Archaeology of Ancient Israel

Recent research into underwater finds from locations off the northern coast of Israel and the southern coast of Lebanon has defined these marine assemblages as ritual deposits (Artzy and Sheizaf 2019; Edrey, Erlich, and Yasur-Landau 2020; Seco Alvarez 2011; Seco Alvarez and Nourredine 2010). Hundreds of ceramic figurines were discovered submerged beneath the waters of the Mediterranean at both Shavei Zion, a locus located between the more prominent urban settlements of Akko and Achziv, and a location northwest of Tyre. Geographically and culturally, these sites fall within regions of the Phoenician homeland in the late Iron Age, Persian, and early Hellenistic periods the ranges of dates represented at Shavei Zion with greater temporal limits on the finds near Tyre. Despite early interpretations of both sites as the remnant of shipwrecks, no wooden hull remains, or other varieties of ubiquitous cargo, were discovered at either site. Date ranges of finds from either location, the 7 th-4 th /3 rd centuries BCE at Shavei Zion (Edrey, Erlich, and Yasur-Landau 2020: 251) and 6 th-4 th centuries BCE at Tyre (Seco Alvarez 2011: 80; Seco Alvarez and Nourredine 2010: 109), indicate gradual deposition of artifacts over lengthy, extended periods of time, rather than wreck incidents at either site. Differences between the Shavei Zion and Tyre deposits remain in terms of the gender of the figurines found at each location. The approximately 250-300 figurines, of several types, from Shavei Zion are all female (Artzy and Sheizaf 2019; Edrey, Erlich, and Yasur-Landau 2020). The underwater coroplastic finds from nearby Tyre, numbering over 300, are dominated by female figurines, but male statuettes are present as well (Seco Alvarez 2011; Seco Alvarez and Nourredine 2010). I propose that these gendered differences from either underwater locus represent variations in ritual performances that took place at either maritime site. While it is not possible to fully equate female figurines with the ritual use of these artifacts solely by women, or

Identitas Palestina modern bukanlah etnis murni, tapi ciri-ciri Nasional yang terbentuk oleh sejarah panjang asimilasi, migrasi, dan perjuangan politik, yang mengikat penduduk Arab di wilayah tersebut dengan nama dan tanah Palestina.



Membahas kompleksitas pengakuan internasional terhadap Palestina sebagai Negara, menuai kontroversi pada sejumlah kalangan; sehingga melahirkan uraian akar historis konflik yang melatarinya. Pengakuan itu menjadi relevan seiring dengan pertanyaan publik tentang mengapa Palestina tak diakui secara universal, seperti yang tercermin dari absennya negara tersebut di beberapa platform digital.  Secara historis, sejumlah negara seperti Uni Soviet, Cina, India, dan Indonesia telah mengakui kedaulatan Palestina, sementara banyak negara Barat, termasuk Amerika Serikat, tidak mengakuinya karena dukungan kuat terhadap Israel. Konflik berakar dari keinginan Bangsa Yahudi dan "Bangsa Palestina" untuk mendirikan negara di wilayah geografis yang sama,  diperparah oleh keputusan Liga Bangsa-Bangsa dan PBB pasca Perang Dunia I. Resolusi PBB pada tahun 1947 mengusulkan pembagian wilayah ditolak oleh pihak Palestina, memicu Perang Arab-Israel 1948 dan pengusiran massal warga Palestina. Sepanjang sejarah, konflik ini diwarnai oleh peperangan seperti The Six-Day War (1967) dan Intifada (1987, 2000), serta upaya perdamaian seperti Kesepakatan Damai Oslo (1993). Meskipun masih berjuang untuk pengakuan penuh, Palestina telah mencapai status Negara Pengamat Non-Anggota di PBB sejak tahun 2012, yang memungkinkan penggunaan istilah "Negara Palestina" dalam dokumen-dokumen resmi PBB. Namun, di lapangan, perjuangan untuk kedaulatan dan pengakuan terus berlanjut di tengah ketidakpastian politik di wilayah tersebut.

