First Person: Should Israel Return the Tablets of the Law to Egypt? - The BAS Library
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First Person: Should Israel Return the Tablets of the Law to Egypt?

By Hershel Shanks

In 969, barely two years after the 1967 Six-Day War, a team of Israeli archaeologists made an exploratory excavation at the base of one of the numerous sites in the Sinai Peninsula proposed as Biblical Mt. Sinai. It was not long before a member of the team exposed a piece of rock with a single Hebrew letter on it. This naturally led to more intensive excavation in this area, as a result of which additional, larger pieces of inscribed stones were recovered. They were taken to Israel for further study. When examined by paleographers, experts in dating inscriptions by […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Rachel Hallote, Archaeological Views: “A Case Against the Repatriation of Archaeological Artifacts,” BAR 37:03.

2.

See Christopher A. Rollston, “What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription?” BAR 38:03.

3.

See Hershel Shanks, “Please Return the Siloam Inscription to Jerusalem,” BAR 17:03.

Endnotes

1.

Owen Matthews, “Turkey’s Archaeology Blackmail,” The Daily Beast (blog), Newsweek, April 9, 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/08/turkey-s-archaeology-blackmail.html.