COURTESY GLENN SCHWARTZ, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Four small finger-like clay cylinders from the ancient city of Umm el-Marra in northwestern Syria are inscribed with what may be the earliest known alphabetic writing. Discovered during excavations in 2004 by a team from Johns Hopkins University, the cylinders, which range in length from 1.5 to 2 inches, come from a securely dated archaeological context and may radically change our understanding of the emergence of the alphabet.

The cylinders were found in a tomb among several burials and a variety of rich grave goods: gold and silver jewelry, intact pottery vessels, and a spearhead. Radiocarbon dating and other evidence support a firm date of 2400 to 2300 BCE for the tomb assemblage.

All four of the hollow clay tubes, which were inscribed with a simple tool such as a reed, are broken at one or both ends, suggesting that they may have been part of a longer inscription or connected to one another. Although the limited number of symbols on the cylinders makes it impossible to know what the writing means, it appears to be unrelated to earlier non-alphabetic Mesopotamian and Egyptian writing systems. Instead, it bears similarities to other early alphabetic scripts—but predates the better-known Proto-Canaanite inscriptions from Sinai by about 500 years.

PUBLIC DOMAIN, VIA THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

1. Ceremonial bell
2. Steelyard weight
3. Boat decoration
4. Roman fishing hook
5. Ancient Christmas ornament

Answer: (2) Steelyard weight

This substantial weight, 9.5 inches tall and weighing about 5 pounds, may depict an empress of the Theodosian Dynasty, who ruled the Byzantine Empire from 379 to 450 CE. Shaping such a weight into the bust of an empress was a common Byzantine practice, especially during the fifth to seventh centuries.

The woman holds a scroll in her left hand, while her right hand is just visible on the inside of her robe. Her hairstyle, with braids looped up on the sides of her head, reflects a style popular in late antiquity. She wears a heavily bejeweled diadem and necklace. The bust sits on a large plinth that serves as the base of the weight.

The quality of this piece is particularly noteworthy, with a rare degree of detail and sensitivity in the depiction of the face, hair, jewelry, and clothing. The eyes exhibit a realism that is usually not seen in the vacant gazes of other such weights.

The weight would have been used in conjunction with a steelyard, a long metal arm that was ruled with weight markings along its length. A commodity would be hung at one end, and on the other end the weight could be moved along the ruled section to create balance, thereby establishing the weight and value of the commodity.

COURTESY SHAI HALEVI, ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY

A newly deciphered papyrus from the Judean Desert tells a dramatic story of forgery and fraud in the early second century, between the years 129 and 132 CE. The 133 lines of Greek text contain notes and transcripts from the Roman trial of two Jewish men, Gadalias and Saulos, who are accused of engaging in corrupt dealings involving the fraudulent sale and manumission of slaves, as well as forging business documents to conceal their activities. The text also details the criminal histories of the two men, allegedly including violence, extortion, counterfeiting, and inciting rebellion; it even suggests that the men were suspected of direct involvement in rebellious activities during Emperor Hadrian’s visit to the area in 129.

“This is the best-documented Roman court case from Judea apart from the trial of Jesus,” said Avner Ecker, a member of the joint Israeli-Austrian team who translated the papyrus. The document sheds direct light on Roman legal practices in Judea in the second century, illuminating the empire’s ability to exercise regulatory control over private business even in remote regions distant from Rome.

For decades, the papyrus went unnoticed in the archives of the Israel Antiquities Authority, where it had been classified incorrectly as a Nabatean document. Because of this misclassification, the document’s exact origin is not known, but its contents suggest that it came from Nahal Hever, where many similar papyri were found.

WALTERS ART MUSEUM, 1989, CC0 1.0 UNIVERSAL

When I worked at a church camp in college, our priests would periodically criticize campers and staff who wore blue beads around their necks. While some defended these beads as mere cultural markers that, together with the cross, identified the community to which they belonged, others acknowledged their traditional function as amulets against the evil eye. Evil-eye and other amulets have a long history, as does the criticism leveled against them by religious leaders.

