074 Sometimes an archaeological discovery permits us to glimpse the soul of an ancient man—to “see” one person who loved, hated, inspired fear or respect. When the discovery is a work of art, fashioned by a gifted pair of unknown hands thousands...

044 In the mid-1970s, a number of limestone ossuariesa came onto the Israeli antiquities market, the result of illegal digging. An investigation conducted by the Israel Department of Antiquities located the source of the ossuaries in the Jericho...

066 Anyone assessing Tom Crotser’s claim that he has found the original Ark of the Covenant in all its gilded glory must surely exercise caution in light of Crotser’s additional claims to having previously located the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Ark,...

We came upon it suddenly, in the very first year of our excavations. At that time we had not yet excavated a single house that had witnessed the catastrophe of 70 A.D., when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. We were still emotionally unprepared for the impressions and associations raised by the...

030 031 For Gezer there is still time. But not much. The stones are still there, but gradually the walls are deteriorating. Soon they may tumble under the assault of winter rains and summer...

054 Everyone knows what a mummy is. We’ve all seen them in museums or seen photographs of them in newspapers and magazines. A mummy is a dead body, preserved to last through eternity. The most famous mummies come from Egypt; they are the bodies...

044 Rain rarely falls in the desert regions of Israel—that is a commonplace assumption. The Sinai, Negev and the Judean wilderness are so dry that inscriptional materials, such as scrolls, have survived for millennia. But “rarely” is not “never...

028 Three sites in the Bible—and perhaps foura—are called Aroer (pronounced Ah-roe-air). We call one Aroer of the Negev. The other two—or three—are east of the Jordan River. Aroer may mean “crest of a mountain.” This very general...

016 On July 22, 1982, BAR editor Hershel Shanks visited Yigael Yadin in his home in Jerusalem. Shanks spoke for several hours with Yadin, who had recently returned to full time archaeology after one of the many discursions that have marked his...

056 The death of Claude Schaeffer of cancer at the age of 84 in his home at St. Germain-en-Laye, France, on August 25, 1982, marks the end of an epoch in the archaeology of the Near East. He was the last of those titanic figures whose...

062 For 40 years Claude Schaeffer directed excavations at Ras Shamra in Syria. There he and his colleagues uncovered the remains of the long lost city of Ugarit, a Late Bronze Age metropolis in early Biblical times. And among the ruins of Ugarit...

060 You’ve been digging in the hot sun since dawn. Your muscles ache. Suddenly, your trowel strikes something hard. You call your area supervisor to watch as you gently brush away more dirt until an entire jar handle appears. The supervisor...