Image Details

ON THE COVER: Benign and wide-eyed, the animal head depicted on this rhyton—a ritual drinking vessel—is identified by its excavators as a lion. Found in a small Philistine shrine at Tel Miqne (Biblical Ekron), the vessel resembles another lion-headed rhyton with bared tongue and fangs excavated in the Philistine temple at Tell Qasile. The religion, culture and commerce of Ekron, a site first mentioned in the book of Joshua, come to life in “Ekron of the Philistines.”