bowls and various minerals – one can easily imagine how a woman from the Second Temple period would wear makeup.
Savariego briefly presents below some of the customs for face care and makeup that were practiced in ancient times.

The custom has its beginnings in magic and cultic practices in which the ancients used to apply creams and makeup to the faces of the statues of their gods in order to “bestow life on them”. Over time the custom found expression in the lives of individuals, women and men alike, for both aesthetic and therapeutic reasons.

Ancient evidence of people applying make up to their face comes to us from Egypt where kohl sticks, cosmetic materials and written descriptions were preserved.

In Egypt and Babylonia they used to rub a dark red color on the face, which was derived from red ocher mixed with vegetable oil or animal fat.

As opposed to them, the Sumerians used yellow ocher. The cosmetic preparations included powders, creams, perfumes and scented oils. Due to their high price they were marketed in small quantities in little vessels with different shapes.

The vessels were manufactured from a variety of materials such as: alabaster, stone, ceramic, glass and bone. There are also faience containers that come from Egypt.

The creams were meant to soften and protect the face and keep the skin fresh. They were made of vegetable oils to which beeswax or fragrant resin was sometimes added.

Eye makeup, besides fulfilling a religious/magical role, was also intended for medical purposes. The makeup kept small flies away that caused eye infections, protected the eyelids from drying out and from the desert sun.
The eye shadow was mainly produced from crushed minerals mixed with water; sometimes resin was added to it and the preparation was kept in shells.

Over time the ancients began producing special small cosmetic containers that are made of various materials, as mentioned above.
Together with the vessel there was a small applicator (kohl stick) made of ivory, bone, bronze or glass.

The kohl stick was thick at one end for spreading around the eyes, and spoon-like or spatulate at the other end for mixing the makeup and removing it from the vessel.

The kohl stick would be immersed in water or scented oil and then into the powder and in that way they would apply the eye shadow to the eyes.
Along with the “make-up kit” (the container and the kohl stick), stone palettes were found that occur in a variety of geometric forms, some of which are decorated with floral or animal patterns. These palettes were probably used for grinding and crushing the cosmetic’s ingredients into powder.

Very little is known about wearing makeup as practiced during the First Temple period. In the Bible the use of makeup is mentioned disparagingly. Jeremiah, wanting to compare Jerusalem to a prostitute wishing to make herself pretty, talks about eye makeup and uses the expression “…you enlarge your eyes with paint” (Jeremiah 4:30).

However, based on the artifacts that have been uncovered from archaeological excavations, there is no doubt that makeup was commonly used during this period.

Included among the cosmetic implements that were used to apply makeup to the eyes and face are small stone bowls that were common in this period in the Levant. These bowls have a depression in their center, are polished and decorated with incised geometric patterns.

Face care was highly developed in Greece and Rome. Women would apply creams and bright colors to their faces. They would apply red (a floral/algae essence) to their lips and cheeks and black (derived from antimony or soot) to their eyes and eyebrows.

Most of the vessels in Greece were made of clay and were adorned with drawings that depict the use of cosmetics.

Ceramic boxes with lids, known as pyxides, were also found in which there were rouge and various cosmetic materials, and there were flat and round containers that were made of bronze or marble.

The custom of face care was also widely practiced in Israel during the Second Temple period. The makeup holder that was characteristic of the period is a long narrow kohl tube. Vessels were found that are composed of two to four such tubes. In most instances the kohl stick itself is made of bronze; some are also decorated with incising. In addition, the ancients used cylindrical containers with ceramic, bone and glass lids.

Back to the present: The cosmetic industry makes millions of shekels annually, as King Solomon once said, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

The days of Adam and Eve, perhaps?

Researchers presented the following report in the October 2010 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Archeologists state they have found evidence that people living 30,000 years ago in present-day Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic used stones to grind seeds and roots into a type of flour. The flour would have provided a good source of carbohydrates and energy. And the flour could be stored for those times when meat was less available.