044 Stylistic and architectural similarities between the cave of Machpelah enclosure at Hebron and the Temple Mount enclosure in Jerusalem have been clearly demonstrated by Nancy Miller in “Patriarchal Burial Site Explored for First Time in 700...

022 Thirty-one pages is a slim product for five years of excavation—even if it is only a preliminary report. So it has been said of the text of Yigal Shiloh’s reporta on his excavations in the City of David, the oldest inhabited area of Jerusalem...

044 045 When God said to Abraham lech lecha: “Get thee out of thy country … unto the land that I will show thee” (Genesis 12:1), the Lord acted as the first known guide. Abraham then “...

060 Do you want to do more than just read about the archaeology of the Holy Land? Do the pictures in BAR make you wish you had a trowel and a brush and a chance to expose a pot, a wall or an inscribed sherd that’s been buried for 3,000 years? If...

044 From ancient literary sources we know that tens of thousands of people were crucified in the Roman Empire. In Palestine alone, the figure ran into the thousands. Yet until 1968 not a single victim of this horrifying method of execution had...

026 Elie Borowski survived his personal losses and the collective tragedy of Jews in World War II with a belief that humankind can “best achieve ethical and spiritual fulfillment by becoming conscious of its historical origins.” Borowski’s...

070 In “The Case of the Gilded Staircase,” BAR 10:05, Professor Morton Smith attempts to prove that the Temple envisioned by the Essenes had a gilded staircase to reach the roof of the Temple where members of the Dead Sea sect worshipped the sun...

018 Eliechish, his brothers called him. Elie the dreamer. He does not deny it; he is a dreamer. Today he is 71 years old and still dreaming. One of Elie Borowski’s dreams is 20 years old. Whether it will ever be realized is still an open question...

040 Underwater archaeology, no longer in its infancy, is rapidly becoming a youth. A current exhibition by the Israel Museum at Jerusalem’s Rockefeller Museum of recent finds recovered from Israel’s coast illustrates this growth. As Israel was an...

042 043 No one knows who invented the oil lamp or exactly when it happened. Did this idea of how to control fire evolve slowly, or was it a sudden inspiration that entered the mind of an...

026 Ma‘arat Ha-Machpelah, the cave of Machpelah, where the Bible says Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are buried, is one of the best-known but least-explored sites in the entire Holy Land. For centuries Jewish, Moslem and Christian...

026 To appreciate fully the significance of the unique altar and cult center we are excavating on Mt. Ebal, one must first understand the archaeological context in which these discoveries were made. We found the altar and cult center, not in the...

054 In 1837, Edward King, Viscount of Kingsborough, sat languishing in a Dublin debtor’s prison, sick and impoverished. He had spent his entire fortune and was suffering from typhus. Within a month, he would die in prison at the age of 42. He had...

066 BAR’s January/February issue traditionally contains a catalogue of exciting opportunities for inexperienced as well as experienced volunteers who want to participate in archaeological excavations. An article describing a volunteer’s...

073 The party was in full swing, the wine flowed freely, and everyone felt on top of the world. There was no power on earth to rival Babylon, and no gods in heaven to equal hers. This is the setting of the famous fifth chapter of the Book of...

058 On the surface, the radical redating of the Exodus and the Israelite conquest of Canaan proposed by Emmanuel Anati in the accompanying article, “Has Mt. Sinai Been Found?” is very attractive. It solves problems, there is no doubt. The...

026 027 The date was March 17, 1967, a Friday. A Dutch expedition led by Professor Henk J. Franken of the University of Leiden was excavating a mound named Tell Deir Alla in the middle Jordan...

042 I first came upon the mountain in 1955, when I was conducting an archaeological survey in the Negev on behalf of the Israel Department of Antiquities. My specific interest was the virtually unknown rock art of the area—figures and signs...

058 The problem of Ai is simply stated. The Bible tells us that an important battle in the Israelite conquest of Canaan occurred at Ai. After being defeated by the Canaanites of Ai once, the Israelites launched a second attack on Ai; this time...

056 An enormous number of Iron Age fortresses have been uncovered in the Central Negev, especially in recent years. The question is, what are they doing here? The answer depends in large part on who built them. And to determine who built them, we...