Increasingly, archaeologists of the Levant have been attentive to
post-destruction activity carried out by residents of ruined sites.
But in addition to the traces of squatter communities, what has
also been unearthed is evidence of the intentional preservation
of ruins by later populations who came to live among them. But
why preserve ruins when their materials and location were of
value for other ends? This study responds to this question by
framing it within a broader phenomenology of ruination. To
begin, I survey recent archaeological evidence that is indicative of
activities undertaken by inhabitants of certain locations in
response to ruins that were still visible within them. My
investigation then leverages a collection of texts from the
Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East that describe the experience
of ruins. The writings examined in this study are of historical
interest for how they attest to the numinous attributes of
ruination, in which material remains are consistently portrayed as
the product of divine agency. Such texts illuminate certain beliefs,
I argue, that share an affinity with practices enacted among the
ruins of locations in the eastern Mediterranean region, offering
insights into why certain Iron Age communities preserved the
ruins that they did within their settlements.

In several periods between the Middle Bronze Age and the Umayyad period, Yavne was a major center of pottery production in the southern coastal plain of the Levant. The location of the site next to Naḥal Soreq, where replenishable clay sources were easily accessible, was a significant factor in the development of the large-scale ceramic industry. The almost 100 updraft kilns from several periods exposed in the extensive excavations carried out at Yavne, and the kilns uncovered at other sites in the southern coastal plain, enable tracing the development of kiln technology and the continuity of pottery production in the region. The case study of the Yavne kilns sheds light on the development of kiln design and technology in the southern coastal plain and the adjacent Shephelah region, providing a broader understanding of the ceramic industry in the different periods.

The AEon Knowledge Project investigates structural, semantic, and contextual parallels among five geographically distant script traditions: the Indus Valley seals (c. 2600-1900 BCE), Classicperiod Maya glyphs (c. 250-900 CE), the Rongorongo corpus of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, c. 1400-1800 CE), Early Phoenician inscriptions (c. 1050-800 BCE), and Imperial Aramaic documents (c. 700-200 BCE). Employing a hybrid methodology that merges Eric Michael OBrien's highresolution visualmemory analysis with AIdriven symbolmatching algorithms, the project presents evidence that many of these writing systems share canonical sign forms, ritual functions, and administrative usecases. The data support a model of ancient cultural diffusion operating at far greater temporal and geographic scales than currently accepted. Key contributions include a proposed "Joint Seal" contract mechanism, quantitative glyphshape clustering across corpora (χ² = 37.1, p < 0.01), and a trioceanic transmission route linking South Asia, Polynesia, and Mesoamerica.

Despite several studies have focused on the past bio-sedimentary response of the Mediterranean coastal areas to ancient seaport activities, only few geoarchaeological and palaeoecological data are available on strictly lacustrine harbours, to date. At the archaeological site of Magdala/Taricheae (Sea of Galilee, north Israel), an interdisciplinary study, combining ostracod fauna composition and shell chemistry with sedimentology, geochemistry of sediments and archaeological data, was undertaken on the sedimentary succession buried beneath the Roman harbour structures in correspondence of two key-sections. This approach provided detailed information about past environmental changes, otherwise not visible, into a high-resolution pottery-based chronological framework at the transition from a natural (pre-harbour) to anthropogenically influenced (harbour) lacustrine depositional setting. New bio-sedimentary and archaeological (pottery) data document that remarkable hydrodynamic and hydrochemical changes took place during the Hellenistic period (from the 3rd-2nd century BC to the first half of the 1st century AD), in response to the construction of the oldest Magdala harbour installations and, possibly, to the following Hasmonean structures. The high V-Cr concentrations observed in the harbour sediments, and the substantial increase of ostracod species (Pseudocandona albicans) preferring slow moving waters and fine-grained substrates point to the establishment of a semi-enclosed, shallow, and organic-rich setting. Coupled ostracod-geochemical analyses also testify to an alkali ions (Na+ and K+) enrichment within whole-sediment samples, reasonably driven by increasing evaporation in response to the partial isolation of the lake margin. The increase in sodium and potassium concentrations is accompanied by the sudden appearance of Heterocypris salina, a brackish-tolerant species, and by the almost absolute dominance of noded valves of C. torosa, whose shells are enriched in Na, K and Cl. The positive covariance between Na2O+K2O values and the frequencies of noded C. torosa seems to confirm the relation between node development and changes in ionic concentration within hypohaline settings.

