25 Giants

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The Giants of The Recent Past

Here are 20 excavators and scholars who dominated the field and who have died during BAR’s tenure (or, in a few cases, slightly before), together with five who are—thankfully—very much still with us. Our readers may have other selections. As usual, we can expect to hear from them.

William F. Albright

William F. Albright (1891–1971), the father of modern Biblical archaeology, was the field’s preeminent figure in the 20th century. His Tell Beit Mirsim excavation (1926–1932) established Palestinian pottery chronology, and his mastery of ancient Near Eastern languages and archaeological evidence and techniques as well as of the Biblical text was unequaled by anyone in his time or since. Given the increasing specialization among scholars, it is unlikely that any one person will ever again match Albright’s command of so many aspects of the field.

Yohanan Aharoni

Yohanan Aharoni (1919–1976) helped found the department of archaeology and Near Eastern studies at Tel Aviv University after defecting from Hebrew University over professional and personal disagreements with his longtime rival, Yigael Yadin. He championed a theory of Israelite origins based on a gradual, peaceful infiltration of the land rather than through quick military conquest, the theory favored by Yadin. At Tel Beersheba, Aharoni uncovered an impressive Iron Age Israelite city. Aharoni introduced the practice of dipping pottery sherds in water to bring out possible inscriptions, which led to his discovery of the Arad inscriptions. With codirector Ruth Amiran, he excavated an Israelite fortress at Arad in which he found an Israelite temple with a sacrificial altar, a holy of holies and cult objects.

Michael Avi-Yonah

Michael Avi-Yonah (1904–1974) fused his knowledge of archaeology and art history in studies that established the foundations of classical and Byzantine archaeology in Israel. He is remembered as a longtime editor of the Israel Exploration Journal and for his work on the scale model of Second Temple period Jerusalem on the grounds of the Holy Land Hotel in Jerusalem. As author and editor of well-regarded books, including the first English edition of the Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Avi-Yonah helped to make archaeology accessible to popular audiences.

Nahman Avigad

Nahman Avigad (1905–1992) is known especially for his meticulous excavation of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem from 1969 to 1983, where he uncovered Herodian mansions, the Cardo (or main street), a broad wall (27 feet high) that enclosed the city during the First Temple period and many other important finds. Unfortunately, he died without completing the final excavation report. Avigad was also Israel’s leading specialist in ancient Semitic inscriptions. At his death he left an almost completed manuscript, now published posthumously, of over 1,200 inscribed West Semitic seals.

Pesach Bar-Adon

Pesach Bar-Adon (1908–1985), a romantic adventurer and archaeologist, tended sheep on a kibbutz after emigrating to Palestine from Poland in 1925. He then lived for three years with a Bedouin tribe in Transjordan. He later served in the Haganah (Israel’s pre-State army) and studied archaeology at Hebrew University. He knew and understood the Judean wilderness like few of his contemporaries. Joining a massive exploration of caves near the Dead Sea with Yigael Yadin, Nahman Avigad and Yohanan Aharoni in 1960, Bar-Adon’s team uncovered hundreds of spectacular ivory and metal cult objects from the Chalcolithic period (4300–3300 B.C.), including crowns and standards.

Pierre Benoit

Pierre Benoit (1906–1987), a Dominican priest and an expert on the archaeology and topography of Jerusalem, taught at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem. From 1971 to 1987 he chaired the international publication committee charged with publishing the Dead Sea Scrolls. An early supporter of BAR, he was a member of our Editorial Advisory Board from the beginning of publication until his death.

Joseph Callaway

Joseph Callaway (1920–1988) excavated Ai and Radanna. His work at Ai, which the Bible describes as the second city conquered by Joshua (after Jericho), showed that there was no Canaanite city there when Joshua was thought to have led the Israelites into Canaan. His work, together with Kathleen Kenyon’s at Jericho, challenged the conquest account in the Bible. Callaway did not live to publish the results of his excavations, but his work reshaped the scholarly debate on the origins of the Israelites and how they came to occupy the land.

Moshe Dayan

Moshe Dayan (1915–1981), the flamboyant Israeli general, acquired a rare collection of pre-Biblical and Biblical artifacts in part by exploiting his military access to unexplored areas of the Biblical heartland (in violation of Israeli law). He would occasionally commandeer military helicopters and troops to assist his excavation efforts. His excavated objects, however, accounted for only about ten percent of his collection. The rest, including Egyptian-style anthropoid coffins and a life-sized head of an Ammonite king, he purchased from antiquities dealers and possibly from the looters themselves. At his death his widow sold the collection to the Israel Museum for $1 million. Although honored by most Israelis for his role in the establishment and defense of the State of Israel, Dayan’s tactics in amassing his antiquities collection have often been criticized by archaeologists.

