Another View: Don’t Be So Quick to be Disappointed, David Ussishkin

In the November/December issue of BAR, David Ussishkin expressed his disappointment at what he thought to be the disappearance of two royal Israelite king burials^a that I had identified in the July/August issue.^b I want to reassure him and other BAR readers that there really are tombs below King Omri’s palace at Samaria.

I will deal first with Ussishkin’s comments regarding Tomb A. Ussishkin expects this ninth-century B.C.E. Israelite tomb to resemble eighth- and seventh-century B.C.E. Judahite tombs (complete with a burial shelf, a Hathor headrest and a bone repository below the burial bench). It does not.