PHOTO BY EGMONT STRIGL / IMAGEBROKER.COM / ALAMY

Today, dams serve a wide range of purposes: diverting rivers and streams, creating reservoirs, generating hydroelectricity, and so on. However, dams are far from a modern invention, with the world’s oldest known dams dating back nearly six millennia.

The Great Dam of Marib in western Yemen, which dates to the early first millennium BCE or before, had a dual role: It protected the capital city of the ancient South Arabian kingdom of Saba (biblical Sheba) from flash flooding and also collected and channeled those precious waters into an extensive system of irrigated fields. The original dam, which spanned the Wadi Adana, is estimated to have been around 13 feet tall and nearly 2,000 feet long. Later modifications, however, raised the dam’s height to nearly 50 feet. The dam stood for more than a thousand years, which allowed Saba to become a flourishing center of trade, culture, and commerce. The Quran (34:15–17) even alludes to its final breach and abandonment in the sixth century CE.

About two millennia earlier, in the 17th century BCE, King Abi-esuh of Babylon, the grandson of Hammurabi, built a similar dam across the mighty Tigris River, but for a very different purpose. Although the dam was used to redirect waters to several Babylonian-held settlements along the Euphrates River, its primary purpose was to divert water away from southern Babylonia, which had been conquered by the First Sealand Dynasty. As such, the Tigris dam is one of the earliest examples of a dam being used to deprive a neighboring people of water resources. The dam ultimately proved ineffective, however; around a century later, the Sealand Dynasty took control of Babylon.

ERICH LESSING / ART RESOURCE, NY

Jerusalem’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription is traditionally interpreted as a commemorative text celebrating the completion of the project.^a However, placing an inscription inside a dark tunnel, where nobody could read it, just makes no sense! Let me propose a better interpretation.

The City of David’s main water source was the Gihon Spring, located outside the eastern city wall near the floor of the Kidron Valley. To bring its water to the Siloam Pool at the other side of the city, the king of Judah (most likely Hezekiah) had a 1,750-foot-long tunnel dug through the rocky hill in the late eighth century BCE. Two groups of tunnelers worked simultaneously from both ends, until they finally met. A remarkable Hebrew inscription was incised into the tunnel wall about 20 feet from the southern exit.

The inscription is not a simple graffito; it took considerable time, skill, and effort to produce, yet it was completely hidden from sight. Its text is fairly clear, and here is what the main part says (restored sections in brackets):

While [the stonecutters were swinging] the axe one towards the other, and while there were still three cubits to be cut th[rough, there was hear]d the sound of one calling to the other, for there was a zdh in the rock on the right and on the [le]ft.

And on the day of the cutting-through, the stonecutters were hewing each towards the other, axe upon [a]xe. And the water flowed from the outlet to the pool for one thousand [and t]wo hundred cubits. And one hu[nd]red cubits was the height of the rock over the heads of the stonecutter[s].

The common interpretation is that the text refers to the dramatic moment when the two groups of stonecutters heard each other for the first time and realized they were about to meet, thereby completing the project successfully. But this interpretation has no support in the text, which describes no such event. What it actually says is that, as the groups were working toward one another and getting close to finishing, suddenly someone cried out because of a zdh (more on this word later) in the rock. This raises several questions.

First, we would expect a commemorative inscription to be placed at the meeting place itself. However, that place, which can be identified by a series of zigzag cutting marks made as the miners groped their way toward each other, is far from the location of the inscription.

Second, the inscription describes a distance of about 5 feet between the groups. However, scientific studies have shown that, in this type of rock, hearing distance is substantially longer. This means that the event described is very likely not the first time they heard each other.

Third and perhaps most problematic, the common interpretation fails to address the main puzzle: An inscription publicly commemorating such an important event should have been placed in a prominent public place, not hidden inside the tunnel where nobody could see it.

Let us first try to identify the inscription’s authors, for whom there are these clues: (1) a vivid, firsthand experience of the events, and (2) close attention to technical details, such as working tools and measurements. Therefore, there is broad consensus that the inscription was authored by the stonecutters themselves.