Studies of ancient Israelite religion have long assumed that texts played some role in its public expression. This role is often reconstructed using depictions in the Hebrew Bible and ritual texts from neighboring regions or the Bronze Age Levant. However, no such ritual texts have been uncovered in the Iron Age Levant. Nevertheless, an analysis of architecturally embedded texts alongside their associated assemblages makes it possible to reconstruct ancient Levantine ritual practices and the roles of texts within them. As components of built environments, texts drew attention to particular areas, directing traffic along particular routes and halting it at waypoints. Texts of various genres occasionally prescribe specific ritual actions to carry out at these waypoints. Even texts lacking prescriptions were often accompanied by iconography depicting ritual practices or functional artifacts implying them. Analyzing architectural, textual, iconographic, and artifactual evidence together allows us to reconstruct ritual sequences performed in ancient built environments. This article demonstrates this method using case studies derived from four Iron Age Levantine sites: Karatepe, Karkemish, Kuntillet ʿAjrud, and Deir ʿAlla.

This paper proposes an explanation for a 579-year discrepancy between a revised chronology of Egypt's Twelfth Dynasty and the orthodox scholarly timeline. The author argues that this significant gap stems from a fundamental error in the orthodox model: the misidentification of the Sothic cycle's starting point. Orthodox chronology is shown to rely on a cycle beginning with the mythical figure Miebis (c. 2782 BCE), leading to the placement of key astronomical events, such as the heliacal rising of Sirius in the 7th year of Senusert III, in 1874 BCE. In contrast, the revised chronology anchors its timeline to a different Sothic cycle linked to the Hyksos period. Through a method of "drift dating" applied to Fifth Dynasty papyri, the author establishes a firm heliacal benchmark of 2256 BCE. This date is synchronized with a historical event recorded in the Book of Sothis-the deification of the Apis bull in-2233 during the reign of the Hyksos ruler Aseth/Salitis. The paper contends that 2257/56 BCE represents the correct cyclical starting point, and that the coexistence of multiple, parallel calendar systems in Egypt explains how two such different chronological schemas could be derived from the same astronomical data. The conclusion posits that the 579-year difference is not an error in the revised model, but rather the result of orthodoxy's reliance on an incorrect Sothic cycle, confusing an Osirian tradition with a later Hyksos-era calibration. The study integrates analysis of king lists, astronomical data, and interdynastic synchronisms to challenge the foundations of conventional Egyptian chronology.

"Megiddo: A City Unearthed,  A Past Imagined"
A Special Exhibition at the ISAC Museum
September 18, 2025 – March 15, 2026

"Megiddo: A City Unearthed, A Past Imagined" marks 100 years since ISAC’s first major archaeological expedition (1925–1939), which revealed layers of palatial complexes, fortifications, and elite material culture. At the crossroads of West Asia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean, Megiddo endured for millennia as a nexus of power and cultural exchange. The exhibition, curated by Kiersten Neumann, examines not only what was unearthed but also what was imagined: a site transformed into a stage for institutional ambition, philanthropic vision, and global storytelling.

Original issues of The New York Times and The Illustrated London News with headlines like “New Revelations from Armageddon”—appear alongside the enduring artifacts they dramatized, showing how kings, empires, and excavation reports became front-page news. Visitors also go behind the scenes to explore how finds were documented and circulated, and how the partage system shaped ISAC’s collections. Directors’ correspondence, archival photographs, and remarkable artifacts trace a century-long journey from excavation to exhibition.

A contemporary art film, generously lent by artists Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson, offers a counterpoint: a meditation on Megiddo’s other legacy as the imagined site of biblical Armageddon. Against a backdrop of modern conflict and collective grief, it invites reflection on what “Armageddon” means today—not as prophecy, but as a nexus of metaphysics and geopolitics.