The church historian Eusebius wrote around 315 CE that Christians would “not allow their sick even to do what is exceedingly common with non-Christians, to make use of charms written on leaves or amulets” (Proof of the Gospel 127). Later in the fourth century, John Chrysostom regularly admonished his congregation in Antioch against the use of amulets: “Have you fallen into a severe sickness, and do many come, constraining you, some with charms, some with amulets … to remedy the evil? … And would you have chosen to suffer all things rather than submit to do any of those idolatrous practices?” (Homily 3 on 1 Thessalonians 3). Chrysostom even acknowledged that amulets worked but insisted that it was better to die from an affliction, accepting it as a form of martyrdom, than to use an amulet to cure it.

So what kinds of amulets did Eusebius and Chrysostom have in mind? Since amulets were ubiquitous in the ancient world, these authors were familiar with many types.^a Some everyday objects, such as coins, nails, and bells, could work as amulets, but we shall focus on those with texts and images inscribed on them to promote healing or protection. These amulets fall into two broad groups depending on their size.

Larger amulets were written on papyrus, parchment, or thin sheets of metal (lamellae). Their size allowed for lengthy texts that typically called upon one or more divine healers and that were personalized for a specific user, with their name and the purpose stated. They were then rolled or folded and placed in a small case to be worn on the body.

Smaller amulets took the forms of rings, pendants, armbands, or gemstones. Their limited surface area could accommodate only a handful of words and was more conducive to the use of powerful images. For example, a late antique brass ring found at Hammat Gader in the southern Golan bears the Greek inscription, “Christ, help Andreas.” This ring represents a prayer in material form. And although the prayer itself would have been unremarkable to early Christian leaders, Chrysostom was resolute that even these objects were forbidden to Christians.

THE ISRAEL MUSEUM, JERUSALEM; PHOTO BY LAURA LACHMAN

Elsewhere, Chrysostom mentions that Christians use the Gospels as an amulet: “Do you not see how women and little children suspend Gospels from their necks as a powerful amulet, and carry them about in all places wherever they go?” (Homily 19 on the Statues 14). This reference may reflect a practice that we see in longer amulets, where the first words of each Gospel, called the incipit, were quoted.^b

An example of a gospel incipit amulet is Berlin P. 6096, a slip of parchment inscribed with excerpts from several psalms and all four Gospels, with a cross marking the beginning of each passage:

† In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. One who dwells in the help of the most high will abide in the shelter of the lord of heaven. [Psalm 91:1] † In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. [John 1:1–2] … [Matthew 1:1; Mark 1:1; Luke 1:1; Psalm 118:6–7; 18:2] † The lord Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity. [Matthew 4:23] † The body and the blood of Christ, spare your servant who wears this amulet. Amen, Alleluia † Α † Ω †.¹

Like the simple ring amulet for Andreas, this parchment amulet is wholly Christian, with most of the text coming directly from the Christian Bible. The only extra-biblical language appears at the beginning and end, framing the biblical passages and invoking liturgical formulae. Nevertheless, the thoroughly Christian character of Berlin P. 6096 would not have exempted it from disapproval by some early Christian authors who rejected similar scriptural amulets for their similarity to Jewish tefillin (phylakteria, in Greek). In Matthew 23, Jesus criticizes what he characterizes as the ostentatious way that some Jews wore tefillin, in a passage that would influence how later Christians interpreted this Jewish ritual practice. In his criticism of gospel amulets, Jerome, the famous translator of the Bible, states that “superstitious little women who keep doing this up to the present day with little Gospels” continue the criticized practice of the Pharisees, who “did not understand that these things need to be carried in the heart, not in the body” (Commentary on Matthew 23:5–7).

Despite Jerome’s protestations, the practice of wearing biblical passages on amulets remained widespread, and not just among Christians. Samaritans, too, used pendant and ring amulets inscribed with short biblical passages to recall longer texts, often featuring the Tetragrammaton. A bronze Samaritan pendant found near Tel Aviv and dated to the second half of the fourth century contains Exodus 15:3, with the first half of the verse, “YHWH is a warrior,” included twice, followed by the second half of the verse, “YHWH is his name.” The back side quotes from three separate verses: “Arise, YHWH” (Numbers 10:35), “There is none like God, O Jeshurun” (Deuteronomy 33:26), and “YHWH alone” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Here, the fivefold repetition of the Tetragrammaton emphasizes God’s identity, and the selected passages highlight his special relationship to the Israelites and their formative experiences during the Exodus.

