Coordinate conversion app needed

Veli Voipio

In "The New Encyclopedia Of Archaeological Excavations In The Holy Land" there are map references that relate to some (100 year?) old coordinate system.

https://www.logos.com/product/223227/the-new-encyclopedia-of-archaeological-excavations-in-the-holy-land 

Here is and example " ... 14 km (9 mi.) north of Acco on the Mediterranean coast (map reference 1598.2727) ...

Prausnitz, M. W., & Mazar, E. (1993). Achzib. In E. Stern (Ed.), The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (Vol. 1, p. 32). Israel Exploration Society & Carta; Simon & Schuster.

I've tried to ask moderate experts and check the Internet to find a free and accurate conversion app for this. Does any Logos user have and idea?

I can also make my own conversion algorithm, which may not be terribly accurate, but I'll try to ask this forum first.

DMB

Veli Voipio said:

there are map references that relate to some (100 year?) old coordinate system.

The numbers look like a long/lat, but the numbers don't line up correctly.  I looked at older maps in Logos (curious; Thomson, and Ramsay); they use long/lats.

Veli Voipio

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1262376#Comment_1262376

Currently I am in the city with good Internet connection, so I took time to find out more about this.

The coordinate system is Palestine grid. The British started to use it about 100 years ago, and is quite common in archaeological books .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_grid 

I could not find the maps mentioned in the book's introduction: "The map in each volume’s endpapers show all the sites covered in the NEAEH, highlighted sites are those covered in the volume." (Stern, E. (1993). Editor’s Foreword. In E. Stern (Ed.), The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (Vol. 1, p. xiii). Israel Exploration Society & Carta; Simon & Schuster.)

In the Wikipedia the following map is available and will be ok for the time being:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/United_Nations_Palestine_map_showing_Armistice_Agreements_between_Israel_%26_Lebanon%2C_Syria%2C_Jordan_%26_Egypt_1949-1950.jpg 

The book says also, related to the coordinate numbers: "Map Reference Numbers. Map reference numbers of six, eight, or ten digits in the entries refer to the maps in the front and back of each volume of the NEAEH. They give the location of each site on the map in coordinates of latitude and longitude according to the grid system established by the Survey of Israel. The first three to five digits, as the case may be, refer to latitude and are read from west to east; the second set of digits refers to longitude and is read from south to north. The site in question is at the intersection of the two lines." (Stern, E., ed. (1993). In The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (Vols. 1–4, p. xi). Israel Exploration Society & Carta; Simon & Schuster.)

For example, Jericho location in the book is 193.142. In Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho: it is 193.3/142. It also provides coordinates 31°52′16″N 35°26′39″E, and I found a conversion tool to change it to decimal  31.871°N 35.444°E

I have made also my own excel list maybe 20 years ago, but I can't remember how. Probably I've got the data from a book and manually typed and then converted it to Lat/L to decimal. So it is inaccurate in all aspects, but I use it occasionally.

2526.BIBLICAL.xlsx

Still looking forward to an ultimate map tool with Logos [H]

Veli Voipio

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1267070#Comment_1267070

This book https://www.logos.com/product/166061/crossway-esv-bible-atlas  has the old archaeological grid in some maps from page 280 onwards.

Probably a large file - it took some time in my summer log cabin to download it.