The Digest of Justinian preserve an enigmatic decision by Emperor Hadrian pertaining to a specific incident of violation of military discipline. The emperor spoke in the case of soldiers who made a failed suicide attempt. Those who had a valid reason that pushed them to take this desperate step, he ordered to be dismissed from service in disgrace. The others faced death. A surprising solution was provided for would-be suicides who decided to take their own lives per vinum aut lasciviam. The ruler ordered these to be spared. The only consequence was their transfer to inferior service. Juxtaposing Hadrian's resolution with contemporary psychological and psychiatric knowledge allows us to hypothesize that the emperor's rescript refers to people who broke the rules of military discipline due to some form of addiction.

Despite its geographic correspondence with a key fourteenth-century BC port, the tell of Yavneh-Yam has yielded only meagre evidence for Late Bronze Age occupation. The recent discovery of a sealed monumental rock-cut burial cave with hundreds of grave goods provides the first clear evidence for a significant polity.

When we start to think about ancient egypt, the first thing to come to our mind is what we call "pharoah". When it actually comes to that word, it actually means "Great House", which was monotonious to the royal house. The pharoah himself was called "nswt bity" which means "king of the upper and lower egypt".

1 "Pool" in this report means the bottom of the water system where water accumulated. 2 We used the definition "Intramural Complex," following Seger (2013:20), to prevent ambiguity. In May 2010 we began the excavations of the water system of Tel Gezer for three weeks with excitement and many questions. The consensus of all the staff about the dating of the water system to the Middle Bronze IIB, even if it was not quite clear, was the beginning of a wonderful friendship between us: the people of Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) and the people of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS), also known as the joint expedition. For the first three seasons (2010-2012) we merely cleaned Macalister's dumps (see below), but then, when we reached the archaeological strata, the real work began. It lasted six more seasons (2013-2018) until we reached our goals. Only the lower part of the pool 1 was not completely excavated because it was impossible to work in the heavy mud. We also made some soundings in the rooms attached to the city wall (henceforth the Intramural Complex 2 -Area C) and in the Canaanite Gate (henceforth the Southern Gate -Area D), trying to date their lower strata and compare them with the creating of the water system. After our work was finished, the INPA prepared the water system for visitors by building an impressive complex of metal steps, leading to the pool. This project was inaugurated on November 25, 2021 and since then it has been open to the public. This was our final goal and we are very proud that our scientific work led to a site that hopefully many tourists will visit.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission in writing of the Deutscher Verein zur Erforschung Palästinas e.V., or as expressly permitted by law.

Some scholars understand the Exodus is fiction and so too is Moses. My research has lead me to the conclusion that they are HALF RIGHT AND HALF WRONG. The archaeological evidence simply does not support in toto the Exodus account. Archaeologists sought physical proof of an archaeological nature, in support of the Exodus narratives and found none. What were they seeking? They sought pottery debris for the Exodus campsites of the general period of circa 1446 BC or circa 1260 BC and failed to find such.

This dissertation continues the saga of research and discovery which began with the revelation of the Idumea ostraca in the 1990s. These nearly 2000 ostraca from the Persian Period (538-332 BC) are shining a light on the seeming “dark age” of ancient Israel, providing information about matters as diverse as commodities, dating systems, and receipt formulas, to legal contracts and trade routes. Within these ancient scraps, approximately 600 anthroponyms are present; these personal names are the focus of this study. The initial overview reveals extensive language contact resulting in linguistically “mixed” names, testifying to the multi-linguistic milieu of ancient Idumea. The linguistic analysis of the anthroponyms includes a grammatical analysis: orthography, phonology, morphology, morpho-syntax, syntax, and lexicon. The final assessment of the results will be considered within the historical framework. This analysis will lighten that dark age, divulging a more detailed picture of this era in the past, and the historical linguistic information will provide much needed context for the ongoing discussion around Late Biblical Hebrew.

The surprising presence of Arabic anthroponyms in the Aramaic ostraca of Idumea, several centuries before the earliest known Arabic texts, reveals unexpected insights into interesting morphological phenomenon. This paper examines the Arabic anthroponyms found in this corpus to explore the status of case endings in ancient Arabic during the Persian Period. Current research on Arabic largely focuses on the internal historical and genealogical development of its case system. The corpus of anthroponyms of Persian Idumea uniquely reflect an intense language contact situation, a multi-ethnic and multilingual milieu which captures linguistic features from oral dialects otherwise not reflected in the historical epigraphic sources. Applying modern linguistic methodology, including cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language contact studies, we conceptualize the complex dynamics of oral communication in this setting. Specifically, we analyze the interaction between the lingua franca and lingua receptiva axes which likely shaped this linguistic phenomenon.

