Biblical Archaeology Review is the flagship publication of the Biblical Archaeology Society. For more than 40 years it has been making the world of archaeology in the lands of the Bible come alive for the interested layperson. Full of vivid images and articles written by leading scholars, this is a must read for anyone interested in the archaeology of the ancient Near East.
In the first publication of the mosaic, Père Louis-Hugues Vincent offered a list of potential options that adds heroines, saints, deaconesses and members of the imperial family to the range of possibilities: Louis-Hugues Vincent, “Une mosaic byzantin à Jerusalem,” Revue biblique 10 (1901), pp. 436–444, p. 441.
Macalister and Duncan dated the tower to the Post-Exilic period, (fifth-fourth century B.C.E.). R.A.S. Macalister, Excavations on the Hill of Ophel, 1923–25 (London, 1926), p. 51. Kathleen Kenyon, who excavated here in 1962, and Yigal Shiloh who dug here in the 1980s, dated the tower, mistakenly in my view, to the Hasmonean period. Kenyon simply assumed that the tower belonged to the same fortification as the Southern Tower which she dated to that period (see K.M. Kenyon, Digging Up Jerusalem [London, 1974], pp. 191–192).
