COURTESY GABRIEL VOLCOVICH, TOWER OF DAVID JERUSALEM MUSEUM

An exceptionally long and well-preserved section of Jerusalem’s Hasmonean-period “First Wall” was uncovered in December beneath the Tower of David Museum complex by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Dating to the late second century BCE, the wall measures more than 130 feet in length, about 16 feet in width, and is estimated to have been more than 30 feet tall. Constructed from massive stones with characteristic chiseled bosses, it was a key part of Jerusalem’s formidable defensive system during the Hasmonean period (141–37 BCE), a time of Jewish political independence and urban expansion.

Ancient sources, especially the first-century CE historian Flavius Josephus, describe the “First Wall”—the innermost of Jerusalem’s three defensive walls during the Second Temple period—as nearly impregnable and lined with 60 towers. Archaeologists, however, have determined that the wall was deliberately disassembled. One possible explanation is that the wall was destroyed under a peace agreement between the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus I and the Seleucid king Antiochus VII Sidetes following the latter’s siege of Jerusalem (134–132 BCE), as suggested by nearby Hellenistic catapult stones and arrowheads. Alternatively, Herod the Great (37–4 BCE) may have razed the wall to distance himself from the Hasmonean legacy.

US LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PUBLIC DOMAIN, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Who performed the first scientific survey of the Dead Sea?

Answer: William F. Lynch

In 1848, U.S. Navy Lieutenant William F. Lynch led the first fully documented scientific expedition down the Jordan River and across the Dead Sea. After transporting sectional metal boats overland from the Mediterranean coast, Lynch and his crew charted depths, measured temperatures, recorded elevations, and mapped the shoreline with striking accuracy. His soundings of the Dead Sea remained standard for more than a century, and his published Narrative of the United States’ Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (Bentley, 1850) became a bestseller in both America and Europe. Framed in the tradition of Lewis and Clark and other government-backed explorers, Lynch’s expedition reflected scientific ambition as well as a strong sense of American national pride.

Lynch was driven by both science and faith. He believed careful measurement could illuminate the biblical world and saw no conflict between scripture and empirical observation. In many ways, his expedition marked a turning point: The Holy Land was no longer only a place of pilgrimage and devotion, but an object of systematic scientific inquiry.

Lynch’s expedition undeniably advanced geographic and archaeological knowledge of the region. Yet his legacy is complicated. He defended slavery in his writings and later served as an officer in the Confederate Navy during the American Civil War (he is pictured here wearing his Confederate uniform). His Narrative contains reflections on race and slavery that reveal the hierarchies he accepted and helped sustain.

How Rabbis Became Experts

An important scholarly debate about the emergence of the rabbinic movement in Roman Palestine concerns when and how the rabbis came to have authority over the general Jewish populace. Composed around 200 CE, the Mishnah (a written collection of Jewish oral law) offers the earliest evidence of rabbinic activity. Regulating everything from prayer to holy day practices to agricultural laws and property disputes, the Mishnah appears to assume a Jewish populace that accepts the rabbis’ authority to regulate their lives.

A traditionalist scholarly narrative takes the evidence of the Mishnah at face value and asserts that the rabbis emerge in the aftermath of the Temple’s destruction (c. 70 CE), already fully vested with political and religious authority. According to this historical reconstruction, the Mishnah’s legislative voice reflects a social reality wherein the Jewish populace regards the rabbis as their legitimate national and religious leaders.

Against this understanding, a minimalist position has emerged that holds that, aside from the Mishnah’s confident tone, little else supports the idea that the rabbis held sway over broad swathes of the Jewish population. At slightly more than 200 members, the entirety of the rabbinic movement did not reach a critical mass from which to wield influence. Furthermore, Jewish towns and villages in Palestine offer little material evidence of rabbinic oversight. Pagan gods feature prominently in the public architecture and coinage associated with Jewish towns, suggesting a complete disregard for rabbinic norms of piety. In addition, synagogue inscriptions and decorations provide no clear evidence of rabbinic influence or leadership. Ultimately, the minimalists assert that the Mishnah (and other normative rabbinic texts) projects an aspirational, rather than achieved, vision of rabbinic authority.

Krista Dalton’s new book steps into the gap between these two narratives. Dalton introduces the framework of “rabbinic expertise” to finesse a middle path between the fully realized rabbinic authority envisioned by traditionalists and the near total absence of rabbinic influence posited by minimalists. Expertise, Dalton explains, is a type of influence and position that results from complex social negotiations. It is not guaranteed by one’s social standing, nor does it flow automatically by virtue of possessing specialized knowledge. As a socially negotiated phenomenon, expertise is played out between the audience and performers of specialized knowledge.

