Browse Items (15 total)
- Collection: The Persian Period and the Judaean-Samaritan Conflict
Tel Jemmeh: Persian Period Imported Greek Vase
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…
Tags: Greece, Persia, Persian Period, Pottery, Tell Jemmeh
Tel Halif: Persian Period Pottery
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…
Tags: Persian Period, Pottery, Tel Halif
Tel Dor: sculpture of a head
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.
Tags: Hellenistic, Sculpture, Tel Dor
Tel Dor: Persian period figurines
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…
Tags: Cult, Persian Period, Phoenician, Sculpture, Tel Dor
Persian Empire: Map
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…
Tags: Map, Persepolis, Persian Empire, Persian Period, Yehud
Persian Divisions of Israel/Palestine: Map
This maps shows the Persian divisions (also known as provinces, or pahva in Persian) of Israel/Palestine: Samaria, Judah, Idumaea, Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.
Tags: Map, Persian Empire, Persian Provinces
Mt. Gerizim: the Samaritan Temple
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…
Tags: Cult, Mt. Gerizim, Samaritans, Shechem, Temple
Mt. Gerizim: Modern Samaritans
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…
Tags: Cult, Mt. Gerizim, Samaritans
Jerusalem: Persian Period
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…
Tags: City of David, Cyrus, Jerusalem, Persian Period
Jerusalem: Coin of Yehud
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…
Tags: Coin, Jerusalem, Persian Period, Yehud
Elephantine: The Elephantine Papyri
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…
Tags: Elephantine, Papyrus, Persian Period, Yehud
Ceramic Horses and Riders
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…
Tags: Cult, Figurine, Persian Period
Babylon: The Cyrus Cylinder
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…
Tags: Babylon, Cyrus, Cyrus Cylinder, Nabonidus, Persian Period