Features

Scrolls, Scripts and Stelae
A Norwegian collector shows BAR his rare inscriptions By Hershel Shanks

If you have a Dead Sea Scroll for sale, you should get in touch with Martin Schøyen (pronounced Skoo-yen) in Oslo. He is a prime prospect. He already owns several Dead Sea Scroll fragments—making him one of the few individuals in the world (I can think of only one other) who owns Dead Sea […]

Rare Incense Altar Raises Burning Questions

Khalil Iskander Shahin, whom everyone called “Kando” even then, slowly pushed the little bronze incense altar across the glass case in his Bethlehem antiquities shop. The year was 1953. He had not yet moved to Jerusalem, where to this day his sons continue to run his antiquities business near the École Biblique et Archéologique […]

Triple Play
The many lives of Jerusalem’s building blocks By Ronny Reich, Ya‘akov Billig

This is an article for people who like puzzles. Not crossword puzzles, but stone puzzles: The challenge is to figure out what the stones were used for—not once, but at three different times, for three different purposes. In solving this puzzle, you will discover a theater, 042a latrine and a palace—all in Jerusalem. […]

The Puzzling Channels in Ancient Latrines

In the previous article Ronny Reich and Ya‘akov Billig told us that the strange-looking grooves in the stones amount to nothing more that a flushing channel. But how does this channel work? It is, after all, the most important evidence that the stones had been used in a latrine. I admit my first thought […]

Return to Aphek

“You can count the centuries as we go down the stairs. We’re going from the 16th century A.D. to the 13th century B.C.,” says excavator Moshe Kochavi as he leads me to some steps inside the remains of ancient Aphek, about 9 miles northeast of Tel Aviv. Today a 16th-century Turkish fort, nearly […]

Bible Study Software
What’s right for you? By David Alan Rech

Despite claims that the World Wide Web will make it as obsolete as vinyl records and 8-track tapes, CD-ROM technology still has a long and useful life ahead of it. This is especially true of CD-ROM programs for Bible study. These programs enable you to study various Bible translations, perform word searches (some in […]

Departments

First Person: The Anonymous Archaeologist
It’s time to link the finder with the find By Hershel Shanks
WorldWide
Hawara, Egypt

Strata