ON THE COVER: This powerful portrait of a bearded man in Egyptian headdress decorates the lid of a human-shaped, or anthropoid, coffin. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli archaeologist Trude Dothan noticed a variety of similar lids and a rich assortment of Egyptian burial goods, scarabs, seals and jewelry surfacing in antiquities shops in the Old City of Jerusalem. Through clever detective work and the help of the late Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, Dothan traced these finds to Deir el-Balah, a costal village south of Gaza. Dothan’s excavations at the site, described in
“Cultural Crossroads,” revealed a world of extensive international trade and cultural exchange and helped to change the way archaeologists understand Canaan and Egypt in the 14th to 13th century B.C.