Browse Items (337 total)

This topographical map of Jerusalem shows the present Old City of Jerusalem in dark blue (the walls of which were built by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century CE) and the Temple Mount in the southeastern corner of the Old City. The City of David is…

In this view of the Temple Mount, looking west, one can clearly see the Dome of the Chain (between the five arches and the Dome of the Rock), and the Al Aqsa Mosque (the large building complex on the left). The Dome of the Chain is one of the oldest…

This photograph shows the excavation of the so-called 'sloping tunnel' that led from the entrance to the Warren's Shaft complex to the vertical shaft. It was clearly carved to allow many people to walk through it simultaneously.

In this aerial view of the Old City of Jerusalem, which is looking east toward the Mount of Olives and Mount Scopus and the Judaean Desert beyond them, the outline of the Old City walls is clearly visible, as is the Temple Mount and the Dome of the…

The 50-foot-high stepped structure on the right in this photo was probably built in the pre-Davidic Jebusite period (i.e., prior to the 10th century BCE). The square-cornered tower immediately beyond the stepped structure was part of the east wall of…

This bone pendant is a typical depiction of the god Bes, an Egyptian god who protected pregnant women. It would have been the central ornament on a necklace.

This map shows the borders of city of Jerusalem from the time of the Jebusites, the settlers of the city prior to the 10th century BCE, to the time of the Judaean king Hezekiah (686 BCE). The current Old City walls (built in the 16th century CE) and…

This map shows the extent of the Persian Empire in 500 BCE. With a capital in Persepolis (down and to the right of the center of the map), they expanded their borders all the way into India in the east and to Egypt, North Africa, and Macedonia in the…

This photograph of the Temple Mount was taken from its southeast corner (i.e., it is looking northwest). The Temple Mount is visible in the center of the photograph, as is the Al Aqsa Mosque (on the left) and both the Old City and New City of…

This view of the eastern slope of the City of David shows the steps leading down to the Gihon Spring (at the bottom of the photo, in the triangular shadow beneath the double window), 8th-7th century BCE walls and a Jebusite wall (immediately below…

This finely worked sculpture of a bearded man wearing a sort of a head cover is typical of the high-quality Hellenistic finds from the port city of Dor.

This aerial photograph shows the City of David and the Temple Mount above it. Notice the ridge upon which the City of David was built (to the right of the road running from the upper center to the bottom of the photograph). The place of the Temple…

These three figurines of pregnant women wearing Egyptian wigs and holding one hand on their stomachs are typical of figurines found at other Phoenician sites in Lebanon, Cyprus, and Israel in the Persian period. Scholars usually assume that they were…

This photograph shows modern Samaritans, one of whom is holding a Torah scroll, on Mt. Gerizim. The Samaritans still practice their religion in much the same way that ancient Jews practiced their religion prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70…

This beautiful urn was made by a well known Greek potter and vase painter around 450 BCE. It was imported to Judah and found in the ruins of a Persian grain storage center at Tel Jemmeh. The reason that an elegant urn from Greece ended up in Judah is…

This aerial photograph of Jerusalem, looking north, shows the hilly character of the area. The Old City, including the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, can be seen in the center of the picture, and the skyscrapers of the New City are in the…

Money was invented in the Persian Period, and this particular coin bears the official name of the district in which the Jews lived: 'Yehud' (spelled out by the three letters to the right of the bird). The script is ancient Hebrew and the name is the…

The Elephantine Papyri are correspondences of a Jewish military garrison who occupied an island in the Nile River on ancient Egypt's southern border. They had a temple in which the god of Israel was worshiped under the name Yhwh ('Yahu'), and in this…

All three of these vessels can be dated to the late 6th or early 5th century BCE, during the first decades of Persian control of Palestine. However, pottery forms do not change simply because the political control does. As a result, these forms look…

When the Persian king Cyrus II (557-529 BCE) conquered Babylon in 539 BCE, he had this ten-inch-long clay barrel made and inscribed in the Babylonian language. In the text he says that his victory was made possibly by support of Marduk, the god of…

This map shows the regional divisions (hyparchies) in the Ptolemaic Period (i.e., 312-198 BCE): Phoenicia, Galilee, Samaria, Judaea, Perea, Ammonitis, Moabitis, and Idumaea.

These two toy-sized ceramic horses with riders are known from the Persian period. They are usually found in a favissa (a repository at a shrine used for objects that had gained sanctity by use in cult ritual and could not, therefore, be returned to a…

This photograph shows one of the main streets of the 3rd century BCE city of Dor. This phase of the city was built under King Ptolemy II (285-246 BCE) on a Hippodamian plan (i.e., a checkerboard pattern of city blocks) and had an advanced sewage…

This map shows the regional divisions (eparchies) after the Battle of Paneas (198 BCE), when the Seleucids seized control of Israel/Palestine: Phoenicia, Samaria, Paralia, Idumaea, and Galaaditis.

