Image Details

PAM, Courtesy L’École Biblique

INDISPUTABLY ISRAELITE, this naos was discovered in the 1940s during a professional excavation led by Père Roland de Vaux at Tell el-Far‘ah (north), the location of the early northern Israelite capital. It, too, bears tree-columns and palmette volutes, but the dove is replaced in this case by a crescent moon and stars, a motif that also symbolizes the mother-goddess. This shrine was probably dedicated to Astarte or Asherah.