Since there is nothing but biblical quotations on this amulet, we do not know why someone wore it. Judging by other late antique amulets, it was likely for protection or healing. The distinctive Samaritan script could additionally mark the wearer’s membership within the Samaritan community, much like the blue bead for some today. Wearing these biblical passages might have also been seen as fulfilling the command in Deuteronomy 6 to “bind” God’s words on the body, similar to how late antique Jews understood tefillin.

The surviving amulets and the critiques leveled against them by religious elites indicate that the practice was very common among late antique Christians. The similarities between Christian amulets and those worn by their non-Christian neighbors, together with criticism of Jewish tefillin, suggest that opposition to amulets may have been rooted in a perceived porousness of boundaries that separated Christian ritual practices from those of outsiders.²

COURTESY THETORAH.COM

Ethnographer Clinton Bailey devoted his life to the Bedouin of the Negev and Sinai. Throughout his career, he documented their lives and advocated for their futures. But for readers of BAR, just as significant was the attention he paid to the past.

Born Irwin Glaser in Buffalo, New York, Bailey made his way to Israel in the late 1950s. He completed his undergraduate work in Jerusalem and then returned to New York to do a Ph.D. in Middle East studies at Columbia University. In the late 1960s, he moved back to Israel, where he became fascinated by the Negev’s Bedouin. Bailey spent weeks on end traveling with various tribes, documenting tribal discussions, collecting proverbs, and recording songs.

Bailey was also concerned with how Bedouin culture informs the Bible.^a He didn’t think the Bible came from a Bedouin-like society, but rather that the biblical writers were appealing to formerly nomadic Israelites in an attempt to incorporate them into their semi-urbanized society. He focused, for example, on aspects of biblical law that are illuminated by the tribe and tribal justice in Bedouin society. He also studied the Exodus wanderings against the realities of life in the desert, and the ways in which biblical poetry parallels themes from Bedouin songs.

Bailey left behind a scholarly legacy comprising detailed knowledge about Bedouin society, values, and practices. There is much biblical scholars can learn if they turn their attention to his work and think creatively about how it can help make sense of biblical history, literature, and culture.

PHOTO BY AVRAHAM IZDAREKHET, COURTESY THE FAMILY OF ZE’EV MESHEL

Ze’ev Meshel, renowned archaeologist and passionate desert explorer, passed away on December 14, 2024. He was 92 years old.

Meshel was born in Tel Aviv to parents who had immigrated from Poland. After his military service, he pursued his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1974, he completed his doctoral thesis at Tel Aviv University on the history of the Negev during Israel’s monarchic period, which marked the beginning of a distinguished career. He then joined the university’s department of archaeology, where he taught until his retirement in the early 2000s.

Meshel’s focus was the Negev and Sinai regions, where he conducted surveys and excavations that shed light on the role of these arid landscapes as hubs of trade, cultural exchange, and human adaptation. He explored ancient water systems, desert fortresses, caravan routes, and agricultural practices, uncovering the resilience and ingenuity of the people who thrived in these challenging environments.

Among his achievements, the excavation of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud in the northeastern Sinai is his most renowned work (see below). This remote Iron Age site yielded inscriptions, artistic representations, and artifacts that continue to challenge conventional understandings of religion, literacy, and trade in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Meshel’s legacy is one of uncovering truths about the past while fostering a deep connection to the land and its stories. His contributions to the study of the Negev and Sinai have left an indelible mark on the field of archaeology, and his dedication to understanding and preserving history will continue to inspire future generations.

EITAN SIMANOR/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

In the early first century CE, Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth was a Galilean village like most others. With a population probably numbering only in the hundreds, it was much smaller than neighboring Yafia and was dwarfed by nearby Sepphoris, one of the Galilee’s wealthiest and most prosperous cities at the time.