Illustrating how and where these social negotiations occurred, Dalton offers the dinner party (the Roman convivium) as one such site. At lavish parties, wealthy donor hosts provided their invited rabbinic guests with an occasion to perform their expertise, for example, by discussing a Torah ruling. Dalton explains that the rabbi’s expert status resulted not only from his intellectual knowledge about the Torah, prodigious though it may have been. Rather, the rabbi gained prestige through the dinner’s socially negotiated interactions between host and guests.

Interestingly, the host also benefited when he provided the rabbinic guest with a platform from which to enact expertise. The host’s benefit did not derive from his ability to understand or follow the technical details of the rabbi’s intellectual work, which Dalton characterizes as a kind of elitist “grammarian piety.” Nor was his appreciation of the rabbi necessarily expressed in his acceding to the rabbi’s normative rulings (e.g., in the Mishnah). Rather, the donor enhanced his status by showcasing the rabbi as someone with whom he was affiliated.

Dalton further observes the conflicts and tensions that exercised the rabbis in their bids to gain and maintain social standing through connections to the donor class. For example, though the rabbis depended on the validation supplied by donors’ recognition of their expertise, they simultaneously struggled to maintain autonomy from the whims of funders and to protect the integrity of their specialized domains of knowledge. As I read this section of the book, I found myself reflecting on the fact that contemporary university professors and researchers face similar challenges trying to legitimize their work when they seek financial support from external sources. Such academics may frame their work in a manner that appeals to the values of funders, but they may also resent the funders’ expectations of reciprocity and interpose a boundary between their work and donor influence.

So, much like modern academics, ancient rabbis gained and maintained expertise not only by participating in intellectual exchange but also by embedding their intellectual prowess in a larger social performance supported by donor networks. That dependency brought its own set of complications. Though the precise content of rabbinic expertise (e.g., knowledge of Torah and halakhic rulings) may have remained inaccessible to the donor class, wealthy donors created the platform that produced rabbinic expertise. Ironically, the rabbis could not have achieved their authority without the support of wealthy, non-rabbinic donors who may have had little vested interest in the technical details of rabbinic teachings.

Bringing textual, historical, and material culture analysis to bear on this significant historical question, Dalton offers a convincing model of how the ancient rabbis achieved positions of social influence. Thinking about expertise as a socially negotiated phenomenon sheds light on a puzzle that has long exercised scholars.

EMIL ALADJEM / ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY

Archaeologists in Jerusalem’s Davidson Archaeological Park have uncovered an extraordinary lead pendant decorated with a seven-branched menorah on both sides, dating to the late Byzantine period (sixth–early seventh centuries CE). Found in the rubble of a building later buried under Umayyad construction, the pendant is one of only two known lead menorah pendants in the world.

Laboratory analysis shows it is nearly pure lead, a material often used for amulets in this time. The pendant’s small size, loop for wearing, and prominent menorah imagery suggest it was intended for personal devotion and protection. Its double-sided design high-lights the central role of the menorah as a symbol of Jewish faith and connection to the Jerusalem Temple, even centuries after its destruction.

The pendant reflects personal Jewish devotion during the Byzantine period, a time when Jerusalem was under Christian governance and written sources suggest Jews were barred from the city. Yet the artifact shows that Jewish individuals—perhaps as merchants, officials, or clandestine pilgrims—still accessed the holy city. The pendant stands as a tangible reminder that faith, memory, and connection to the Temple endured even amid imperial restrictions.

PHOTO FROM BAS ARCHIVE

The distinguished Israeli archaeologist Gabriel (“Gaby”) Barkay passed away on January 11, at the age of 81. Born in Budapest in 1944, he survived the Holocaust as an infant and later immigrated to Israel. He devoted his life to uncovering the layers of history beneath the Holy Land, with particular interests in burial customs, art, and epigraphy.

A professor and lecturer at institutions including Bar-Ilan University and Jerusalem University College, Barkay became a leading voice in biblical archaeology. He received numerous honors, among them the Jerusalem Prize for Archaeological Research and the Yakir Yerushalayim award, and was widely lauded as an influential figure in both scholarly and popular circles. Beyond academia, he routinely engaged the public’s interest in archaeology—including writing many articles for BAR—and even trained tour guides, sparking a spirit of discovery in so many.

