032 033 Think small. No, think minute! Think something seemingly unimportant, but invaluable. Think seeds and weeds and grains—grown over 2,500 years ago. Our story takes place in the...

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...

052 Cyrus Gordon is a scholar of enormous range. His bibliography of more than 35 books and 350 articles is divided into over 20 categories, focusing largely on linguistics and social history. Among them are Aramaic-Syriac-Mandaic studies, art...

016 016 There can be little doubt that King David had a palace. The Bible tells us that Hiram of Tyre (who would later help King Solomon build the Temple) constructed the palace for David: “...

074 “Overwhelming” is the only word to describe the 1994 Annual Meeting,a where 7,500 scholars attended more than 700 presentations. Imagine jumping into a huge wave high above your head, extending for miles along the shore on either side...

025 If you have a Dead Sea Scroll for sale, you should get in touch with Martin Schøyen (pronounced Skoo-yen) in Oslo. He is a prime prospect. He already owns several Dead Sea Scroll fragments—making him one of the few individuals in the world (I...

020 020 For ten years, between 1968 and 1978, the area south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was intensively excavated by archaeologist Benjamin Mazar.1 His many spectacular discoveries...

034 Like so many archaeological projects, the excavation of the Phoenician tombs at Achziv was prompted by looters. In 1941, when Great Britain governed the land of Israel, the Mandatory Department of Antiquities assigned Dr. Immanuel Ben-Dor to...

053 I must confess at the outset that I should be disqualified from writing this piece because its subject, Professor Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, has charged me with playing a “pivotal role” in the forgeries alleged in the so-called...

038 As in Washington, so in Jerusalem: There are some sections you just don’t venture into. In Jerusalem one such section is the village of Silwan, on the eastern slope of the Kidron Valley opposite the City of David (the oldest inhabited part of...

028 028 028 Hershel Shanks: I have known each of you for many years. And I know that the Bible has been a central influence in your lives—...

054 William G. Dever, the world’s leading academic opponent of the term “Biblical archaeology,” has now declared the age of the “New Biblical Archaeology”—and his support of it. Dever, the excavator of the Solomonic gate at Biblical Gezer, former...

046 047 For nine years, I have written reviews of the Annual Meetinga as objectively as possible. This year, however, I admit to being prejudiced—prejudiced in favor of this year’s meeting...

050 The Middle East “peace process”—may it be thy will, O Lord—has raised two thorny archaeological issues. Both have recently been in the news. The first concerns archaeological finds recovered in territories taken in war and later ceded—or to...

024 Even before Nehemiah came from Babylonia to Jerusalem in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E., he knew that he wanted to rebuild the broken-down walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 1:3). When he arrived, he promptly made his famous night journey...

052 It is one of the most famous sites in Jerusalem—right up there after the Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall. And it is also one of the most exciting to visit—Hezekiah’s Tunnel. But is it really his? The...

030 I’ve known Bill Dever for a quarter century. I first met him when I knocked—unannounced—on the door of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem in 1972. Bill, who directed the institute, answered and graciously invited...

036 It is now clear that anti-Zionist political pressures in Syria are attempting to affect the scholarly interpretation of the Ebla tablets. The Syrians are furious that in the West the intense interest shown in this fantastic cache of tablets...

038 Yigal Shiloh, director of the City of David Excavations in Jerusalem from 1978 to 1985, died last November at the age of 50. Less than five months before his death, Shiloh was interviewed by BAR editor Hershel Shanks. In Part I of the...

022 021 Archaeological periods are not always easy to define; for example, we cannot gauge precisely when the Late Bronze Age turned into Iron Age I. Not so, however, with the Age of BAR. This...