Most study of the definition of early Israel, from an archaeological perspective, is based on outdated views on the relationship between material culture and group identity, ignoring recent social theory on the relationship between the archaeological finds and group identity. This has led to simplistic assumptions on defining and identifying the materials correlates -and the group identities -relevant for understanding the formation and development of early Israel. While critical of much of the research, and aware of the limitations of the ability to interpret the archaeological remains, I suggest some paths how to move forward in defining -what is and what is not -early Israel, stressing the need to focus on a bottom-up approach, commencing with the study of small-scale communities of practice.

Burials of domestic asses appear in the Early Bronze Age (EBA) of the Near East, yet there is little understanding of the nature and importance of such burials. Usually, they are treated relatively simplistically as the remains of adored pets (if carefully interred) or sick animals who have lost their usefulness (e.g. as beasts of burden). Also, the relationship between the burials and the surrounding deposits and structures is rarely clear (e.g. were they buried in an abandoned area of sites or purposely buried beneath floors). In this paper, we discuss the excavation and analytical results of the burial of an ass found under the floor of an EB III house at the site of Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel. By integrating the results of zooarchaeological, architectural, stratigraphic, and typochronological analyses to this bioarchaeological deposit, it is clear that the ass was deliberately bound, slaughtered and buried as a foundation deposit under the EB III house. e importance of this taxon to the religious and economic realms of the EBA of the Near East is discussed. If this approach is applied to the other ass burials dispersed across the region, their significance is clarified.

Finely crafted ivory objects were highly valued prestige commodities in the Levant and more generally throughout the ancient Near East, wielded as symbols of authority, rulership, and participation in trans-regional trade networks. Our research aims to trace the networks and agents involved in the trade of ivory to the Southern Levant over a period of a thousand years (1600 BCE-600 BCE) by identifying its biological and geographical sources. This timespan encompassed major shifts in the geopolitical landscape of this region, from Late Bronze Age Canaanite city-states under Egyptian hegemony to autochthonous Iron Age territorial polities. Proteomic analyses reveal that ivories were harvested mostly from African elephants, while multi-stable isotope analyses indicate that these animals generally inhabited woodland mosaic habitats, probably located in the upper White Nile tributary. Elephant ivories were probably acquired by Nubian traders via small-scale exchange with local hunters who harvested elephants from diverse ecological niches within that broader ecoregion. The persistence of ivory sourced from this region despite the political disintegration of Dynastic Egypt, the widely recognized mediator of ivory exchange networks, suggests that Nubians actively asserted their monopoly over the procurement and distribution of lucrative ivory independent of Egyptian control and prestige economies.

Past coastal reconstruction is useful for understanding archaeological coastal settlements and predicting how coastal change might affect modern populations. The ancient Maritime Maya inhabitants of Vista Alegre in the northeastern Yucatan were active seafaring peoples. However, the past coastal landscape environmental history is unknown. Previous research concentrated on the fully terrestrial component of the site, and did not approach the issue from an earth sciences, sedimentological perspective. In this study, a sediment core campaign in the shallow offshore of Vista Alegre aimed to reconstruct the coastal and environmental changes that occurred over the past 3000 years, and specifically identify the changes in sea-level. Nine cores were analyzed using a multiproxy approach including a range of sedimentological parameters such as granulometry, micropaleontology (foraminifera), radiocarbon dating, and loss on ignition. The sediment cores provided an archive of environmental changes related to sea-level change, anthropogenic influence, and shifting microenvironments which can be associated with cultural time periods. The environmental phases and shifts show some linkage to the archaeological chronology, suggesting an association between the environmental conditions and human activities. Sea-level changes and shifting shorelines have always been, and still are, a challenge for coastal settlements, and ancient sites can be a harbinger of what to anticipate in the future. In addition to this, current natural and anthropogenic pressures on coastlines are placing archaeological sites at increasing risk and thereby threatening this important scientific and cultural archive. Therefore, efforts to identify, characterize, and record natural and anthropogenic pressures prior to destruction are increasingly important.