Barkay’s most celebrated discovery came in 1979 at the Ketef Hinnom burial site near Jerusalem, where he uncovered two tiny silver scroll amulets inscribed with a version of the Priestly Benediction: “The Lord bless you and keep you…” (Numbers 6:24–26). Dating to around 600 BCE, these amulets—bearing the name of the Israelite God Yahweh—are among the earliest known biblical texts ever found. They predate the Dead Sea Scrolls and confirm that parts of the Hebrew Bible were already in circulation during the time of the kingdom of Judah.

Barkay’s work embodied patient, meticulous fieldwork, from documenting tombs to cofounding the Temple Mount Sifting Project. After building renovations on the Temple Mount (or Noble Sanctuary) dumped 9,000 tons of excavated earth into the Kidron Valley, Barkay and Zachi Dvira recovered the discarded material and organized volunteers to sift through it. Their efforts rescued thousands of artifacts that testify to the history and archaeology of this sacred site.

Selected Contributions to BAR

• “Relics in the Rubble,” November/December 2016
• “Who Was Buried in the Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter?” January/February 2013
• “The Riches of Ketef Hinnom,” Jul/Aug/Sep/Oct 2009
• “Royal Palace, Royal Portrait?” September/October 2006
• “Mounds of Mystery,” May/June 2003
• “The Garden Tomb: Was Jesus Buried Here?” March/April 1986

GLENN J. CORBETT, BAS

The exceedingly well preserved Terrace Houses in the city of Ephesus, on the west coast of modern Turkey, contain ancient private apartments well suited to deepening our understanding of the cultural and religious context of the early Christian movement. Their initial construction dates to the reign of Tiberius (14–37 CE), just a couple of decades before Paul’s missionary activity in the city. Due to their position on a steep hillside, they are preserved to the full height of the first floor and sometimes even into the second story.

One of the excavated structures, Terrace House 2, is something like a condominium or apartment house containing six separate two- or three-story apartments (“units”), each of which would have housed an extended family and its enslaved workers. Among the artifacts found in these units are many objects that reflect religious activity, such as statuettes, reliefs, incense burners, lamps, and small altars. These artifacts are predominantly found in zones of the houses that evoke passage, transition, or even danger, such as doorways, staircases, bedrooms, latrines, wells, and kitchens. Many of them were discovered in association with small wall niches, being found either still within the niches or on the floor below them.

The niches in which these objects were kept functioned as shrines and were permanent features of the houses, like doors and windows—sometimes renovated, but rarely abandoned. A survey of the excavation reports for Units 2, 4, and 7 published by the excavation team of the Austrian Archaeological Institute suggests that such niches were prevalent in the Terrace Houses, present in 35 to 50 percent of the ground floor rooms of the preserved apartments. In addition, more than half of the niches are preserved at a height several feet above floor level. Excepting sites such as Ostia and Pompeii, preservation of house walls to this height is rare, so this makes the niches from the Terrace Houses especially precious for what they tell us about domestic religious activity.

Some of the objects in the niches were surprisingly enduring. Many of them were installed when the houses were first built, and remained in their places for decades or even centuries as more or less fixed elements of the house. In one of the units, a marble relief of a man on horseback (see below) was found still in place in a niche in the wall of an interior courtyard at the foot of a staircase. The relief is set back within its niche, forming a ledge that allowed members of the family to leave offerings in front of the hero.

The relief dates to the Hellenistic period, which makes it at least a generation older than the initial construction of the house in which it stood. It was never moved during the long history of this unit—which lasted about 250 years before the house was finally destroyed in an earthquake—and the niche never went out of use. The fact that the relief was older than the house may indicate that it was a legacy possession belonging to an ancestor of the family who lived there.

SONIA HALLIDAY PHOTO LIBRARY / ALAMY

In another unit, excavators found three similar reliefs, each of them showing a man reclining at a banquet. Like the relief of the equestrian hero, one of them was found still in place in a wall niche, while the other two had fallen on the floor beneath other niches. Small banquet reliefs such as these were very common in this part of Asia Minor. The two rooms in which the reliefs were found were near the entrance to the unit, an area of the house in which one commonly finds religious objects. The niches allowed the placement of offerings or lamps, and an incense burner was found on the floor of the room. One wall was decorated with a painted bust of a man as well as a painting of a snake, a motif also found on the reliefs themselves.

These banquet reliefs also date to the Hellenistic period, from the mid-second century BCE. They were around 400 years old when the apartment was destroyed, since they were already a century or more old when the Terrace Houses were built. Their presence in the unit lasted well beyond the span of several human lifetimes.

