For 30 years, archaeologists have been excavating et-Tell in the Lower Golan, east of the Jordan Rift Valley. See why they believe their site is biblical Bethsaida.

025 A small shovel started it all. In the summer of 1996, at the excavation of the Galilee site of Bethsaida (which we codirect), we uncovered a small bronze incense shovel. Others like it were used in the imperial cult throughout the Roman...

038 The scene was more like a moonscape than a landscape. Starlight highlighted the dark gaping holes of robbed-out tombs and collapsed underground chambers. These tombs and chambers were the reason we were here. They belonged to a necropolis in...

040 Fifteen years ago, I (Arthur Segal) sat in my study reading an article in BAR by Vassilios Tzaferis about Sussita, a dramatic site overlooking the Sea of Galilee that had been destroyed in a violent earthquake in 749 C.E. and had never been...

050 051 It is unlikely that any archaeological work will be undertaken at Baalbek in the near future. This imposing site lies about 50 miles east-northeast of Beirut (ancient Berytus), between...

045 The Arab historians and geographers who accompanied the Muslim invaders of northwestern Africa in the middle of the seventh century C.E. said it was like a large island—surrounded on the north and east by the Mediterranean Sea, on the west by...

044 Bethsaida is the town that disappeared. Soon after playing a prominent role in the Gospels—Bethsaida is mentioned more often in the New Testament than any city except Jerusalem and Capernaum—this fishing village on the Sea of Galilee simply...