028 Large-scale illegal construction on the Temple Mount and wholesale dumping of earth in the nearby Kidron Valley resumed this spring. The construction, which is being undertaken by the Waqf, the Muslim religious trust responsible for the Mount...

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...

016 For almost two decades and still continuing, Israeli archaeologist Beno Rothenberg has investigated the Timna Valley—called in Arabic wadi Mene’iyeh and known to thousands of visitors as “King Solomon’s Mines”...

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...

The Canaanite city of Gezer was brutally destroyed at the very end of the Late Bronze Age. Explore the vivid archaeological evidence for the city’s destruction and discover why the devastation might be attributed to Pharaoh Merneptah, who infamously claimed to have conquered not only Gezer but also a people known as “Israel” in the late 13th century B.C.E.

033 Over 100 years ago Edward Palmer explored the Sinai desert and recorded his findings in a still fascinating book entitled The Desert of the Exodus. At a site called by the Arabs Kuntillat, Palmer found some architectural remains which...

040 As in years past summer is the time for old hands and new adventurers—young and not so young—to join archaeological excavations in the Holy Land. There are many opportunities in 1978, some of which offer academic credit for the...

040 041 Mount Vesuvius sleeps quietly today, overlooking the brilliant blue waters of the Bay of Naples. Yet over the millennia its eruptions have again and again destroyed (and sometimes...

007 On the last day of his 1975 season Professor Nachman Avigad of Hebrew University, digging in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, discovered four arrowheads buried in ashes at the base of a massive stone defense tower. The tower...

046 Elie Borowski impatiently thrusts aside questions about the cost of the Jerusalem Bible Lands Museum that will open on May 10, 1992. “It is unholy to the mission to speak about money. Just say it is nes min hashamayim (a miracle from...

022 Three recent books deal with the life of Moses and that epoch-making journey we call the Exodus. Although each is different from the other two, a reading of all three impresses one with how little, not how much, we really know. Two of these...

050 F. A. Klein was an Anglican minister, born in Alsace, who came to the Holy Land as a medical missionary in the mid-1800s. Although he lived in Jerusalem, he traveled widely on both sides of the Jordan, seeking to relieve pain and win converts...

060 The underground chambers were filled with the sounds of the crunching of small picks against the dirt floors and the thud of earth dumped into buckets. Voices of a dozen children and their parents accompanied warnings not to swing picks at...

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...

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...

028 In the deft hands of Jerusalem artist Yehudit Shadur, simple sheets of paper are cut into intricate designs blending the poetic words and images of the Bible. A leading reviver of the traditional Jewish folk art of paper-cutting, Shadur...

044 045 This is the story mostly of what will be rather than what has been. It is a report on what we hope to do more than what we have already done. It tells of the tantalizing clues that keep...

001 For at least 10,000 years, on the plain of the Great Rift, bordered by the mountains of Judea on the west and, on the other side of the Jordan River, the mountains of Moab, there has been a city at Jericho. The earliest settlement at Jericho...

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...