In an exceptionally large niche in yet another unit, archaeologists found busts of Tiberius, the emperor in power when the house was built, and his mother Livia. They were installed at the time of the unit’s initial construction, in a room facing the interior courtyard. A marble offering table and an altar, both found in situ in the courtyard, indicate that Tiberius and Livia received worship here. Their gaze was directed toward the altar, on which small animals could be sacrificed, and toward the marble table in front of it, on which would be displayed bloodless offerings, such as flowers, incense, and wine.

The prevalence of small niche shrines throughout these apartments must be taken into account in assessing domestic worship in early Christianity. Using private houses as centers for religious activity was clearly already a well-established practice when Paul arrived in Ephesus. The ancient houses used by Paul’s communities were not empty canvases. They were already occupied by many divine entities, in specific locations throughout the house dedicated to their worship, with statues, reliefs, altars, and incense burners. And the sacred images themselves were an enduring presence, sometimes living in their niches for hundreds of years, present before the birth and after the death of most of the inhabitants of the houses. They watched over the families of these houses as they came and went, generation after generation, century after century.

What would happen when one of these families converted to Christianity? Some may have simply allowed the traditional gods, heroes, and ancestors to remain in their places in the house, continuing to receive honor alongside the new God. Paul himself does not seem to advocate this, however, praising his followers for turning “away from statues to the living god” (1 Thessalonians 1:9, my translation), which is a very concrete turn of phrase. The conversion of the household might then have involved the alteration of the physical structure and its many locations for worship. “Turning away from statues” could mean their literal removal, a sort of decommissioning that allowed for the worship of a God who tolerated no rivals.

MOHAMMED SABER / EPA-EFE / SHUTTERSTOCK

Across an area only about half the size of Manhattan, the Gaza Strip features hundreds of archaeological and heritage sites, ranging in date from prehistoric times to the British Mandate. Indeed, as one of the few harbors along the southern Levantine coast, Gaza was a center of commerce and exchange for thousands of years, remembered in the Bible and ancient sources as one of the leading Philistine cities and then, during the Roman period, as a critical commercial hub that connected the Roman East with the wider Mediterranean world.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Gaza’s rich archaeological heritage has been among the many casualties of the Gaza war, which has brought seemingly endless suffering and despair to so many. In the wake of the October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, which killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and saw hundreds of others taken captive, more than 72,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza, with many more injured, often severely. By some estimates, nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been destroyed, leading to massive displacement of its more than 2 million residents into temporary camps.

Official reports place the number of damaged or destroyed religious, historical, and heritage sites at more than 160, though local monitoring groups believe the number to be much higher. Among these are some of the most important and recognizable sites in the territory. Gaza’s Omari Mosque, first built in the early seventh century to honor one of the prophet Muhammad’s successors, was severely damaged by airstrikes early in the war and is now mostly rubble. Like so many of the region’s sacred sites, the ancient mosque was built over and incorporated the remains of an earlier Byzantine-period church, an even earlier Roman sanctuary, and, by some accounts, was even the spot where the biblical judge Samson famously toppled the Philistine temple to Dagon (Judges 16:23–30).

Roman and early Christian sites have suffered as well. The ruins of the fifth-century Jabalia church, which features some of Gaza’s most beautiful Byzantine mosaics, was damaged when airstrikes on a nearby building caused its visitor center and shelter to collapse. The fourth-century Monastery of St. Hilarion, one of the region’s oldest monastic complexes, was added to UNESCO’s list of endangered World Heritage sites, while Gaza’s ancient harbor, Anthedon, was severely damaged from shelling and bulldozing. In addition, the storage facility that held thousands of artifacts excavated from both sites had to be hurriedly evacuated before an airstrike destroyed the building late last year.

Another major casualty was Qasr al-Basha, a 13th-century Mamluk fortress that was used by subsequent imperial powers to administer the port city, including the Ottomans and even the French commander Napoleon Bonaparte. Repurposed in recent years as one of Gaza’s principal museums, the building was struck by rockets and then later bulldozed, destroying or burying beneath the rubble nearly 20,000 artifacts and objects.

With a fragile ceasefire in place since October, Palestinians have begun to clear the rubble and assess the damage. But even with the support of international aid groups, who have promised millions in cleanup and restoration efforts, the recovery is just beginning. Many threatened sites remain inaccessible due to military restrictions, hazardous debris fields, and the sprawling camps that have been set up to shelter the displaced. And with some in the international community promising to rebuild Gaza as the “Riviera of the Middle East,” even more threats to Gaza’s heritage may be yet to come.