Roland de Vaux

Roland de Vaux (1903–1971), a Dominican priest who was both a wide-ranging Biblical scholar and a careful excavator, dug for nine seasons (1946–1960) at Tell el-Far’ah (north), which he identified as Tirzah, the first capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. He also led the excavation of Qumran (1951–1959), where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Like many in his field, however, he was never able to produce a final report on any of his excavations.

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Moshe Dothan

Moshe Dothan (1919–1999) helped shape Israel’s archaeological policy from the 1960s until his retirement in 1988 as head of the Excavations and Surveys Division of the Department of Antiquities. Best known for his excavations at Ashdod and Akko, he later taught at Haifa University. At Hammath Tiberias, near the Sea of Galilee, he uncovered the remains of four ancient synagogues, one above the other, dating from the fourth to the eleventh century A.D. One of them contained a mosaic that featured not only a Torah ark but also the Greek god Helios within a zodiac.

Claire Epstein

Claire Epstein (1911–2000) almost single-handedly brought to light a Chalcolithic culture that flourished on the Golan Heights. As a devoted amateur archaeologist in the 1950s, she participated in several digs before obtaining her Ph.D. under Kathleen Kenyon in 1966. After Israel captured the Golan in 1967, she and her Druze assistants began exploring the area on foot from her home near the Sea of Galilee. Her recently published study, which won the prestigious Irene Levi-Sala book prize, describes more than 25 Chalcolithic sites in the Golan.

Nelson Glueck

Nelson Glueck (1900–1971), an archaeologist, Bible scholar and rabbi, studied under Albright. During World War II, he worked for Allied intelligence to locate water sources in the event of a Nazi invasion of Palestine. He is best known for his surveys of 1,500 sites in the Negev and on both sides of the Jordan, which are still useful today. He excavated the Iron Age site of Tell el-Kheleifeh, which he identified as Solomon’s seaport, Etzion-Geber. When he was shown to have been wrong, he graciously admitted his error. In 1947 Glueck was elected president of Hebrew Union College, and in 1960 he established HUC’s Biblical and Archaeological School in Jerusalem, which is today named after him.

Jonas Greenfield

Jonas Greenfield (1926–1995), an outstanding scholar of Semitic languages with particular expertise in Aramaic texts, published scores of articles in a wide range of fields, including Dead Sea Scroll studies, Ugaritic literature of the Late Bronze Age, apocryphal literature of the Hellenistic period and Biblical Hebrew. Greenfield drew on his broad knowledge to illuminate for the first time the proper meanings of numerous Biblical words and idioms, legal clauses and poetic themes.

Siegfried H. Horn

Siegfried H. Horn (1906–1993), a Seventh Day Adventist minister and missionary, excavated at Shechem, in the West Bank, and directed the Andrews University dig at Tell Hesban (Biblical Heshbon), Jordan. At Hesban, Horn was led to the same conclusion Callaway and Kenyon had reached at Ai and at Jericho: There was no city there at the time that Joshua supposedly conquered it.

Dame Kathleen Kenyon

Dame Kathleen Kenyon (1906–1978) introduced to Near Eastern archaeology the Wheeler-Kenyon stratigraphic method, in which excavators dig relatively small squares and trenches and concentrate on layers of deposits and their relationship to structures and small finds. She has been called the master—or mistress—of stratigraphy. After digging at Samaria, she attacked the great mound of Jericho. Her Jericho excavation shook Biblical archaeology, however, when she concluded that there was no walled city there when Joshua is thought to have conquered it. In the 1960s she excavated in the City of David, the oldest section of Jerusalem. Both Jericho and Jerusalem were unpublished at her death.

Benjamin Mazar

Benjamin Mazar (1906–1995) learned the fundamentals of stratigraphy and pottery typology at Albright’s excavation at Tell Beit Mirsim. For his doctoral dissertation, he explored the ancient synagogues in the Galilee. He led an excavation at Ein Gedi, near the Dead Sea, that uncovered a Chalcolithic temple. He later became a visionary president of the struggling Hebrew University. In 1967 he began a decade-long dig just south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, unearthing tombs from the First Temple period, a massive Second Temple period staircase, Byzantine residences and several Umayyad palaces. Mazar encouraged his many students to use, as he did, a broad range of disciplines in their work, including history, historical geography, Biblical archaeology, epigraphy and ancient oriental languages.

James Bennett Pritchard

James Bennett Pritchard (1909–1997) led a major excavation at Biblical Gibeon, whose identification he firmly established. He is best known as editor of Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ANET), a frequently cited collection of ancient inscriptions and texts in numerous ancient languages, all translated into English by other scholars. Pritchard also led important excavations at Tell es-Sa‘ideyeh in Jordan and at Sarepta in Lebanon.

