ReViews: 10,000 Cups of Coffee: Putting Deir el-Balah on the Map

The critical clue was the yellow sand. But for the grains of fine yellow sand clinging to the clay coffin lid, the source of the stunning finds—carnelian and gold jewelry, scarabs, alabaster vessels, Canaanite, Cypriot and Mycenaean pottery, anthropoid clay coffins— flooding the antiquities market in Jerusalem after the Six-Day War might never have been discovered, or discovered too late for the scientific excavation needed to illuminate the cultural and historical context of the artifacts. Without such excavation, the origin and date of the finds would forever remain guesswork, and it would be impossible to understand the true importance […]