Biblical Archaeology Review

Joyce Reynolds and Robert Tannenbaum, Jews and Godfearers at Aphrodisias (Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 1987).

Dio Cassius, Roman History XLIX 22.6 (Loeb edition).

Amihai Mazar, “From 1200 to 850 B.C.E.: Remarks on Some Selected Archaeological Issues,” in Lester L. Grabbe, ed., Israel in Transition: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIa (c. 1250–850 B.C.E.), Volume 1: The Archaeology (T&T Clark: New York, 2008).

Joseph Aviram et al., Eretz Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies: Teddy Kollek Volume, Vol. 28 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Hebrew Union College, 2007).

During heating, bones undergo changes including dehydration, oxidation, decompostion and fusion. The fired bones revert from a gray to pale color as most of the organic material is burned off. On the burned rosette surface the bone chips are reddish brown, the yellow and white patches beneath resulted from bone disintegration and fusion with the carbonate (host limestone) substratum.

Loeb translation (15.416) or Whiston, Book 15, Chapter 11.416.

Antiquities of the Jews 15.412.

The Jewish War 5.5.6.

See Frank Moore Cross and Thomas Lambdin, “A Ugaritic Abecedary and the Origins of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 160 (1960), pp. 21–26, now conveniently available in Frank Moore Cross, Leaves from an Epigrapher’s Notebook (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), pp. 313–316.

I would like to thank Professor Steve Fassberg, Caspar Levias Chair in Ancient Semitic Languages at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, for his help in reading the inscription.