The question of audience is more complicated, as there are no clear clues in the text. The solution may come from an unexpected source: linguistic research on dialogue. Studies have shown that the content of the speaker’s contributions reflects their beliefs about what the addressee already knows or wishes to know. Applying these results to the inscription, we must conclude that the audience already knows the background about the tunnel project and doesn’t need to be told who commissioned it, for what purpose, or when it was carried out. Also, the inscription clearly aims to tell the audience how the project was concluded, including the technical details.

Therefore, we seek to identify an audience who: (1) knew the background of the project; (2) wanted to know how it ended; (3) but didn’t; and (4) was able to read an inscription hidden in a dark and inaccessible place. What kind of audience could satisfy all four criteria? I propose the audience was one or more of the workers who didn’t manage to see the end of the project, because they were killed in an accident before it was completed.

In Iron Age Judah, secondary burial was a common practice, in which the remains of the deceased were first placed in a temporary tomb, to be moved later to a permanent resting place.¹ In many cultures—ancient and modern—where secondary burial is practiced, the dead remain in the temporary tomb for up to several years. During this time, the dead are believed to roam the places where they used to live and work; they are in a sad and dismal state and need comforting. As such, the authors of the Siloam Tunnel Inscription may have hoped that the dead workers who roamed the tunnel would read the inscription and be comforted by its message.

What sort of accident could have killed these workers? Most researchers agree that, before they started digging, the workers would have had to block the flow from the Gihon Spring to keep it from flooding the tunnel. If this blockage collapsed prematurely, the water would rage into the tunnel and endanger the lives of the workers.

Does the inscription contain any reference to such an event? One clue may be the mysterious word zdh. It is often interpreted as a fissure in the rock, which enabled the groups to hear each other. But there is no linguistic evidence for this, and no such fissure has been found.

The word zdh does not occur in the Hebrew Bible, but its probable root (z-w-d/z-y-d) appears several times. This root literally refers to a liquid that is overflowing. It is metaphorically extended to the sense of breaking boundaries, that is, doing evil deeds. Interestingly, in Psalm 124:4–5, this root applies to water, where both literal and metaphorical interpretations are appropriate: “The water overwhelmed us … the overflowing/evil water went over our souls.” It seems likely, therefore, that zdh in the inscription refers to a sudden and disastrous overflow of water, which fits perfectly with the accident proposed here.

With all this in mind, the text is addressed to one or more workers who died in an accident while digging the tunnel. The inscription tells them that the sound they had heard just before they died was their comrades crying out a warning about the incoming water. Nevertheless, their death was not in vain, as the work was completed successfully.

The Siloam Tunnel Inscription was not meant to commemorate the construction of the tunnel. It was an act of kindness, performed by a group of common people who wanted to offer some consolation to their tragically deceased friends.

COURTESY AMERICAN CENTER OF RESEARCH

Across more than four decades, Patricia Maynor Bikai worked on archaeological projects in Lebanon, Egypt, Cyprus, and most intensely in Jordan. When her husband Pierre Bikai became Director of the American Center of Research (ACOR) in Amman in 1991, Patricia took on many roles, including Associate Director.

Patricia’s career began in Lebanon, where she meticulously documented the complex ceramic sequence from the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre. This led to her publication The Pottery of Tyre (Aris & Phillips, 1978), which remains a standard scholarly reference.

At ACOR, the Bikais undertook myriad excavation, restoration, and publication projects, especially in Petra. Patricia spearheaded the comprehensive volume The Petra Church (ACOR, 2001), which published the excavations from the famous sixth-century church uncovered by ACOR in the early 1990s. Patricia also edited the first of five volumes on The Petra Papyri (ACOR, 2002), which deal with the fragile scrolls found inside the church that revealed details about daily life in Byzantine Petra.

In 1999, she turned her attention to the hillside above the Petra Church and there excavated the North Ridge Church and the nearby Blue Chapel. In the early 2000s, she initiated a project in Bayda and uncovered an amazing cache of architectural sculptures that adorned a Nabatean banqueting hall.

