036 Dan Gill’s new understanding of Jerusalem’s underground water installations, including Hezekiah’s famous tunnel, raises once more the question of the significance of the monumental inscription found in the tunnel recording the meeting of the...

029 As any dig volunteer will tell you, there is nothing like the adventure of going on your first dig. Of course, digging is itself exciting, but there’s also the adventure that comes along with being immersed in a different country and culture...

Foot-shaped sites have been found throughout the Jordan Valley, including an extraordinary cultic site on Mt. Ebal. Is this the Israelite altar described in Joshua 8? Were these foot-shaped enclosures built by the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land?

After the Assyrian conquest of the northern Kingdom of Israel and deportation of its people in 722 B.C.E., who lived in the land? A large building complex at Tel Rekhesh hints that the new inhabitants came from Mesopotamia.

018 Ashkelon The Bible frequently mentions the Philistine port city of Ashkelon. Samson went there in a rage and killed 30 men (Judges 14:19); David lamented “Proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon” when he learned of the death of Saul and...

037 038 The magnitude and extent of archaeological activity in Jerusalem since the city was reunited in 1967 are unparalleled in the city’s long history of research. Since then, we have seen...

027 In the Book of Revelation, a prophet named John experiences a vision of the risen Christ, who asks him to convey a message to each of the seven Christian congregations of Asia Minor—Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia...

018 At Herodium, the isolated mountain palace-fortress complex originally created by Herod the Great in the midst of the Judean desert,1 an underground tunnel system dating to the Bar-Kokhba revolt, the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (132–135...

024 025 A careful study of the archaeology of Ephesus will, I believe, deepen our understanding of one of the visions in the Revelation of John, perhaps the most difficult book of the New...

020 Among the most controversial issues in both Biblical archaeology and Biblical studies is the nature of Jerusalem in the tenth century B.C.E. Why the tenth century? Because in the Bible that is the time of Israel’s glory, the time of King...

003 Father Charles Couäsnonwas already a practicing architect when he entered the Dominican Order of Preachers. Since 1954, he has been actively engaged in the restoration work of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, aimed at...

032 Byzantine Jerusalem was Christian Jerusalem—par excellence. The Byzantine era began when the Emperor Constantine—soon to convert to Christianity—became master of Palestine in 324 A.D. It did not end in Jerusalem until...

056 Nothing brings together the scholar and the crackpot like a pyramid. Built more than 4,000 years ago, Egypt’s pyramids are among archaeology’s perennial fascinations—huge, geometric structures with mummified bodies inside. Books about the...

For more than a century after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.E., his heirs, the Seleucids in Syria and Mesopotamia and the Ptolemies in Egypt, fought for control of the portion of southern Israel known as Judea. Early in the second century B.C.E., a Jew named Joseph stepped into the...

023 In the summer of 1975 a Spanish gypsy named Virgilio Romero Moreno visited the museum in Jaén, 250 miles south of Madrid, and offered to sell several limestone sculptures. After some negotiation, the museum bought the pieces, which had...

036 037 For about 5,000 years, Egypt’s Southwest Desert, west of Lake Nasser, has been a hellish, lifeless, hyper-arid region of barren rock and sand. But that wasn’t always so. Archaeologists...

012 The ancient Persian empire, founded by Cyrus the Great (559–530 B.C.), was on the verge of chaos. In 525 B.C. Cyrus’s son and successor, Cambyses II, led a campaign in Egypt to expand the empire’s territories. Just three years later, however...

034 My profession is medicine, but my passion is Egyptology. Whenever I travel, I visit museums and used-book stores. So it was that I found myself in a modest little bookshop in Seattle. “I do have something that’s sort of on Egypt,” the...

037 BAR readers know Sepphoris well. In the BAR 14:01 issue the mosaic known as the Mona Lisa of the Galilee appeared on the cover and was the prize find of the 1987 season.a More recently, in the BAR 18:03 issue, Sepphoris was the chief exhibit...

051 Recent attacks on the historicity of the Exodus raise the question of whether or not a text prepared long after the event is likely to be historically accurate. For it is undoubtedly true that the text of Exodus was prepared centuries after...