Nazareth today is a very different place. With a population of nearly 80,000, it is one of the largest cities in northern Israel, but residents are packed into just a few square miles of close-set houses built along steep, narrow streets. Around 70 percent of Nazareth’s residents are Muslim and 30 percent are Christian (primarily Latin and Greek Catholics and Greek Orthodox), while Jews make up the bulk of the population of the adjacent city of Nof HaGalil. Thanks to this diversity, Nazareth has become well known for its tolerance, with Muslim sheikhs and boy scouts marching in the annual Christmas Eve parade, church bishops and Christian boy scouts participating in the parade on the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr, and many Jewish families from Nof HaGalil filling Nazareth’s restaurants on Friday evenings.

Many who visit Nazareth, of course, come to see sites and places associated with the life of Jesus. Outside of the New Testament, however, Nazareth is rarely mentioned in ancient and medieval sources. It does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, Apocrypha, Josephus, or early rabbinic writings, and receives no mention in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which contains stories about Jesus’s childhood, or the Protevangelium of James, which tells of Mary’s childhood. We have a late fourth-century report that Emperor Constantine granted permission for a church to be built in Nazareth, and between the fourth and ninth centuries, Christian pilgrims visited a cave that was identified with Mary’s house, as well as various churches identified with the site of the annunciation, the home of Joseph, Jesus’s childhood home, and the synagogue where Jesus learned his ABCs.

Thanks to these long-venerated spaces, today there is much to see nestled among Nazareth’s sweet shops (the city is famous for them), falafel stands, and clothing boutiques. Let’s take a walking tour through the city’s many historic and cultural sites.

We begin at the Basilica of the Annunciation, whose black cupola makes it the most visible building in the city. Constructed in part to preserve earlier holy spaces, the current structure was built in the 1960s following the demolition of an earlier church that dated to the first half of the 18th century. Between demolition and construction, archaeologists conducted extensive excavations.

DUBY TAL/ALBATROSS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

The present church preserves the outline of the 12th-century Crusader church. Beneath an octagon in the floor, we can see into the “lower church” that contains the apse of a fifth-century Byzantine monastery church adjacent to a grotto that Catholic tradition continues to venerate as the site of the archangel Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary (Luke 1:26–38). Elsewhere on the church grounds, archaeologists uncovered the remains of house walls, oil presses, storage chambers, and silos from the first-century village. Just to the north is St. Joseph’s Church, which was built in the 17th century over a cave that supposedly was the site of the village’s carpenter shop.

Next we head to Nazareth’s old suq (market), where visitors can shop for souvenirs amid a maze of narrow streets, shop stalls, and restaurants. If time allows, we’ll walk through Elbabour, the spice market that occupies the old 18th-century community mill. The stone grinders were first turned by horses, then by steam and diesel engines. Until the late 1960s, local farmers brought their grain here to be processed.

After a café hafukh (Hebrew for “upside-down coffee,” since the espresso is poured into steamed milk), we continue on to the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Gabriel, where the Eastern Orthodox tradition has commemorated the site of the annunciation since at least the 12th century. Located just a few hundred feet south of the church is Mary’s Well, one of the city’s best-known landmarks. It is probably the place identified in some apocryphal sources, including the Protevangelium of James, as the site of Gabriel’s appearance to Mary. The well, which is fed by a nearby spring (one of the few in the Galilee), supplied the village with fresh water as early as the Byzantine period, although it went out of use in the 1990s and now primarily serves as a gathering spot for both locals and tourists enjoying the city’s downtown.

Also worth a stop is Nazareth Village, the Galilee’s answer to Colonial Williamsburg. On a hillside located between Nazareth Hospital and the YMCA, characters in period dress herd goats, thresh wheat, card wool, weave fabric, and crush olives in a reconstructed first-century Jewish village built according to ancient methods. The park provides an opportunity to test the efficiency of first-century industries and building techniques while also trying out foods imagined to be like those eaten by Galileans 2,000 years ago.

Rounding out our trip, we make our way to the so-called Synagogue Church, purported to be the location of the synagogue where Jesus first learned the Torah, although no first-century synagogue has been uncovered there. We will also make quick photo stops at the Gothic revival Church of Jesus the Adolescent, built on the high hill to the west of Nazareth, which is a wonderful spot to overlook the modern city, and then Mt. Precipice, which offers a commanding, panoramic view over the lush Jezreel Valley. Local tradition identifies this as the peak where the residents of Nazareth tried to hurl Jesus to his death (Luke 4:28–30), but he was able to leap to safety onto the peak of nearby Mt. Tabor.

