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ON THE COVER: A silver calf emerges from his ceramic shrine. Discovered last summer in the ruins of a destroyed temple at the coastal city of Ashkelon, the 4-inch tall male calf was completely intact save for one missing horn. Extensions beneath the hooves once fit into holes on a now-lost platform. Calf images, associated with the worship of El or Baal, two of the most important gods in the Canaanite pantheon, were anathema in Israelite religion. The Golden Calf worshiped at the foot of Mt. Sinai by impatient Israelites (Exodus 32) may have resembled this statuette. Excavator Lawrence E. Stager describes this rare find and takes us back to the time “When Canaanites and Philistines Ruled Ashkelon.”