Biblical Archaeology Review

See M. P. Graham, “The Discovery and Reconstruction of the Mesha Inscription,” pp. 41–92 in A. Dearman, ed., Studies in the Mesha Inscription and Moab (Archaeology and Biblical Studies 2; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989).

On Moab’s tribute of lambs, see also Isaiah 16:1. In modern times, the 19th-century traveler Henry Baker Tristram left eyewitness comments that lend some plausibility to those figures (The Land of Moab. Travels and Discoveries on the East Side of the Dead Sea and the Jordan [London: John Murray, 2nd ed. 1874], pp. 223–24).

On this term see M. Coogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (Anchor Bible 11; New York: Doubleday, 1988), p. 43.

The inhabitants of the Madaba plains cultivated superb vineyards long after the disappearance of Moab. The vine is central in the iconography of the numerous mosaics from Byzantine times, published in M. Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan (Amman: American Center of Oriental Research, 1993).

Jerome, commentary on Isaiah 16:8.

For example, the 1998 season at Tall al-‘Umayri produced fragments of 18 querns and 45 upper millstones.

Karel van der Toorn, “Mill, Millstone,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992); Rasmussen, “Mill, Millstone.”

See George F. Moore, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Judges, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1895), p. 268; and Mieke Bal, Death and Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 220–221.

We later weighed 18 upper millstones that were readily available to us from previous seasons and estimate that the average weight for a complete upper millstone is 6 pounds, 13 ounces.