Browse Items (337 total)

This map shows the compromise plan drawn by a series of United Nations committees to divide the land between its Jewish and Arab residents. Jerusalem (in white, in the middle of the map) was meant to become an international zone under UN…

A tel (sometimes spelled 'tell'), shown in this picture, is a mound holding ancient ruins. Most towns and cities in ancient times were built on the top of a hill because this location offered a defensive advantage. When all or part of a city was…

This aerial view of Acco, looking northwest, shows the Crusader fortification system, including the moat and thick walls. At the heart of the city you can see the Muslim complex of the Gazar Mosque. The port is in the background.

This photo gives a good view of the bay of Acco/Acre, the only natural port site between Tyre and Gaza. In the past it was a central port in Palestine, including in the days of the Crusades. Today it is a modern Israeli/Arab city.

This is a painting of Jazzar Pasha. He was a Serbian Ottoman soldier who defected and created his own mini-kingdom in Galilee that lasted for approximately 30 years. He successfully defended Acco against Napoleon in 1799. This is a painting of him…

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 shrine model and pillar figurines were not actually found together, but have been photographed together because they are cult objects from the end of the Israelite period (8th-7th centuries BCE). The shrine model was made from an inverted water…

Israel is located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, between the Sinai Peninsula, the Arabian Peninsula, and Syria. Other important regions include Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, which make up the northern edge of the Mediterranean, and…

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 miniature clay chair with breasts and head stands 7 inches high and dates to the 12th century BCE. So many fragments of other chair figures such as this were uncovered at Ashdod that they came to be called 'Ashdod' figures. They were…

This incense stand from 10th BCE Philistine Ashdod shows 5 musicians playing double flutes, cymbals, and a lyre. Incense was placed on top and hot coals were placed inside. The incense would burn and release a pleasant smell.

This distinctive type of painted pottery has been found at sites along the southern coast of Palestine from the 12th and 11th centuries BCE, which has led scholars to conclude that this is 'Philistine pottery,' as the Philistines were known to have…

This bronze figurine of Osiris (one of the two traditional Egyptian gods, the other being Isis) was found at Ashkelon and dates to the 4th century BCE. Both Isis and Osiris had become very popular throughout the Mediterranean, and although this…

This map shows the ancient Near East and the expansion of the Assyrian kingdom. The core of the Assyrian kingdom was in Assyria (in the upper right portion of the red area), and the red area depicts the kingdom's expansion under Shalmaneser III…

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 is a famous photograph of Theodor Herzl at the First World Jewish Congress, looking over the Rhine in Basel, Switzerland. He was born in Hungary and became the founding leader of the Zionist movement. In 1895-1896, he wrote a seminal piece Der…

This map shows the battle of Ein Galud (September 1260) between the Mamluks (yellow) and the Mongols (red arrow). The Mamluks came from Egypt and the Mongols from Syria. They met at the great plains near a spring called Ein Galud (green star) in a…

This map highlights the distribution of forces during the Battle of Hattin. The red represents the Crusaders; the yellow represents the Muslim encirclement of their army. To the right is the Northwest tip of the Sea of Galilee and to the north of…

On this map the red circle surrounds the site of the Battle of Hattin, which took place on a small plateau to the west of the city of Tiberias. To the right is the northwest tip of the Sea of Galilee and to the north are the hills and peaks of Upper…

This picture provides a close look at the Galilee region, and highlights the 3 important sites for the Battle of Hattin (on July 4, 1187) between the Crusaders and Saladin. The red circle delineates the port city of Acre, where the Crusaders…

Modern Be’er Sheva is in southern Israel, where the climate is arid. It is the largest city in the Negev, and home to many global Jewish cultural traditions, represented especially by Sephardic (Spanish), Mizrahi (Egyptian, Iraqi), as well as Jews of…

This photograph shows a close-up of one of the panels of the mosaic floor in the 6th century CE synagogue at Beit Alpha. The panel tells the story of the Akedah, or the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19). At the left two servants stand with a beast…

During the crusader period (1095–1291 CE) several European style castles were built in the land of Israel. These are located in geographically strategic locations. The Belvoir Castle, for example, was built by the Knights Hospitaller (a medieval…

This photograph of an archway in the Belvoir castle shows architecture typical of the Crusader period - in this case, pointed arches.

