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Tell Deir Alla. Archaeologists have sliced into this artificial hill—created by layer upon layer of earthcovered settlements—to reveal a prominent city from Biblical times. Sometime during the eighth century B.C. there may have been an important religious school here at Deir Alla in the Jordan Valley; in one building from that period excavators discovered a wall that had been inscribed in Aramaic with a religious text mentioning “Balaam, son of Beor,” the same Balaam famous from the story in the Book of Numbers, chapters 22–24.