Inside BAR

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Even though the Phoenicians exercised autonomous rule in Dor only from about 1050 to 1000 B.C., their culture dominated the city for approximately 800 years. Ephraim Stern explores the Phoenician remains at the site and considers the question, “How Bad Was Ahab?” in the second installment of his three-part article, “The Many Masters of Dor.” The title question arises because although the Bible excoriates Ahab, king of the northern kingdom of Israel (874–853 B.C.), he initiated many great construction projects, probably including the rebuilding of Dor as a major Israelite seaport.

Stern is the Bernard M. Lauterman Professor of Biblical Archaeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Early in his career, Stern worked as field director at several famous excavations (Masada, Hazor, En-Gedi, Beersheba) under the direction of some of Israel’s most illustrious archaeologists (Yigael Yadin, Benjamin Mazar, Yohanan Aharoni). In addition to Tel Dor, he has also directed excavations at Tel Mevorakh, Tel Kedesh and Gil’am. From 1981 to 1990, Stern edited Qedem, the bulletin of Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology. His book, The Material Culture of the Land of the Bible in the Persian Period (Arts and Philips/Israel Exploration Society, 1982), won the 1984 BAS Publication Award for Best Scholarly Book on Archaeology. Stern’s previous BAR article on Dor was “What Happened to the Cult Figurines?” BAR 15:04.

We would not casually write about “the 1993 destruction of Washington” (or fill in your own city), but the distancing effect of time sometimes allows archaeologists to speak rather cavalierly about the destructions of ancient cities. Andrew Stewart, however, gives us a rare glimpse at what such destructions entail in “A Death at Dor.” In the process, he also tells the fascinating story of exactly how his team excavated the skeleton of a woman who was killed during the destruction of Phoenician Dor in about 1000 B.C.

Stewart serves as professor of the history of art at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1979. He has directed the Berkeley team at Tel Dor since 1986. His previous excavation experience includes digs in New Zealand and Britain and at Knossos in Crete. Stewart’s two-volume Greek Sculpture: An Exploration (Yale Univ. Press, 1990) won major awards from the Association of American Publishers and from the Art Libraries Society of North America. Another book, Faces of Power: Alexander’s Image and Hellenistic Politics, will be published soon by the University of California Press.

All the wisdom of Solomon did not help him when he picked a “thank you” gift for King Hiram of Tyre. Hiram took one look at the 20 cities in the Galilee and said, “Cabul!” No one today knows exactly what “Cabul” means except that it expresses displeasure. Hiram kept the territory, though, and built a well-stocked fortress to protect it. Pottery storage jars left there when the fortress was destroyed were a major method of identifying the area, as Zvi Gal explains in “Cabul: A Royal Gift Found.”

Chief archaeologist of the northern district for the Israel Antiquities Authority, Gal received his Ph.D. from the University of Tel Aviv. During the last decade, he has conducted a regional research project surveying Biblical Galilee, especially the Lower Galilee, and has directed excavations at Hurvat Rosh Zayit, Afula, and Migdal Haemeq.

When is a mikveh (ritual bath) not a mikveh? When it lacks an otzar, an attached storage pool filled with “living” (naturally flowing) water deemed capable, on brief contact 003with ordinary water in the mikveh, of making it ritually pure. So wrote Jerusalem guide Walter Zanger in a recent letter to BAR. Zanger noted that the vast majority of purported mikva’ot (plural) uncovered in excavations in Jerusalem (described in ”A Thousand Years Of History In Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter,“ BAR 18:03) and elsewhere in Israel lack an otzar—and therefore cannot have been ritual baths. Not so, responds Ronny Reich, who contends that an otzar was not a sine qua non of mikva’ot during the Second Temple period. Follow “The Great Mikveh Debate.”

Reich wrote his Ph.D. thesis on mikva’ot and served as an assistant to the late Nahman Avigad during his Jewish Quarter excavations in Jerusalem. Currently with the Israel Antiquities Authority, Reich authored “Caiaphas Name Inscribed on Bone Boxes,” BAR 18:05.

How much influence—if any—should the Bible have on the interpretation of evidence found in digs? Is the very term “Biblical archaeology” a misguided one? From William Foxwell Albright to William G. Dever, scholars have debated these questions. In “Faith and Archaeology—A Brief History to the Present,” Thomas W. Davis guides us through the discussion that shaped the careers of some of the most famous names in Biblical archaeology.

Davis received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. His postdoctoral research experience includes a stint in Cyprus as a Pacific Scientific Company Research fellow. Davis is now an assistant project manager for R. Christopher Goodwin and Associates, a cultural resource management firm for the mid-Atlantic region.

In “The Welcome Mat Is Out—Until You Are Asked to Leave,” BAR editor Hershel Shanks gives his freewheeling commentary on last November’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco of the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Academy of Religion and the American Schools of Oriental Research. If you read it in conjunction with another report, “Blood on the Floor at New York Dead Sea Scroll Conference,” you will discover that scholarly meetings are not quite the sedate affairs you may imagine.

Even though the Phoenicians exercised autonomous rule in Dor only from about 1050 to 1000 B.C., their culture dominated the city for approximately 800 years. Ephraim Stern explores the Phoenician remains at the site and considers the question, “How Bad Was Ahab?” in the second installment of his three-part article, “The Many Masters of Dor.” The title question arises because although the Bible excoriates Ahab, king of the northern kingdom of Israel (874–853 B.C.), he initiated many great construction projects, probably including the rebuilding of Dor as a major Israelite seaport. Stern is the Bernard M. Lauterman Professor of […]