Browse Items (337 total)

This map shows the expansion of the Hasmonaean kingdom in the period between 160 and 76 BCE. The capital of the kingdom was always in Judaea, colored light blue. The Hasmonaean ruler Jonathan (160-142 BCE) added the yellow portions; his brother Simon…

This photograph shows what one of the Dead Sea Scrolls looked like when it was found (before it was unrolled). Though a scroll in this state is much easier to deal with than others that were broken into thousands of fragments, the 2,000 year-old…

This photograph shows the inside of Cave 1, the first of 11 Judaean Desert caves that were found to contain the Dead Sea Scrolls. Seven intact scrolls came from this cave, including the two oldest copies of the book of Isaiah (they date to the late…

This photograph shows the Arch of Titus, erected near the eastern entrance to the Forum of the city of Rome to honor Titus's defeat of the Jews and the taking of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The inscription at the top reads 'The Roman Senate and People…

This photograph shows the outside of Cave 1, which, according to the common story, is what the two Bedouin shepherd boys saw and threw a rock into, hoping to find a lost goat. Instead, they heard the crash of broken pottery and found the first of the…

This aerial photograph shows the Roman-style forum and adjoining basilica at Sebaste, which is located in the central part of the Central Hill. Herod built this town around 30 BCE in honor of Caesar Augustus (Sebastos is Greek for the Latin word…

This photograph shows in the inside relief of the Arch of Titus, located near the eastern entrance to the Forum in Rome. The arch was erected by emperor Domitian, Titus' brother, to honor and commemorate the defeat of the Jews and the capture and…

This aerial photograph shows the archaeological remains of Herod's palace at Jericho, which is located in the Judaean Desert, on the bank of Wadi Qelt, near the northern tip of the dead Sea. He likely chose it because it is in the Judaean Desert, so…

This photograph shows one of the city streets in Caesarea, which was built by King Herod as a port city on the Mediterranean cost. Two seated statues can be seen facing each other across the street. When Herod's son Archaeleus was deposed in 6 CE,…

This photograph shows the aqueduct that fed the city of Caesarea Maritima, a port city (notice the waves of the Mediterranean on the left) that King Herod the Great built nearly from scratch between 25-13 BCE. The monumental aqueduct stretches north…

A typical coin struck by the Hasmonaean (Maccabean) king Alexander Jannaeus (ruled from 103-76 BCE). The symbol on the left is an anchor and the symbol on the right is a lily flower, which was a symbol for Jerusalem. The inscription around the anchor…

This monumental stairway is all that still exists of the monumental temple that King Herod the Great (37-4 BCE) erected and dedicated to the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus. The temple's foundations were laid directly over the top of the palaces of the…

This photograph shows the remains of a Tobiad palace at Araq el-Amir in modern Jordan (east of the Jordan River). The Tobiads were a Jewish ruling family in the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BCE who, according to the books of 2 Maccabees and…

This aerial photograph shows one of the great engineering feats of antiquity: the enclosed harbor at Caesarea Maritima. The coast of Israel/Palestine has few good natural harbors, so King Herod built one using the state-of-the-art technology of…

The Romans are well known for having built stone-paved roads in order to speed communication and enable the army to move more efficiently. They built an extensive road network that connected the main cities of all of their provinces. This one led…

This building is a mausoleum, i.e. a monumental burial structure, from the 2nd-3rd century CE. Bodies were placed inside the building in sarcophagi (lidded coffins carved out of limestone). Mausolea are extremely rare in Roman Palestine. The two…

This theater is an example of both a new custom and a new architectural form brought eastward by the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Romans. Theater was a Greek invention, but many (if not most) of the Hellenistic 'influences' came to…

This aerial photograph of the southern portion of the city of Caesarea Maritima shows the huge theater that looks out toward the ocean and the setting sun. The land that juts out into the ocean at the lower left corner of the photo is the so-called…

The large stones visible in the foreground of this picture are catapult stones that were used in the Roman siege of the Judaean desert fortress of Masada (in 73 CE). They are obviously very large and very heavy, and were made by the Roman soldiers…

These vessels are typical of those created in the Roman period. Glass bead jewelry is known to have been made as early as 3,000-2,000 BCE, core-formed glass vessels were made beginning around 1,500 BCE, and molded glass vessels are known from the…

This aerial photograph, looking straight down on King Herod's (37-4 BCE) palace at Herodium, clearly shows its double circular defense wall and four towers. Three of the semi-circular towers were defensive, while the completely round tower probably…

This jug, which was found in the Jewish Quarter excavations in Jerusalem, is made of a type of pottery called Eastern Terra Sigillata 'A', or ESA. Its red, lustrous slip is one of the hallmarks of this kind of pottery and is partially the result of…

This aerial close-up of the northern outcropping of the mountaintop fortress of Masada shows the three-tiered Northern Palace that was built by King Herod the Great (37-4 BCE), as well as storehouses and a bath house (at the top of the photograph).…

This photograph shows the synagogue within the fortress of Masada, which is located in the Judaean Desert (note the Dead Sea in the top right of the picture). At the end of the Jewish revolt against Rome in 70 CE, some of the rebels who were part of…

This slide shows the ways and degrees in which the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was expanded in the Hasmonaean (blue area) and Herodian periods (purple area).