In December 2019, an expedition on Mt. Ebal to examine the discarded material from Adam Zertal’s 1982–1989 excavation yielded a small, folded lead tablet. The east dump pile, from which the object emerged, contained the discarded matrix from two structures that he interpreted as altars dated to the Late Bronze Age II and Iron Age I. The earlier and smaller round altar lay underneath the geometric center of the later and larger rectangular altar. The tablet could not be opened without damaging it. A team of scientists performed X-ray tomographic measurements with different scanning parameters. The tomographically reconstructed data were subjected to advanced processing to reveal the hidden text. Epigraphic analysis of the tomographic data revealed a formulaic curse written in a proto-alphabetic script likely dating to Late Bronze Age II. The inscription falls within the literary genre of Chiastic Parallelism and predates any previously known Hebrew inscription in Israel by at least 2...

Right after the Priestly summary of the Israelites&#x27; travel through the wilderness (Num. 32: 1–49), God gives Moses an additional set of instructions regarding their future conquest of the Promised Land; they are to drive out the inhabitants, destroy their images and “high ...

Resumen. En los cinco últimos años se ha producido un bombardeo mediático sobre una presunta sinagoga y miqweh 1 , hoy propiedad pública municipal con aprobación unánime de técnicos, políticos y académicos, entre los que sin embargo hay discrepancias en la interpretación, gestión e información realizadas. Se analizan las leyendas asociadas al edificio, la ubicación de la judería, platería y sinagoga medieval, las dataciones de 14C y las interpretaciones del edificio y cisterna, concluyendo que no se puede dar por segura su identificación como lugar de reunión y baño ritual judíos. Se propone una revisión de lo hecho hasta ahora y los proyectos futuros, previa consulta a instituciones responsables como el Museo Arqueológico,

Some scholars have proposed Pi-ha-hiroth to be of a Semitic derivation, meaning “Mouth of the Canal” or “Opening of the Gorge”.  I note that that Dr. David Falk, an Egyptologist (2018), reflects the Egyptian pr-hwt-wrt, was a place mentioned in Papyrus Anastasis III.  Pi-ha-hiroth was a canal that was encountered by the Israelites on the way to the reed sea (pȜ ṯwfy).

Despite its geographic correspondence with a key fourteenth-century BC port, the tell of Yavneh-Yam has yielded only meagre evidence for Late Bronze Age occupation. The recent discovery of a sealed monumental rock-cut burial cave with hundreds of grave goods provides the first clear evidence for a significant polity.

Beirut, Sidon and Tyre were major centres of maritime trade from the Bronze Age onwards. This economic prosperity generated increased pressures on the local environment, through urbanization and harbour development. Until now, however, the impact of expanding seaport infrastructure has largely been neglected and there is a paucity of data concerning the environmental stresses caused by these new forms of anthropogenic impacts. Sediment archives from Beirut, Sidon and Tyre are key to understanding human impacts in harbour areas because: (i) they lie at the heart of ancient trade networks; (ii) they encompass the emergence of early maritime infrastructure; and (iii) they enable human alterations of coastal areas to be characterized over long timescales. Here we report multivariate analyses of litho- and biostratigraphic data to probe human stressors in the context of their evolving seaport technologies. The statistical outcomes show a notable break between natural and artificial sedim...

