024 BAR recently published a fascinating article by Gabriel Barkay reporting on his excavation of a small rolled silver amulet, dating from the seventh or sixth century B.C. When the amulet was unrolled, it was found to contain the tetragrammaton...

082 Rebecca S. Knudeson of Carlton, Oregon, is the winner of BAR’s Biblical Archaeology Essay Contest. Her prize is a $1,500 traveling fellowship to Jerusalem. Knudeson, a former elementary school teacher, was chosen from among more than 80...

033 On August 1, 1960, I received a letter from a man who identified himself as a Virginia clergyman. The letter stated that the writer was in a position to negotiate the sale of “important, authentic discoveries of Dead Sea Scrolls.” Obviously,...

012 For a week in April, all Jerusalem was aglitter with archaeology. The occasion was the International Congress on Biblical Archaeology marking the 70th anniversary of the Israel Exploration Society. At the opening session, the Acting President...

046 Jerusalem, April 22, 1983 Hershel Shanks: Ami, in the United States no one, or almost no one, has heard of you. You’re one of the younger generation of Israeli archaeologists. And the reason I want to talk to you about yourself and your work...

050 Yigael Yadin’s magnificent edition of the Temple Scroll1—the latest-to-be-published and the longest of all the Dead Sea Scrolls—has been available to scholars in Hebrew for over four years and last year became available in a three-volume...

070 You can dig at Tell el-‘Umeiri in Jordan, a tell that has never been dug. You can explore David’s Jerusalem, where several bullae or letter seals bearing names of First Temple period Jerusalem residents have been discovered. You can don scuba...

052 In an article in the September/October 1981 issue of BAR (“The Remarkable Discoveries at Tel Dan,” BAR 07:05), John Laughlin identified an unusual installation at Tel Dan, in northern Israel, as an Israelite cult installation associated with...

074 On January 29, 1935, during the third season of excavations at Tell ed-Duweir, a site thought to be Biblical Lachish, archaeologists discovered a collection of 18 ostraca, or inscribed potsherds. The ostraca had been covered by a thick layer...

066 The forger has struck again—this time he managed to fool some of the world’s foremost scholars. Although at least some of his forgeries have now been discovered, the forger himself remains at large. And the problem of archaeological forgeries...

024 Israel’s most celebrated Biblical archaeologist, Yigael Yadin, died of a heart attack on June 28 at the age of 67. The world of Biblical archaeology has been impoverished. Yadin was struck down at his weekend home in Michmoret on the...

032 For two seasons in 1961 and 1962 (the second season lasted eight days into 1963) Moshe Dothan, then Deputy Director of the Israeli Department of Antiquities and Museums, directed the excavation of an ancient synagogue at a site known as...

062 “It was different then,” the archaeologist said. “Today there are institutes and technicians, engineers, directors and subdirectors!” “Back then, we had nothing,” he said. “But it was a wonderful period. A time of life. A time of courage; no...

048 In the late eighth century B.C., Lachish was the second most important city in the kingdom of Judah. Only Jerusalem surpassed it. At that time, Assyria had risen to unprecedented power, dominating the known world. On the eve of Sennacherib’s...

030 031 “Tophet” is a Biblical word. It is the name of a place that was on the south side of ancient Jerusalem in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, where the Israelites sacrificed their children by...

068 069 Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope, granddaughter of William Pitt and daughter of the third Earl of Stanhope, was the first person who ever intentionally excavated an ancient artifact in the...

027 028 We were driving south, along the Gulf of Suez, heading for our excavation site when our jeep broke down. Fortunately, it happened on a paved road, before we turned onto the desert track...

042 New inscriptions from two different sites have reopened the debate about the meaning of asherah, a term often used in the Bible. Is it—or she—a goddess? Is it a holy place? Or perhaps a sacred tree? Or a pole? Or possibly a grove of trees?...

064 One of the greatest Biblical archaeologists of the 20th century, William Foxwell Albright, left an unfinished book manuscript when he died in 1971. But this is no secret to his friends, students and admirers. BAR readers were told of the...

022 According to the Greek biographer Eunapius, the second most beautiful bath complex in the entire Roman Empire during the fourth century A.D. was located in, of all places, Palestine—at a site known as Hammat Gader.1 Hammat Gader lies just...