024 Every year millions of Christian pilgrims converge on the Vatican, the heart of Catholic Christendom, and its vast basilica bearing the apostle Peter’s name. The church, visitors are told, marks the site of Peter’s tomb. According to long-...

046 Nahman Avigad was born in the Galician town of Zawalow (then in Austria, now in the Ukraine), on September 25, 1905, the son of Isak and Perl Reiss. He died at age 86 in Jerusalem on January 28, 1992. His childhood and schooling took place in...

050 050 Are you single and looking for your true love? Someone thought the conference I recently attended at Oxford was the answer: Radiocarbon dating was the way to find the perfect match...

Excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa have uncovered a second city gate from the 10th century B.C.E., the time of King David’s reign. No other site from this period has more than one gate. What do Qeiyafa’s two city gates tell us about the Kingdom of Judah in David’s time?

Biblical Hazor was the largest and most important royal city in the southern Levant in the second millennium B.C.E. Its continuing exploration has brought to light impressive architecture and unique objects. But, one major discovery remains elusive: Where are Hazor’s cuneiform archives?

The Jewish dynasty of Hasmoneans ruled Judea for more than a century in the Late Hellenistic period. Their palaces, excavated in Jericho, reveal a great deal about how they lived. But what do the palace architecture and pottery tell us about the delicate balance the Hasmonean rulers tried to strike when projecting the power, wealth, and authority—both secular and religious—of their independent Jewish state to their Jewish subjects and foreign dignitaries?

048 We tend to think of ancient objects as either useful or beautiful—or both. A bit of text scratched on a clay tablet is used to communicate or record information; a finely filigreed golden earring is thought to be lovely; an elegant stairway,...

044 To most people, Yemen is an obscure part of southwest Arabia that appears to have escaped major currents of history. Yemen’s greatest claim to fame is that it is known as the birthplace of the queen of Sheba and that it was once the center of...

021 In the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (283–246 B.C.), Rabbath Ammon was renamed Philadelphia. Despite the name change, the city’s inhabitants remained largely Semitic and probably were never extensively Hellenized. When Arab Muslims...

032 In 1160 B.C., Shutruk-Nahhunte, King of Elam in the mountains east of Mesopotamia, campaigned triumphantly through Agade, Kish, Sippar, and other towns of ancient Babylonia. He returned to his capital at Susa with a rich haul of loot, which...

044 045 Of Jerusalem’s beauty during the Herodian period, the Talmuda tells us: “Whoever has not seen Jerusalem in its splendor has never seen a lovely city.1 Lest this seem a parochial...

060 Any archaeological discussion of the Temple or its location on the Temple Mount invariably includes a statement to the effect that it would, of course, be unthinkable to conduct any archaeological excavations on the Temple Mount itself. We do...

029 The history of archaeology is filled with accidental discoveries. With all our scientific tools and methodologies, chance continues to be a major component of our success. So it was that we discovered the final resting place of the Caiaphas...

032 Slowly it emerged from the ground: a beautiful, 8-inch-long bronze incense shovel, the prize find of the 1996 excavations at Bethsaida, near the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The shovel lay in a first-century C.E. refuse pit. Just...

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is revered as the site of Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection. BAR readers get a look at the church’s history and tradition in light of new archaeological research.

Since its discovery, most scholars have argued that Jerusalem’s Tomb of the Kings belonged to Queen Helena of Adiabene. But was she the original commissioner of the tomb? Our author presents new archaeological clues that suggest the ownership history of this impressive monument is far more complex than originally thought.

Jerusalem was home to numerous Diaspora Jewish communities before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. From texts to tombs, evidence of these communities abounds. See what it reveals about the city’s cultural, economic, and religious life and diversity.

012 Early in the afternoon of October 26, 1975 a fire struck the cramped, book-filled office of Father Albert Jamme at Catholic University in the nation’s capital. The fire probably started from neon tubes in a ceiling light fixture, but...

052 North American Indians left few monuments of their civilization. Early European explorers and settlers in North America found no stone cities or defense walls or water systems or monumental structures built by the native Americans. The only...

054 In a recent issue of BAR, archaeologists Gabriel Barkay and Amos Kloner described two magnificent burial caves from the First Temple period located just a few hundred yards north of Jerusalem’s old city (“Jerusalem Tombs From the Days of the...