Authors

Gary Vikan (“Made by Human Hands”) is director of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore and an adjunct professor of art at Johns Hopkins University. His article on the amulets used by Byzantine pilgrims to the Holy Land (“Don’t Leave Home Without Them,”) appeared in BAR 23:04. A specialist in Byzantine art, Vikan has also written and lectured on “Pilgrimage to Graceland: The Cult of St. Elvis.”

Nachman Ben-Yehuda (“Where Masada’s Defenders Fell”) is the author of The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel (Univ. of Wisconsin, 1995). But the sociology professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem has also served as a government advisor on drug abuse policy and as a member of national committees on police violence, cults and corruption in public service.