In excerpt from A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, British Egyptologist Amelia Edwards (1831–1892) describes an excavation in the Necropolis of Thebes, when the Governor of Luxor invited Edwards and her colleagues to witness the opening of a tomb.
Walter Zanger is a well-know Israeli tour guide who is often featured on Israeli TV. Zanger explains why seemingly pagan zodiac mosaics have been found in a number of ancient Jewish synagogues.
How did the Christmas festival originate, and how did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus’ birthday? Read about how one of the Western world’s most celebrated holidays came to be.
Who was the first person to truly recognize Jesus as the Messiah and understand the implications? Biblical scholar Ben Witherington III takes a close look at the account given in Luke, and sheds some light on what the Biblical narrative has to say about who was the first to recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
Peeling back the layers of the traditional Christmas story reveals a startlingly simple and beautiful insight into the story of the nativity as related in the Gospel of Luke.
For more than two thousand years, Jezebel has been saddled with a reputation as the bad girl of the Bible, the wickedest of women. This ancient queen has been denounced as a murderer, prostitute and enemy of God, and her name has been adopted for lingerie lines and World War II missiles alike. But just how depraved was Jezebel?
What explains Ashkelon’s 700 partial or complete dog carcasses from the fifth century B.C., the largest animal cemetery of any kind known in the ancient world? Author Lawrence Stager examines the archaeological evidence.
During the first half of the second millennium B.C., Askhelon was one of the largest and richest seaports in the Mediterranean, with probably 15,000 inhabitants. Author Lawrence Stager discusses how a silver calf excavated at Ashkelon illuminates the period when the Canaanites and Philistines ruled the city.
Is it possible that the earliest existing picture of a scene from the Bible also includes the philosophers Socrates and Aristotle as onlookers? In the building known as the House of the Physician in Pompeii, excavators found a wall painting clearly depicting King Solomon seated on a raised tribunal and flanked by two counselors. Author Theodore Feder believes these two counselors to be Socrates and Aristotle.
Author Harvey Minkoff explains how errors crept into the Bible and what can be done to correct them. Because of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Bible translators now have an important new body of evidence to help them decide how best to settle problems in the text—evidence not available to earlier generations of scholars.
Excavator Eilat Mazar describes finding what she believes to be King David’s Palace in the northern part of the most ancient area of Jerusalem, known as the City of David.
British archaeologist and explorer Sir Charles Fellows (1799–1860) discovered the ruins of a number of ancient cities in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), including Xanthus, the ancient capital of Lycia, which he excavated under the sponsorship of the British Museum but he funded personally. On his way to Lycia, Fellows spent three days at Aphrodisias, which he meticulously documented in an illustrated report.
Many people assume that Jesus’ Last Supper was a Seder, a ritual meal held in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Passover. And indeed, according to the Gospel of Mark 14:12, Jesus prepared for the Last Supper on the “first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb.” If Jesus and his disciples gathered together to eat soon after the Passover lamb was sacrificed, what else could they possibly have eaten if not the Passover meal? Was the Last Supper a Passover Seder? Most likely, it was not.
BAS Dig Scholarship winner and Pennsylvania State University student Eric Welch reports from Tell es-Safi/Gath on his fourth season helping to excavate the ancient Philistine city.
Join BAS Dig Scholarhip winner Caroline Tully on her archaeological adventure as she digs through the layers of time in the Philistine city that is believed to be the site of Biblical Gath.
The legend of the magi has fired the imagination of Christians since the earliest times. In art, the adoration of the magi appeared earlier and far more frequently than any other scene of Jesus’ birth and infancy, including images of the babe in a manger.
Who was the first person to truly recognize Jesus as the Messiah and understand the implications? Biblical scholar Ben Witherington III takes a close look at the account given in Luke, and sheds some light on what the Biblical narrative has to say about who was the first to recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
Peeling back the layers of the traditional Christmas story reveals a startlingly simple and beautiful insight into the story of the nativity as related in the Gospel of Luke.
How did the Christmas festival originate, and how did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus’ birthday? Read about look at how one of the Western world’s most celebrated holidays came to be.
Few symbols have a tradition as long and as rich as the dove. Read about what it represents, how its use has been shared, adapted and reinterpreted across cultures and millennia to suit changing belief systems.
Literary evidence tells us that hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in Asia Minor in the first century C.E. However, only two confirmed synagogues have been found: the large one in Sardis and this second one in Priene.
What does a musical passage in the Book of Daniel: “the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick,” tell us about the orchestra that Nebuchadnezzar assembled?
For every tourist who visits the ancient city of Petra in modern day Jordan, there is one breathtaking moment that captures all of the grandeur and mystery of this city carved in stone.
Perched atop a windswept mountain along the Turkish coastline and gazing proudly—almost defiantly—over the azure Aegean Sea sit the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Pergamon.
Sodom and Gomorrah. They are perhaps the most infamous cities of the Bible, but where does the Bible locate these legendary dens of iniquity, and does any trace of them still exist?
A trend has developed recently in the archaeological establishment: Ignore all unprovenanced artifacts. This has become a hotly-debated topic among archaeologists, and prompted us to take a look at several unprovenanced artifacts that have contributed to our understanding of the Biblical world.
When an ancient Israelite got a raging bellyache, what did she do? Where could she—or he—go for help? Both the Bible and archaeology indicate that numerous options were available.
Few people are familiar with the Biblical figure Nehemiah, and yet he was instrumental in the rebuilding and reestablishment of Jerusalem in the fifth century B.C. following the Babylonian exile.
Living in the Greco-Roman world, early Christians were able to draw from a set of rich artistic paradigms when they set out to depict their stories and beliefs in decorative contexts. This often led to the assimilation of well-established pagan artistic styles and images into early Christian art.
3,000 years ago, when alphabetic writing had just begun to spread across the masses of the ancient Near East, written words were far more than idle marks meant simply to be read. Words were repositories of power, physical vessels that gave material reality to one’s innermost thoughts and even the soul itself.
A new excavation in the hills of ancient Judah has revealed an amazing discovery: a fortified city dating to King David’s reign. View photos from the Khirbet Qeiyafa excavations, and read about the other exciting finds that have been uncovered there.
Our article explaining how the two teams of tunnelers who dug the sinuous path of Hezekiah’s Tunnel from opposite ends managed to connect (“Sound Proof: How Hezekiah’s Tunnelers Met,” BAR, September/October 2008) produced many interesting reader responses.
Every summer, people of all ages and from all walks of life volunteer to participate on archaeological digs throughout Israel, Jordan and other parts of the Mediterranean world. We share the dig experiences of three such volunteers, all of whom were selected as 2008 BAS Dig Scholarship winners.
People in antiquity were no less concerned about the prevention and cure of maladies than they are now, however, and entire cults, sanctuaries and professions dedicated to health dotted the spiritual, physical and professional landscapes of the ancient world. So what exactly did ancient cultures do to combat disease and injury, and did these methods have any real basis in science as we know it today? The answers may surprise you.
The Explorations in Antiquity Museum in LaGrange, Georgia, allows visitors to learn about the world of Jesus, and the environment that shaped his experience and teachings.
The works of Josephus are often referred to in the ongoing debate over whether or not the Essenes were the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Read what Josephus himself has to say about this fascinating ancient Jewish sect.
What is kosher law, and how did it develop? Biblical texts and archaeological evidence offer some insight into this ancient and modern Jewish practice.