When I moved to Jordan in 2006 to become Pierre’s successor, I was well aware of all that Patricia had accomplished. I will always admire her tenacity and passion for archaeology but equally her abiding loyalty to friends and family.

NATHAN STEINMEYER / BAS

For generations, archaeologists and biblical scholars alike have struggled with how to precisely date the Dead Sea Scrolls, perhaps the most important trove of documents ever discovered from the ancient world. Now, however, a new source of answers may be emerging. Using artificial intelligence (AI), a team of scholars has developed a model that can apply and cross-reference close paleographic analysis (which examines the shapes of letters) and radiocarbon dating on a scale not previously achievable, in order to arrive at secure dates for individual scrolls.

To train their AI model, which they named Enoch, the researchers supplied radiocarbon data from two dozen scrolls that came from four different locations in the Judean Desert. They then told the model which letter features to consider indicative of distinct styles. Using this information, Enoch developed a timeline of the development of letter forms that could then be cross-referenced with other scrolls to assign probable dates of authorship.

The results of their work on more than 130 scrolls were remarkable. According to Enoch, the scrolls analyzed were almost all significantly older than previously thought, with many dating before the earliest settlement at the site of Qumran in the second or first century BCE. Some scholars, however, urge caution in the acceptance of Enoch’s results; other historical clues, such as specific factors in the content of a given scroll, may require a revision of the AI-generated chronology. Nevertheless, the model is promising and, with refinement, likely will continue to deepen our understanding of how and when these documents were produced.

COURTESY AHMAD AL-JALLAD

Across the southern reaches of the Arabian Peninsula, enigmatic inscriptions in a variety of ancient pre-Islamic Arabian scripts pepper the landscape. In particular, the region of Dhofar in southern Oman is known for two such scripts, Dhofari 1 and the related Dhofari 2, discovered in the early 20th century. Painted on cave walls and carved into desert boulders, these previously undeciphered scripts, which date to more than 2,000 years ago, have lent themselves to a variety of speculative hypotheses, such as connections to ancient Arabian tribes mentioned in the Quran.

Now, that is all beginning to change. Epigrapher Ahmad Al-Jallad from the Ohio State University has managed to decipher the Dhofari 1 script. In examining the available inscriptions, Al-Jallad observed that three of them contained more than 20 separate letters without any repetitions. This would be highly unlikely if the texts recorded words that could be read sensibly, but it would make perfect sense if they instead recorded the Dhofari alphabet.

Treating these three inscriptions as abecedaries (lists of letters in alphabetical order), Al-Jallad conducted comparisons with other pre-Islamic Arabian scripts, relying on certain tell-tale similarities between Dhofari 1 and these other writing systems to confirm that the inscriptions did indeed approximate the traditional letter order evident in other contexts. The general correspondence enabled Al-Jallad to sort out specific cases where letters were uncertain or in an unexpected order, and the Dhofari 1 code was cracked.

Thanks to Al-Jallad’s pioneering work, many Dhofari 1 inscriptions have been identified as short prayers or apotropaic texts, while others are now understood to record personal names or simple graffiti such as “I was here.”

PATTI MCCONVILLE / ALAMY

1. Washington, DC
2. Alexandria, Egypt
3. Karnak, Egypt
4. New York City
5. Rome, Italy

Answer: (4) New York City

This ancient Egyptian obelisk currently stands in New York City’s Central Park, between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Great Lawn.

The pink granite monument comes from the quarries of Aswan in Upper Egypt, where it was cut under the warrior-king Thutmose III around 1445 BCE. Together with its identical twin, it was brought down the Nile to decorate the entrance to the Temple of the Sun in Heliopolis. In about 10 BCE, the first Roman emperor, Augustus, had both obelisks moved to Alexandria and erected in front of the Caesareum—a temple in honor of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar. During an earthquake in 1301, one of them toppled but didn’t break and was eventually taken to London in the 19th century.