This map shows the areas of Israel/Palestine that revolted against Rome in 66 CE (also known as 'the Great Revolt'), as well as the paths of attacks and counter-attacks that occurred during the four years of fighting. Pink areas (Galilee, Perea, and…

This map shows the gradual expansion of the Roman Empire around the Mediterranean between the years 100 BCE and 150 CE. Red areas indicate Roman control in 100 BCE; yellow areas indicate the extent of the empire at the time of Julius Caesar's death…

This bronze coin, which was minted in Rome in 71 CE after the Romans captured Jerusalem, features the profile of the Emperor Vespasian on the recto (left), and, on the verso (right), a Roman soldier standing over a mourning woman who symbolizes the…

This scale model of Second Temple Jerusalem resides at the Israel Museum in modern Jerusalem. This particular photograph is looking west and shows a reconstruction of the Second Temple itself (after King Herod the Great's renovations). The Holy of…

This map shows both the size of Herod's kingdom at the beginning of his reign (the purple areas that include Judaea, Perea, and Galilee) and the regions that were given to him later by his Roman benefactors, mainly the emperor Augustus (the lighter…

This aerial close-up of the northern outcropping of the mountaintop fortress of Masada shows the three-tiered Northern Palace that was built by Herod the Great, as well as storehouses and a bath house (at the top of the photograph). The Jewish…

This plan shows what Jerusalem looked like in the late Second Temple period, prior to the Jewish revolt of 66-70 CE. The Jewish Temple occupied the Temple Mount and the upper-classes lived in the Upper City (known today as Mt. Zion), across the…

This plan shows what Jerusalem looked like in the Byzantine period. The Temple stood in ruins, as did the short-lived Temple of Jupiter that some scholars believe was erected in its place. Multiple churches were built during and after the reign of…

This scale model of Second Temple Jerusalem resides at the Israel Museum in modern Jerusalem. This particular photograph is looking from north to south at the Antonia Fortress, which sat at the north edge of the Temple Mount complex (the Temple…

This photograph shows Phasael's Tower, one of three towers built by King Herod the Great (37-4 BCE) as part of his defensive wall system on the western side of the city of Jerusalem. Herod named the tower after his brother, who was killed by the…

This photograph shows the current day Damascus Gate (one of the northern entrances into the Old City of Jerusalem) and a lower, earlier doorway of the Roman gate of the city. Above the lower arch is a worn inscription that reads 'Colonia Ae[lia]…

This pool, just north of Jaffa Gate, on the west side of the Old City of Jerusalem, is one of several large reservoirs constructed to provide water for the expanding population of Jerusalem during the reign of King Herod the Great (37-4 BCE). It and…

This bronze coin was minted in 131 CE and commemorates the rededication of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina (the inscription is in Latin and reads 'COL[onia] AEL[ia] KAP[itolina]'). The picture in the middle of the coin is the façade of the temple to…

This photograph shows the Damascus Gate (one of the northern entrances into the Old City of Jerusalem) and a lower, earlier doorway of the Roman gate that stood at the same place. Above the arch is a worn inscription that reads 'Colonia Ae[lia]…

These three doorways, which were blocked up after the Crusader period, led from the monumental steps on the south side of the Temple Mount into the Temple Mount and the area called Solomon's Stables. They were built into the base of the Temple Mount…

This stone, with an inscription in Hebrew that reads, 'To the place of trumpeting to an(nounce)…,' was found in excavations at the base of the southwest corner of the Temple Mount (where many things were found that had been thrown off of the Temple…

This plan shows what Jerusalem looked like after the Roman emperor Hadrian (117-138 CE) ordered the establishment of a colony named Aelia Capitolina in 130-132 CE. Some scholars believe that a temple to Jupiter was erected on the site where the…

This monumental staircase, located to the south of the Temple Mount compound (the wall of which is seen in the background) is one of two that led up to the Double and Triple Huldah Gates and into the Temple Mount. They were built as part of King…

An especially high quality of pottery, modeled after Nabataean pottery, was produced in Jerusalem toward the end of the Second Temple period. It is very thin and delicate, with hand-painted designs that are impressive for this period. Note the lack…

This scale model of Second Temple Jerusalem resides at the Israel Museum in modern Jerusalem. This particular photograph shows the towers that were part of a defense system of Jerusalem constructed by Herod the Great at its western border to guard…

This inscription, written in Greek, was found in the City of David, south of the Temple Mount, in 1914. It can be dated, on the basis of script, to the reign of King Herod (37-4 BCE), and its content points to a synagogue having been built in…

This photograph shows the detail of extra-long blocks that King Herod's engineers used to bind the existing exterior walls of the Temple Mount compound to the southern addition that he was building. Some of these blocks measure 39 feet long and weigh…

The mosaic floor, stone-carved table, and stone vessels are from the Jerusalem Jewish Quarter excavations, which revealed the upper-class houses from the Second Temple period. As a result, we can say that, for instance, upper-class Jerusalemites in…

This photograph shows the 'springer' for Robinson's Arch. In 1838, Edward Robinson noticed the strange, curved stones jutting out of the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount (to the upper left of center in this photograph). He realized that these…

In this drawing, the yellow pieces are those that have been found in archaeological excavations and the rest are an architect's reconstruction of how the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount probably looked in the Second Temple period: a…