Biblical Archaeology Review

Perhaps the most frequently asked question about Josephus concerns his reliability. But this deceptively simple question entails half a dozen others, each requiring a different answer.

“The Essenes shun pleasures as a vice and regard temperance and control of the passions as a special virtue. Marriage they disdain … They do not on principle condemn wedlock and the propagation of the race, but they wish to protect themselves against women’s wantonness, being persuaded that none of the sex keeps her plighted troth to one man.

In the art of the ancient empires and kingdoms of the Near East, from the Hittites in Anatolia to the Assyrians in Mesopotamia, from the fourteenth to the seventh century B.C.E., rosettes indicated royalty. This brief survey begins in the fourteenth century B.C.E. with the Hittites, who placed winged rosettes, previously used to represent their sun god, on the seals of their ruler.