Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2009
Features
If you’ve ever wanted to volunteer on an archaeological dig, our annual guide to excavations has all the info you need to find a dig that’s right for you. And when it comes time to pack for your trip, don’t forget your hat, sunscreen, work gloves—and your laptop. With all of the amazing scientific […]
I had wished for this summer to come ever since the last day of the 2006 season at Tel Megiddo, when I fell in love with archaeology and decided that I had found a path for my future. Everything about my experience two years ago—the expert training, the enthusiastic team, the fantastic location and […]
“Get tough or die,” as Dor veteran Merrill likes to say, is the best way to describe my first day working in Area D5 at the new Tel Dor expedition. At the start of the dig, we all naively thought we were going to be able to stay clean. What were we thinking? The […]
Yossi Garfinkel has gone Biblical. After years of laboring in the pleasant orchards of prehistory, Yossi decided he needed a new and different site. The voluptuous (not to say zaftig) middle-aged goddesses of Sha’ar ha-Golan (a site about a mile south of the Sea of Galilee in the Jordan Valley) had long since lost […]
Professor Nadav Na’aman has suggested that Khirbet Qeiyafa should be identified with the Biblical site of Gov, which was the location of two battles between the Philistines and the Israelites (2 Samuel 21:18–19), but following Anson Rainey’s suggestion, Garfinkel believes that it is Sha’arayim (1 Samuel 17:52), which means “gates” in Hebrew. As we […]
The Antonia, the palace/fortress lavishly described by the ancient Jewish historian Josephus at the northwest corner of the Herodian Temple Mount, is not mentioned by name in the New Testament. For a long time, however, it was thought to be the “praetorium” where Pilate questioned Jesus and found him innocent. The praetorium is […]
The Antonia was almost a square building, approximately 86 meters (280 ft) on a side, with four towers, one on each corner. In my proposed reconstruction, the towers project slightly beyond the basic square. Three of the towers are 19 meters (62 ft) square and the fourth, the southeastern one is 22 meters (72 […]
“What would we ever do without the Amarna tablets?” asks the text scholar. “Oh, yeah?” replies the field archaeologist. “What would we ever do without the corrective of our excavated sites?” “Corrective?” says the text scholar. “Who needs the corrective, you or me?” And that, as they say, is the question. The Amarna tablets […]
To the woman he said, “I will make most severe Your pangs in childbearing; In pain shall you bear children.”
Alexander William Kinglake (1809–1891) was born in Somerset, England. He practiced law and served 11 years in the House of Commons, but his wealth and position in society led to a desire to travel abroad. He toured the Levant in 1844. Kinglake’s account of that journey, Eothen (“Towards the East,” 1849), changed the way […]