COURTESY THE LEON LEVY DEAD SCROLLS DIGITAL LIBRARY, ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY, PHOTOGRAPHER SHAI HALEVI

A few of the Dead Sea Scrolls feature mysterious scripts known as Cryptic A and B. These scripts use signs and symbols that were not part of any known writing system, making texts deliberately difficult to read. Cryptic A was deciphered in 1955. Surviving in only two manuscripts and a handful of fragments, Cryptic B has long resisted interpretation—until recently.

Scholar Emmanuel Oliveiro of the University of Groningen applied a method inspired by the Cryptic A breakthrough: He treated Cryptic B as a monographic substitution cipher, where each Hebrew or Aramaic letter is replaced by a unique symbol. By comparing recurring patterns to common words in the Hebrew Bible and Qumran texts, Oliveiro identified symbols used in the word ysr’l (“Israel”) as the first key breakthrough.

The anchor letters provided by “Israel” enabled Oliveiro to work outward, testing patterns against formulaic phrases typical of biblical and Qumran texts. He then tentatively identified words such as “grave,” “Judah,” “Elohim,” and “wicked.” The deciphered content is not groundbreaking; rather, it features vocabulary consistent with the prophetic and eschatological themes found in other documents from Qumran. Cryptic B thus appears to have functioned more as a marker of insider status among the scribes than as a means of communicating novel messages.

Some experts view the decipherment as plausible but not fully confirmed, given the scarcity of well-preserved manuscripts. Still, Oliveiro’s work represents the most significant advance in understanding these enigmatic texts in decades.

COURTESY PHOTO BY THE US SUPREME COURT

1. Athens, Greece
2. The Hague, Netherlands
3. Oxford, United Kingdom
4. Washington, DC
5. Rome, Italy

Answer: (4) Washington, DC

The outside of the United States Supreme Court building is lavishly adorned with elaborate reliefs that pertain to bedrock American legal principles. Over the main entrance on the west side of the building, an inscription reads, “Equal Justice Under Law.” The West Pediment is decorated with reliefs that depict the great lawgivers of the past, such as Hammurabi, Demosthenes, and Cicero, as well as human figures personifying the authority of law and other fundamental concepts.

Perhaps less familiar, however, are the reliefs on the opposite side of the building. Centered atop the East Pediment, over the inscription “Justice the Guardian of Liberty,” sits Moses, the great lawgiver of the Hebrew Bible. The figures flanking him are particularly intriguing: On his right stands Confucius (d. 479 BCE), the paragon of Chinese philosophy; and on his left is Solon (d. 560 BCE), renowned lawmaker and philosopher of ancient Athens.

The East Pediment sculptures were designed by Hermon A. MacNeil and built between 1932 and 1934. Writing to the Supreme Court Building Commission, MacNeil described his choice of the pediment’s central figures as appropriately “derived from the East,” identifying Moses, Confucius, and Solon as representatives of the fundamental laws and precepts of three great eastern civilizations.

© PHILIPPE MAILLARD / COURTESY INSTITUT DU MONDE ARABE

Through August 23, 2026
Arab World Institute
Paris, France
imarabe.org

In an opportunity of a lifetime, summer visitors to Paris can marvel at the long and rich history of Byblos, an ancient city 25 miles north of present-day Beirut on the coast of Lebanon. Titled Byblos: Cité Millénaire du Liban, or Byblos: Lebanon’s Millennial City, an exhibition at the Arab World Institute tells an unparalleled story of this great archaeological and historical site. Developed in collaboration with Lebanon’s Directorate General of Antiquities, it was originally scheduled to open in 2024 but had to be postponed due to the volatile geopolitical situation.

Some 9,000 years ago, Byblos emerged as a small fishing settlement, before it transformed into one of the first urban centers of the eastern Mediterranean and then a powerful Phoenician city-state. Linking the Levantine coast with Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the broader Mediterranean, Byblos became a crucial hub for maritime trade and cultural exchange. In the Greco-Roman period, the city was so famous for the trade in papyrus that sheets of this writing material were called biblia and, in turn, it even gave the Bible its name.

The wealth of Bronze and Iron Age Byblos is reflected in the splendid artifacts uncovered during the past century of archaeological exploration. Among the more than 400 artifacts on display is this figurine representing a god seated on a throne, with his right hand raised in a gesture of blessing. It is made of bronze and dates to the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1200 BCE).