Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2007
Special Section
And the Digs Go On
What happened last summer, when many archaeological excavations were interrupted by the Israel-Hezbollah war, is past. And digs are gearing up again for the 2007 season. This year’s opportunities range from digging at the almost 30-year-long excavations of Emmanuel Anati at Har Karkom in Israel to further...Read more ›
Features
Out of Egypt
The Archaeological Context of the Exodus
Every spring as Passover nears, TV audiences in America are accustomed to seeing Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Ramesses II, the putative pharaoh of the Exodus. For millions, the images from this classic film have shaped their...Read more ›
Nebuchadnezzar & Solomon
Parallel Lives Illuminate History
This article is an abbreviated version of my paper “What Has Nebuchadnezzar to Do with David? On the Neo-Babylonian Period and Early Israel,” in Chavalas and Younger, eds., Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Explorations, JSOTSup 341 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), pp. 330–355. The current debate over...Read more ›
Assyrian Palace Discovered in Ashdod
As so often happens in Israel, so it happened in 2003 when the Israel Railway Authority was constructing a rail connection between Ashdod and Ashkelon, those ancient Philistine, now modern cities on the Mediterranean coast: Ancient remains were discovered, work stopped, and the Israel Antiquities Authority was...Read more ›
Magic Incantation Bowls
Charms to Curse, to Cure and to Celebrate
According to Dan Levene, an expert in Jewish magic incantation bowls, more than 2,000 of these fascinating vessels have survived.1 The vast majority bear inscriptions written in a dialect known as Jewish Aramaic and were produced in Jewish communities in Babylonia between the third and seventh centuries...Read more ›