Image Details
Photo courtesy of the Collection Archaeological Staff Officer for Judea, Samaria and Gaza/Photo: Israel Museum; inset by Israel Museum/Restoration Laboratories
ON THE COVER: King David, like Orpheus, plays a lyre and enchants a lion, a serpent and a deer in this restored mosaic from a sixth-century Gaza synagogue. (Inset shows mosaic before restoration.) The Bible describes David as “ruddy-cheeked, bright-eyed and handsome” (1 Samuel 16:12). But restorers at the Israel Museum had only black-and-white photos taken before David’s head was destroyed, so they could not be sure what colors were used in the original. Using the latest in visual computer technology, however, they were able to restore the lines of the destroyed face, writes Israel Museum conservator Connie Kestenbaum Green in “King David’s Head From Gaza Synagogue Restored.”