025 Herculaneum and Pompeii were both destroyed by the same eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. For archaeologists, however, it must seem that they were leveled by different volcanoes entirely. Pompeii was smothered beneath a shallow blanket of...

066 When you look at a map of the Near East, you notice many place names that include as their element the word “tell.” You can find names beginning with “tell” in Israel, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. In Arabic and Hebrew the word “...

050 The first time I took my children on a dig, they were 13 and 11. Usually, you don’t find many children on a dig because there are no facilities for them and they might be out-of-place. Nevertheless, I thought they might be old enough to enjoy...

058 Some people think of archaeology—incorrectly—as a treasure hunt. Not many archaeologists are as lucky as Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb of King Tut with all its glorious treasures. More often than not, archaeologists find neither gold...

042 Many people do not realize that archaeology is destructive. Unlike experiments in physics or chemistry, which can be repeated in the lab, once a site has been excavated it cannot be re-excavated. The archaeological remains are gone forever...

067 “The remains of the city were found buried under a heavy layer of ash and destruction debris … ” “ … ovens and grinding installations were found in many of the rooms … ” “ … a large cemetery was discovered on a hill facing the tell on the...

073 “Walk about Zion … number her towers, consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels … ” (Psalms 48:12–13) What distinguished an ancient village or town from a city? One thing, perhaps the most important, was fortifications. Fortifying a...

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...

024 “I laid waste the large district of Judah and made the overbearing and proud Hezekiah, its king, bow in submission,” boasts Sennacherib, monarch of Assyria, in a preserved cuneiform inscription.1 “I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities: .....

How was the first woman created in Genesis 2? Was she made from the man’s rib or, as recently suggested in BAR, from his os baculum (penis bone)?

A third-century portrait of a woman drawing water from a well was uncovered at a church in Dura-Europos, Syria. While this was originally interpreted as the Biblical scene of the Samaritan woman who speaks with Jesus, further analysis suggests that it portrays the Annunciation—making this painting the earliest depiction of the Virgin Mary. But there are other candidates.