En domaine littoral, dans un contexte de stabilisation plurimillénaire de la montée du niveau de la mer, une question qui se pose est celle de l'impact des conditions environnementales sur les choix d'implantation des communautés humaines qui s'installent autour des lagunes. L'historiographie a développé des modèles plus ou moins déterministes mais survivent-ils à la confrontation avec les données environnementales récemment acquises ? Quels ont été les effets de ces occupations sur l'évolution du littoral et réciproquement, comment les sociétés anciennes ont utilisé, contourné, surmonté ou pas les potentialités et contraintes environnementales spécifiques liées à l'occupation des milieux lagunaires, telles que l'accessibilité, la navigabilité, la vitesse de remblaiement et la hauteur de la colonne d'eau. Nous présentons des données acquises dans le cadre de nombreuses recherches pluridisciplinaires sur différents ports principalement méditerranéens et nous tentons d'estimer le poids des forçages naturels et anthropiques sur la mobilité des rivages à différentes échelles spatiales, ces processus affectant plus ou moins directement l'aménagement et la survie des ports lagunaires. Nous présentons cinq principaux types de contexte portuaire lagunaire différents, qui illustrent l'immense diversité et mobilité de ces milieux, leurs potentialités mais aussi leurs contraintes, la quasi-totalité des trajectoires géomorphologiques des lagunes aboutissant à leur disparition, soit par remblaiement soit par submersion : (1) les bassins lagunaires artificiels, (2) les ports lagunaires remblayés en contexte deltaïque, (3) les ports lagunaires toujours en eau, (4) les ports estuariens et (5) les systèmes de lagune mixte.

The early 10th-century BCE pottery assemblage from Khirbet al-Ra‘I is presented. The assemblage, which came from a few rooms that were suddenly destroyed, offers a large number of complete profiles. This is the second largest pottery assemblage, after that of Khirbet Qeiyafa, of this poorly known ceramic phase.

Israel Antiquities Authority  saarg@israntique.org.il Abstract This article presents a Proto-Canaanite inscription written in ink on a jug. It was unearthed in 2019 at Khirbet al-Ra‘i, located 4 km west of Tel Lachish, in a level dated to the late twelfth or early eleventh century BCE. Only part of the inscription had survived, with five letters indicating the personal name Yrb‘l (Jerubba‘al). This name also appears in the biblical tradition, more or less in the same era: “[Gideon] from that day was called Yrb‘l ” (Judg. 6:31–32). This inscription, together with similar inscriptions from Beth-Shemesh and Khirbet Qeiyafa, contributes to a better understanding of the distribution of theophoric names with the element ba‘al in the

Seventeen samples of burnt olive pits discovered inside a jar in the destruction layer of the Iron Age city of Khirbet Qeiyafa were analyzed by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating. Of these, four were halved and sent to two different laboratories to minimize laboratory bias. The dating of these samples is ~1000 BC. Khirbet Qeiyafa is currently the earliest known example of a fortified city in the Kingdom of Judah and contributes direct evidence to the heated debate on the biblical narrative relating to King David. Was he the real historical ruler of an urbanized state-level society in the early 10th century BC or was this level of social development reached only at the end of the 8th century BC? We can conclude that there were indeed fortified centers in the Davidic kingdom from the studies presented. In addition, the dating of Khirbet Qeiyafa has far-reaching implications for the entire Levant. The discovery of Cypriot pottery at the site connects the 14C datings...

Su bm I t t e d • i n pa r t I a I f u I f i I I men t o f t he r e q u i r eme n t s for the degree of Master of Arts. to the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town~u~d&r the supervision of Rev. ltumeleng J. Mosala .

Su bm I t t e d • i n pa r t I a I f u I f i I I men t o f t he r e q u i r eme n t s for the degree of Master of Arts. to the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town~u~d&r the supervision of Rev. ltumeleng J. Mosala .

The archaeological excavation at Silwan Pool revealed both continuity and change as regards the site's entrance over the past 2,000 years. This article presents the preliminary results of the excavation and discusses changes in accessing the pool.

he Megiddo excavation of the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (previously the Oriental Institute; hereafter ISAC) was the first of many multiyear archaeological expeditions initiated by the burgeoning institute in the early twentieth century. The discovery, recording, and interpretation that took place over the fourteen seasons of fieldwork (1925–1939) under three successive field directors—Clarence S. Fisher (1925–1927), P. L. O. Guy (1927–1934), and Gordon Loud (1935–1939)—would come to lay the foundations for archaeology in the southern Levant. Accessible through ISAC’s seminal publications, museum collections (including both archaeological objects and archival records), and public exhibitions, the wealth of information and materials acquired as a result of the Megiddo Expedition are still rigorously consulted and built upon today, making it one of the most impactful and lasting endeavors in ISAC’s history.