This detail photograph is from the 'Sidonian Tomb,' so called because of an inscription that says that the deceased were members of a Sidonian colony living at Maresha. In this photograph we see paintings of animals from Egypt, along with their Greek…

The first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found by Bedouin in 1947 in the Judaean Desert, who took them to an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem named Kando. Kando took four of the scrolls to St. Mark's Monastery in the Old City of Jerusalem, where he…

This aerial photograph looking north at Mt. Gerizim, which is located in the northern part of the Central Hill, shows the remains of the Samaritan Temple. The city of Shechem sat in the valley below (a portion of which can be seen on the right and…

This photograph shows the entrance stairs leading down into the Sidonian Tomb at Maresha, so called because of an inscription that says that the deceased who were buried here were members of a Sidonian community in Maresha. The paintings on the walls…

After the decree of the Persian King Cyrus the Great allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem from Babylon (ca. 538 BCE), they began to rebuild the city. Seen here are a few of the remains of that building project, which was executed over the following…

This maps shows the Persian divisions (also known as provinces, or pahva in Persian) of Israel/Palestine: Samaria, Judah, Idumaea, Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.

This detail photograph is from the 'Sidonian Tomb' at Maresha, so called because of an inscription that says that the deceased were members of a Sidonian colony at Maresha. In this photograph we see a painting of a horse-mounted hunter accompanied by…

This map shows the extent of Alexander the Great's conquests on the eve of his death in 323 BCE. His empire stretched from Macedonia and Northern Greece in the west to the border of India in the east, and from the Black Sea in the north to Egypt in…

This photograph shows the back wall of the Sidonian Tomb at Maresha, called the 'Sidonian' Tomb because of an inscription designates the tomb's deceased as members of a Sidonian colony living at Maresha. Each of the openings on the walls is a…

This round stone tower dates to the Early Hellenistic period and was part of the defenses of the city of Samaria, which is located in the central and northern parts of the Central Hill. It is possible that this tower is evidence of the Greek…

This photograph of the Qumran settlement, taken from a nearby cave, shows the marl terrace where caves 4 and 5 were found, the settlement, and the Dead Sea in the background.

This map shows the divisions of the Hellenistic kingdoms after the Battle of Paneas in 198 BCE. After this point, the land of Israel/Palestine was controlled by the Seleucids. The Ptolemiac Kingdom continued to occupy Egypt and North Africa.

This photograph shows the marl terraces of Qumran, upon which the ancient settlement was built. The Qumran Caves 4 and 5 are pictured near the center of the image. The wadi (dry riverbed) flows with water after fresh rains. The Dead Sea is visible in…

This aerial photograph shows the settlement of Qumran, which is located in the Judaean Desert, which is probably where a group of people known as the Essenes lived between ca. 150 BCE and 72/73 CE. Most scholars think that the people who lived here…

The light colored, curved shape on the left in this photograph is the roof the Shrine of the Book, a building within the Israel Museum in Jerusalem that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls. The roof was designed to look like the lid of one of the jars inside…

After the Dead Sea Scrolls from Cave 1 were found by the Bedouin and taken to Bethlehem, they ended up in front of Eleazar Sukenik, a professor and archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is the man in this picture. He was the first…

This fragment of a Greek inscription inscribed in stone is one of several large stone notices that were erected around the Temple precinct entrances in the Second Temple Period. A complete version of the same text was found in the 19th century, and…

The two men in this photograph, Jum'a Muhammed (on the left) and Muhammed edh-Dhib (on the right) are the two Ta'amireh Bedouin cousins who claim to have discovered the first Dead Sea Scrolls in Cave 1 in 1947. Details of the discovery differ, but…

The jars in this picture are the same type of jar inside of which the scrolls from Cave 1 were found. Its unusual shape suggests that it may have been made specifically for storing scrolls. The same sort of pottery, as well as a potter's kiln, were…

This photograph shows what the limestone cliffs in the region around Qumran look like, which makes it easier to understand how the Dead Sea Scrolls could have been hidden for nearly 2,000 years without being discovered. Cave 1 is in the upper left of…

This inscription was discovered in a tomb in a northern suburb of modern Jerusalem. It is written in Aramaic, a common language of the Second Temple period, but the script, called Paleo-Hebrew, is like the one that was used hundreds of years earlier,…

This aerial photograph, looking east, shows what Herodion now looks like after stones were piled up next to the walls and the towers were knocked down. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, King Herod (37-4 BCE) built this palace on the site…

This photograph shows the walls of the western side of the Old City of Jerusalem. The prominent portion of this wall was built by the Ottomans in the 16th century; however, significant parts of the wall, especially the lower layers, are from the days…

There are a few monumental tombs outside and below the southeast corner of the Old City of Jerusalem, in the Jehoshaphat Valley. The one in this picture is known anachronistically as the Tomb of Absalom (Absalom was the biblical son of David who…

This aerial photograph, looking southeast, shows the mountaintop fortress of Masada, located in the Judaean Desert, which rises 400 feet above the Dead Sea. King Herod (37-4 BCE) built two palaces on top, and the Northern Palace is visible here. Note…

The Great Isaiah Scroll is one of the largest and best-preserved scrolls from the Dead Sea Scrolls and was probably produced around 100 BCE. The entire cache of Dead Sea Scrolls, which were initially found by some Bedouin in caves near the Dead Sea…