During the Hellenistic period (332-63 BCE) the city of Beth Shean enjoyed a revival and came to be known as Scythopolis, or 'City of the Scythians', perhaps as a result of a unit of the Scythian cavalry in the army of Ptolemy II Philadelphus. During…

This portrait—part of a mosaic floor found in the archaeological excavations at Beit-Shean—depicts Tyche (also known as Fortuna), the goddess of fortune. She wears a crown in the shape of the city walls and holds a horn full with fruit and vegetables…

This photograph shows the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, originally commissioned in the 4th century CE by the emperor Constantine and built under the supervision of his mother Helen over a cave that they identified as the site of the birth of…

This map shows the extent of the British Mandate of Palestine, which includes Palestine and Transjordan. Note that Syria was a French mandated territory after WWI.

This map was published by the Palestine Arab Refugee office and represents developments from 1945–1949. The areas in red show Jewish land owned in March of 1945. The black lines show the proposed 1947 UN Partition Plan (“J” for Jewish State, and “A”…

This aerial view of the ancient harbor of Caesarea Maritima, looking from the Mediterranean sea toward the northeast, gives a feel of what the Coastal Plains are like. They are relatively flat and fertile from the rain runoff. The ports and cities…

This is a south-north aerial view of the ancient port-city Caesarea Maritima, one of King Herod’s most extravagant building projects (22-10 BCE). It was built in honor of Caesar Augustus, and became the capital of Roman Judaea around 6 CE. The…

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…

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…

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…

This aerial view of the area just south of the harbor at Caesarea Maritima shows the Roman theater (approx. 4,000 seats in its final stage) and the remains of the Promontory Palace (in the lower left corner of the photo), both built in the 1st…

This is a photograph of Anwar Sadat, the third President of Egypt. He was the first Arab leader to visit Israel in 1977 and he signed a peace treaty with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1979, following the Camp David Accords. He was…

This page, from a book called Nihayat al-Sul, a Mamluk manual on horsemanship that was published in Cairo in the mid- to late-14th century, offers a visual depiction of Mamluk cavalrymen. Note their spears and light armor.

This photograph shows Winston Churchill (second from right), who was at that time the British Colonial Secretary, meeting with Emir Abdullah of Transjordan (fourth from right) and Sir Herbert Samuel (between them), who was the High Commissioner of…

This image shows an ancient manuscript with Hebrew writing from the 2nd century CE. This document, along with others, were found in the “Cave of Letters,” located in Nahal Hever, a canyon near the Dead Sea. In total, about 14 letters were sent from…

This picture shows a portion of the Central Hill rising up from the Seashore plaines, looking east. Over the Hill is the Dead Sea and the Jordan River. The Central Hill is a rectangular topographic feature that runs north and south through central…

This relief map shows the Coastal Plain, Central Hill, and Jordan Valley in the central part of the country. Jerusalem is just off the map to the south, and Megiddo, on the edge of Galilee, is at the northern edge. In the period before the Israelite…

This landscape is typical of many parts of the Central Hill. To the right one can trace the valley that descends from the peak of the central hills and runs west toward the Mediterranean. The steep slopes on the left are man-made terracing (known in…

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 view of the fields below the Central Hill shows the lush nature of the Coastal Plain between Tel Aviv and Caesarea Maritima. The blue line in the background is the Mediterranean.

This map of the eastern Mediterranean shows the extent of the now-small-sized Crusader state that was preserved after the Battle of Hattin (in 1187 CE). It was a small strip stretching from Acre to Sidon with the city of Tyre (represented by the…

The Dead Sea, which is the lowest place on earth (1,388 feet below sea level), received its name from the fact that its high salinity precludes almost anything from living in it. Water flows into it from various sources, including the Jordan River,…

This image looks east over the Dead Sea towards the Jordanian hills. The Dead Sea is 31 miles long and 9 miles wide. It is situated along the Syrian-African Rift, and is the lowest place on earth, about 1,400 feet below sea level. The Dead Sea is…

The Mesha Stele, also known as the Moabite Stone, is an inscription that was written by Mesha, the king of Moab, in the 9th century BCE. In it he writes that he defeated Omri, the king of Israel. It is the earliest known inscriptional evidence of the…

This photograph shows some common every-day pottery from the Early Bronze Age (3,300-2,000 BCE). Because archaeologists find more pottery sherds than anything else in an excavation, it is the main source of information for dating the architecture of…