Biblical Hebrew has two distinct words often translated simply as "valley" עמק ʿēmeq and גיא gay.  Standard translations flatten their difference. Closer symbolic and geographical study reveals that עמק denotes a broad land basin (盤地), while גיא refers to a narrow gorge or ravine (峽⾕), a pressed route between ridges. This article proposes translating ʿēmeq as "basin" and gay as "gorge", restoring the imagery Hebrew intends and enriching the aesthetic depth of passages such as Psalm 23.

This study reviews the most prominent landmarks in the Palestinian governorates, each separately, as follows:
Jerusalem: the city walls, gates, and neighborhoods, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Hebron: the Ibrahimi Mosque, Haram al-Rameh.
Bethlehem: Church of the Nativity, Milk Grotto, Shepherds’ Field, Herodion.
Jericho: Tell es-Sultan, Monastery of Quruntul, Tulul Abu al-Ala’iq, Khirbet al-Mafjar Palace, Maqam Nabi Musa.
Nablus: the Great Mosque, Tell Balata, Sebastia.
Acre: the old city of Acre, Al-Jazzar Mosque.
Nazareth: Church of the Annunciation.
Jaffa: the mosques of Jaffa.
Gaza: Tell al-Ajjul, al-Blakhiyya, Monastery of St. Hilarion, Great Omari Mosque, Sayyid Hashim Mosque, Al-Pasha’s Palace.

In a review article I recently published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society (Wallenfels 2019) focusing on P. James and P. van der Veen's edited volume, Solomon and Shishak (2015a), I remarked that although there was an image on that volume's front cover of King Aḥirām of Byblos enthroned, there was no reference to Aḥirām or to his relief-carved and inscribed sarcophagus to be found within the volume. Since the dating of Aḥirām is, in fact, intimately connected to the chronological issues discussed at BICANE 3, I briefly summarized in an Appendix there some of the earlier arguments as well as more recent developments in the ongoing debate surrounding the dating of Aḥirām. Here, in BICANE 4, I reexamine , now in the full light of the Centuries of Darkness (= CoD; James et al. 1991) ultra-low chronology, the soundness of situating the reliefs and inscription on the Aḥirām sarcophagus in the mid-9th century bce. At the same time, I make the more general case for the dating of the full corpus of the so-called Old Byblian linear Phoenician inscriptions to c. the mid-9th through the middle of the third quarter of the 8th centuries bce. 1 * The following remarks were first presented at the Seminar für Biblische Archäologie bei Schwäbisch Gmünd in September of 2019 at the kind invitation of that meeting's organizer, P. van der Veen. All conventional dates not directly linked to the Julian calendar are marked herein with an asterisk (c. *1200 bce); all CoD chronology-based dates are marked with an exclamation point (c. 950! bce). Phoenician inscriptions are identified herein by their sigla in Donner and Röllig (1971 = KAI).

The article explores the final stages of Canaanite Megiddo during Iron I, focusing on Strata VIB and VIA. Stratum VIB presents evidence for a modest village lacking monumental structures, while Stratum VIA marks the peak of urban development before its catastrophic destruction. The article argues for the architectural and social continuity between the Late Bronze and Iron Age I, highlighting Megiddo's role as an independent city-state, and emphasizing its economic self-sufficiency, localized production, and Canaanite heritage. The destruction of Stratum VIA was unexpected, rapid and complete, as there no signs of crisis behavior.

Following the collapse of the Northern Kingdom in the late 8th century BCE, Megiddo became the capital of the Neo-Assyrian province of Magiddû. The University of Chicago excavations exposed the settlement’s distinct orthogonal layout and administrative quarter. And yet, many questions concerning its chronology, material culture and population remained unsolved. In this paper I highlight the unique contributions of recent fieldwork conducted in the mound’s northwestern sector to the understanding of Megiddo under Assyrian, Egyptian and Babylonian rule.

Excavations in the southeastern sector of Megiddo revealed important finds that illuminate the material culture and history of the site in particular and northern Israel in general during the early days of the Northern Kingdom (Israel). This includes the appearance of public architecture and the revival of the commercial networks in the eastern Mediterranean.