Nazareth is easily reached by car from many of northern Israel’s cities, including Tiberias and Haifa, or if coming from the south, is about a two-hour drive from Jerusalem. Given its central location, Nazareth also serves as a wonderful base to tour other archaeological sites in the Galilee and the north, including Sepphoris, Beth Shearim, and Megiddo, or, with just a little more driving, Beth Shean and sites around the Sea of Galilee to the east. In the temperate fall and spring months, hikers will want to try out sections of the Jesus Trail and the Sanhedrin Trail, both of which traverse the Lower Galilee and pass through or in close proximity to Nazareth.

IMAGE GIANCARLO LIGUORI/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Perhaps the most famous Phoenician trading colony and eventually the capital of an expansive Mediterranean empire, the ancient city of Carthage was an important center for maritime trade, with two large artificial harbors constructed to house its navy and merchant ships. Located on the northwestern coast of modern Tunisia in North Africa, Carthage was for a time among the most powerful and prosperous cities of the Mediterranean, outshining even the Phoenician city-states of Tyre and Sidon, whose inhabitants first established the settlement as a small trading outpost.

Founded in the late ninth century BCE, Phoenician Carthage thrived until its eventual destruction by the Romans at the end of the Third Punic War (c. 146 BCE), although it would later be rebuilt by the Romans and become one of the largest and most important cities in the Roman and later Byzantine empires. The city was also an important center for early Christianity, the seat of an archdiocese, and the location of several early church councils.

Carthage was first excavated in the mid-19th century and includes layers from the Phoenician to Islamic periods. Shown here are the restored remains of the Antonine Baths, built by the Roman emperor Antonius in 165 CE.

PETRIE MUSEUM OF EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY, UCL / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Determining when an object or artifact was created is one of the main concerns of archaeology. Among the earliest techniques used to date ancient artifacts is seriation, which assumes that specific types of material culture evolve over time, changing their form, manufacturing techniques, and decorative styles. Seriation analyzes and compares artifacts of a particular type and places them into chronologically ordered series.

Dating based on seriation does not provide absolute dates but rather indicates where an artifact belongs relative to other artifacts of a given type. Known also as artifact sequencing, seriation is thus a technique for establishing a relative chronology. However, when the same archaeological layer contains a datable object (e.g., coins or dated inscriptions) or can be linked to a securely dated event (e.g., a historical battle), these objects then become chronological anchors.

This dating technique was first developed in the late 19th century by the founding father of modern archaeology, William Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), during his excavations at predynastic sites in Upper Egypt and at the site of Tell el-Hesi, now in southern Israel.

Seriation is most readily useful for dating pottery and provides the best results in combination with methods of absolute dating, such as radiocarbon and archaeomagnetic analyses (see “Dating Game: How Archaeologists Date the Biblical Past”). Today, seriation is generally run by computers, which can handle astronomically large volumes of data when looking for patterns and arranging them into sequences.

The Kitāb al-ṭabīh (“Book of Cooking”) is a 13th-century collection of recipes from the Iberian Peninsula. It is the oldest recipe collection from Spain, specifically the Andalusian region, and dates to the time of Islamic rule. The text is written in Arabic, but at least six recipes are marked as Jewish, and others may contain hints of Jewish influence—a noteworthy fact given that the text was written during a time of intercommunal and religious tensions. The book’s author is unknown, but they were clearly familiar with both Islamic and Jewish dietary laws and customs.

This recipe for a Jewish dish is straightforward and requires only two adjustments. First, the recipe calls for etrog or lemon leaves, which can be hard to find. An equal amount of lemon zest can be used as a substitute.

Second, the recipe calls for rue. This herb can be hard to acquire and, in some cases, should be avoided. It is dangerous for pregnant women, can cause rashes, and is poisonous in large doses. It is extremely bitter, so fenugreek or dandelion greens would be a good substitute, though I chose to omit it entirely.

This communal dish is meant to be plated and enjoyed at a large gathering. So grab some friends and family and enjoy our culinary trip into the Iberian past.—J.D.