Inside BAR

“Simeon ben Kosba president of Israel” are the extraordinary words inscribed on a lead weight recently unearthed in Israel. Dating to the second century A.D., the weight was found in one of the subterranean burrows used by Jewish rebels during the Second Revolt against Rome. Amos Kloner, head of the archaeological team investigating these hundreds of underground hiding complexes in the Judean foothills, describes the weight and its exciting discovery in “Name of Ancient Israel’s Last President Discovered on Lead Weight.”

Kloner serves as district archaeologist of the Judean Shephelah for the Israel Department of Antiquities and teaches archaeology of the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods at Bar-Ilan University, near Tel Aviv. An article by Kloner and colleague Gabriel Barkay on another underground complex—burial caves—entitled, “Jerusalem Tombs From the Days of the First Temple,” BAR 12:02.