The Ottoman viceroy of Egypt Ismail Pasha donated the standing obelisk to the United States at the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, though the obelisk didn’t reach New York until July 20, 1880. This followed the inauguration of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on March 30, and it was hoped that such an impressive monument would drive public interest in the museum. To enormous public excitement, the presentation ceremony was finally held on February 22, 1881.

The obelisk remains the oldest outdoor monument in New York City. Weighing about 200 tons, its shaft measures almost 70 feet from base to tip, and almost 8 feet across at the square base. All four sides are covered with engraved hieroglyphic inscriptions celebrating the achievements of Thutmose III and Ramesses II.

ELIYAHU YANAI, CITY OF DAVID

Within about 100 feet of Jerusalem’s Western Wall, a remarkable treasure has been discovered: a small fragment of a cuneiform inscription. The text is Neo-Assyrian and dates to the middle of the First Temple period, likely the eighth or seventh century BCE. Although it preserves only about 20 cuneiform signs, it appears to pertain to a delay in payment, possibly of a royal tax that was owed to Assyria by the kings of Judah.

The inscription appears to be from a bulla, a small piece of clay used to seal a more extensive document; this is suggested by how thin the clay is and by the impression of a string or cord on the back of the object. Bullae often bore a summary of the contents of the document they sealed.

Through laboratory analysis, archaeologists confirmed the clay itself came from the Assyrian heartland near the Tigris River. The fragmentary text mentions a due date on the first day of the month of Av, likely pertaining to a payment of some kind. It also mentions a chariot officer, possibly the very one responsible for conveying the enclosed message from Assyria to Jerusalem.

Scholars surmise that the original letter concerned a delay, whether intentional or not, in the payment of tribute during the period when Judah was a vassal of the Assyrian Empire. This would likely mean that the letter arrived during the reign of King Hezekiah, Manasseh, or Josiah; in fact, it might be connected specifically to Hezekiah’s tax revolt against Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:7).

COURTESY OF ISAC

The Megiddo ivories are one of the largest caches of Bronze Age decorative ivories ever found. Consisting of roughly 400 pieces, the ivories were discovered in a disordered heap in a storeroom of the city’s last Canaanite palace, dated to the 12th century BCE. Most scholars believe the ivories were heirlooms collected by several generations of Canaanite rulers before they were ultimately discarded during the city’s final days.

The hoard is remarkable for both its size and diversity. Among the Megiddo ivories are items that draw on Aegean, Hittite, and Mesopotamian styles and motifs, although most common are Egyptian-inspired pieces, such as this nearly 4-inch-tall depiction of a winged sphinx. The recumbent female figure is shown holding a large vessel between her hands and wears a flattened headpiece topped by a Levantine-style coiffure and a bouquet of lotus flowers.

Most of the ivories were discovered by the University of Chicago expedition to Megiddo, which began just over a hundred years ago in 1925. Today, the ivories are split between the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem and the ISAC Museum at the University of Chicago, which is exhibiting the ivories and other objects from Megiddo in a special exhibit, Megiddo: A City Unearthed, A Past Imagined, through March 15.

The Bible’s First Kings

The Stories of Saul, David, and Solomon are central to the biblical narrative of a transition from tribal governance to the United Monarchy in ancient Israel. The Bible recounts David rising out of the failed monarchy of Saul, fighting off the Philistines (first by killing Goliath), establishing Jerusalem as his capital, and then handing over the kingdom to Solomon, who builds the Temple. More than half of the Psalms are attributed to David, and it is through the line of David that the Messiah is promised. It is no wonder then that David is mentioned more frequently than any other person in the Bible—nearly 1,000 times.

This period of ancient Israel’s history, and its first kings, has become the most contested area of research over the past 40 years. It is into this quagmire of history, archaeology, and faith that archaeologist Avraham Faust and biblical scholar Zev Farber offer a new synthesis titled The Bible’s First Kings, which offers a dense but engaging discussion of the various biblical and archaeological issues.

