Excavating the Tribe of Reuben

We were lucky. There’s no other way to explain it. When our archaeological survey team, part of a larger expedition known as the Madaba Plains Project, discovered Tall al-‘Umayri¹ in 1976, we had no idea it would yield great treasures.² But now, almost 25 years later and after seven excavation seasons (beginning in 1984), we can only stand back and marvel as the Holy Land’s best-preserved site from the time of the Judges slowly emerges from beneath more than three millennia of accumulated dust and debris.