Yigal Shiloh

Yigal Shiloh (1937–1987) directed the City of David excavations in Jerusalem (1978–1985). Shiloh’s finds included a hoard of bullae (seal impressions) with the names of officials mentioned in the Bible. He also cleared to its base the Stepped-Stone Structure, the largest Iron Age structure in Israel, which survives to a height of five stories. He received the prestigious Jerusalem Prize just one week before his untimely death from cancer at age 50.

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G. Ernest Wright

G. Ernest Wright (1909–1974), like Albright (under whom he studied), combined archaeological theory and practice with Biblical interpretation. In 1938, Wright started Biblical Archaeologist, which aimed to interpret archaeological results for nonspecialists. It is still published today under the name Near Eastern Archaeology. Wright led digs at Shechem, Gezer and Idalion, Cyprus, and is noted for bringing specialists from other sciences into excavations. From his twin positions as professor at Harvard and president of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Wright influenced virtually all Americans involved in Near Eastern archaeology and Biblical studies.

Yigael Yadin

Yigael Yadin (1917–1984) was Israel’s most celebrated Biblical archaeologist. He led major excavations at Hazor, which he believed was the Biblical city that Joshua burned, and, most famously, at Masada, where he unearthed Herod’s luxurious palace and the hideout of the Zealots during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–73 A.D.). He also led a team that systematically explored Judean wilderness caves, finding packets of letters, some of which had been written by rebel leader Bar-Kokhba during the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (132–135 A.D.). Yadin was also instrumental in Israel’s acquisition of four intact Dead Sea Scrolls. His last and perhaps greatest scholarly publication was a magisterial three-volume edition of the Temple Scroll, the latest and the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls to come to light. A brilliant synthesizer, as well as a charismatic personality, he was a unique leader of Israel’s archaeological community.

Anakim—The Living Giants

Ruth Amiran

Ruth Amiran (b. 1914) will always be associated with Arad, where she directed excavations of the large Canaanite city. She is also the author of the classic work, Pottery of the Holy Land, which spans the Neolithic period (5500–4500 B.C.) through Iron Age II (1000–587 B.C.).

Avraham Biran

Avraham Biran (b. 1909), the grand old man of Israeli archaeology, continues at 91 to direct the dig at Tel Dan, Israel’s longest-running excavation (33 years). In 1993 his team discovered an inscribed stone slab that refers to “the House of David,” the first extra-Biblical reference to the Davidic dynasty. After a stint as director of Israel’s Department of Antiquities, he became director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, a post he still holds. He is also president of the Israel Exploration Society.

Frank Moore Cross

Frank Moore Cross (b. 1921), a renowned Semitic epigrapher and a member of the original Dead Sea Scrolls editorial team, is, in the opinion of many, the world’s leading Bible scholar. In what is probably the most frequently cited article in Dead Sea Scroll literature, he established a typology of scripts that allows the hundreds of manuscripts to be dated. His Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies has become a classic and was recently reprinted. His two books of essays, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic and From Epic to Canon have had a major influence on Biblical scholarship. Cross has served as epigrapher on many excavations, including, most recently, Ashkelon.

Trude Dothan

Trude Dothan (b. 1923) is the world’s leading authority on the Philistines and is the author of the seminal study, The Philistines and Their Material Culture. She codirected (with Seymour Gitin) the excavation of the Philistine city of Ekron, known from the Bible as a city of the Philistine Pentapolis. She has led excavations at Athienou in Cyprus and at Deir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip, where she unearthed Egyptian-style coffins similar to those purchased on the antiquities market by Moshe Dayan.

David Noel Freedman

David Noel Freedman (b. 1922) has been called the greatest editor since R, the Redactor who edited the final text of the Pentateuch. With Albright, he founded the distinguished Anchor Bible Series of scholarly commentaries. Freedman now serves as general editor and has also written several volumes in the series. His often brilliant insights are acknowledged in hundreds of footnotes. He has also served as editor of Biblical Archaeologist. He coedited the Leviticus text from the Dead Sea Scrolls and served as editor in chief of the landmark Anchor Bible Dictionary (1992). In his roles as author, coauthor, editor or consultant, he has vastly influenced scholarship on the Bible and Biblical archaeology.

The Giants of The Recent Past

Here are 20 excavators and scholars who dominated the field and who have died during BAR’s tenure (or, in a few cases, slightly before), together with five who are—thankfully—very much still with us. Our readers may have other selections. As usual, we can expect to hear from them.