After providing a brief overview of the biblical account of the United Monarchy in the book’s first chapter, the following two chapters enter the maze of biblical scholarship, reviewing the trajectory of modern scholarly skepticism that began with the rejection of the Bible’s patriarchal, exodus, and conquest traditions. Based largely in a scientific approach that rejected divine intervention in human history, scholars approached the past with methodological doubt and essentially demanded tangible evidence through archaeology and extrabiblical sources.

Indeed, by the 1980s, archaeological evidence traditionally associated with the United Monarchy began to be reinterpreted. By 1992, Philip R. Davies rejected the kingdom of David and Solomon because it “had not the faintest echo in the archaeological record—as yet.” Even after the phrase “House of David” was found inscribed on a stela from Tel Dan the following year (and, according to some scholars, on the previously discovered Mesha Stele as well), the die had been cast. Archaeology quickly took the driver’s seat in the debate.

The middle part of the book, therefore, focuses on the archaeology of the tenth century BCE, the period when Saul, David, and Solomon would have ruled. Here, the authors excel in leaving no stone unturned. They evaluate highland fortifications, examine the connections between the “pots and people” of Israel and Philistia, trace demographic trends across settlements in the Negev highlands, Gilead, and the northern Galilee, and discuss the accumulating evidence for tenth-century copper mining in Edom and Timna and their possible connection to the biblical “Solomon’s mines.” Ultimately, the authors answer the question of whether there is clear archaeological evidence for the United Monarchy with a “resounding yes” (p. 87).

In the book’s final part, the authors submit a proposal for a new paradigm, reflecting on the archaeological record and providing some creative interpretations. Much of their argument revolves around the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Judean Shephelah, where I codirected excavations with Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor more than 15 years ago.^a The authors agree with our conclusions that Qeiyafa (1) dates from the 11th to 10th centuries BCE; (2) has inscriptions written in paleo-Hebrew; and (3) was an Israelite construction. Yet they also argue that Qeiyafa was built when “the Shephelah was empty other than the six Canaanite villages” (p. 157), and that it was most likely occupied during the time of Saul, not David.

To their first point, data now suggest that the region was not, in fact, empty of Judahite towns. The authors could have bolstered their case—which does include discussions of contemporary sites, such as Khirbet al-Ra‘i, Beth Shemesh, Tel Burna, Tel Zayit, and Tel ‘Eton—by referring to our extensive survey of Khirbet Shuweikah (biblical Socoh) just across the Elah Valley, where we found pottery nearly identical to that from Qeiyafa.¹

As to their second point, while I agree that Saul could have built Qeiyafa, radiocarbon dates do not support the idea that it was destroyed before the reign of David. Furthermore, although dating Qeiyafa solely to the time of Saul supports their hypothesis that the Ishbaal inscription (found at the site in 2012) refers to Ishbosheth of the Bible, their idea that he was a usurper rather than Saul’s son is contradicted repeatedly in 2 Samuel (2:8–15; 3:7–8, 14; 4:1, 8).

There remains much more to engage the reader in this tour de force defense of the United Monarchy of Saul, David, and Solomon—a period crucial to ancient Israel’s formation.

How many individuals are called “sinners” in the New Testament?

Answer: 5

Only five individuals are explicitly called “sinners” in the New Testament, even though the Bible deals abundantly with sinfulness as an inherent human condition. The apostle Paul summarizes the concept of universal human sinfulness saying, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). As a result, sinners are rarely singled out. A somewhat defined group of sinners includes ritually impure people, such as prostitutes or tax collectors, who are repeatedly named among or together with sinners: “Tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him” (Luke 15:1).

Two of the five individual sinners are anonymous: (1) the woman who anoints Jesus at a Pharisee’s house (Luke 7:37), and whom later tradition associated with Mary Magdalene; and (2) the repenting tax collector in Jesus’s parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, who calls himself a sinner (Luke 18:13). The three named sinners are Zacchaeus the chief tax collector, whom people considered a sinner (Luke 19:7); Paul, who calls himself the worst of all sinners (1 Timothy 1:15); and finally Jesus, whom Pharisees call a sinner on account of his healing a blind man on the Sabbath (John 9:16).