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 outlined in light blue, at the south (and lower) end of the Hill of Ophel. During Solomon's reign the city was expanded northward (up the hill), and the Temple was built at the highest point on the hill (the red square within Solomon's city).
Jerusalem: Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock
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 structures on top of the Temple Mount and was used as a prayer house.
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 Rock (in the center of the photo). The Tyropoeon Valley, which runs through the middle of the Old City, is visible as a shadow that runs between the Temple Mount and Mt. Zion at the bottom of the photograph.
Jerusalem: City of David - the Stepped Structure
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 the city in the Second Temple period and the walls and steps in the lower left of the photo belong to a house from the 8th or 7th centuries BCE.
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.
Jerusalem: map of the period between the Jebusites and Hezekiah
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 the Temple Mount complex (built by Herod the Great between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE) are in red. The Canaanite, Jebusite, and Davidic city (i.e., the city prior to the time of king Solomon) is outlined in purple; the Solomonic expansion is outlined in green; and the 8th century BCE expansion of the city is in yellow. Water systems (e.g., the Siloam Tunnel, the Pool of Siloam, and the Gihon Spring) are in blue.
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 west.
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 Jerusalem (in the background). The ruins at the bottom left of the photograph are archaeological remains from the Crusader period.
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 the modern terrace walls that are to the right of the diagonal path), a tower in the eastern wall of the city that was built in the time of Nehemiah (at the crest of the hill, above the terrace walls, casting a triangular shadow), and the modern walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, which were built in the 16th century CE (at the top of the photograph).
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 Mount was outside of the City of David until the time of Solomon. As the highest point in the area it became the location for David's 'high place' altar and Solomon's 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 votive offerings to a goddess. Some similar figurines from a 4th century BCE shipwreck at Shave Zion, on the northern coast of Israel, bore the symbol of the Phoenician goddess Tanit.
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 CE. They slaughter lambs at Passover and burn parts of the sacrifice on a fire much as happened in the Jerusalem Temple courts. And the Samaritans of today still hold their religious festivals on Mt. Gerizim, near the archaeological ruins of their ancient Temple.
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 unknown, but likely has something to do with the fact that the Persians controlled everything east of the Aegean by this time.
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 background. In the middle of the picture a spur of a hill descends from the Old City toward the intersection of the shadows that are created by the hill on which the Old City sits. The Jehoshaphat Valley sits in the shadow that curves around the Old City to the right, while the Hinnom Valley curves around to the left side of the Old City (the valley itself is not clearly visible because of the other hill in the foreground). These two valleys intersect at the bottom of the spurand become the Kidron Valley, which then runs south all the way to the Dead Sea. The City of David sits on the spur itself, between the Jehoshaphat and Hinnom valleys and below the Old City. To the right of the Jehoshaphat Valley is the Mount of Olives with village of Siloam on its slopes. At the top right of the photo you can see the water tower of the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus.
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 Persian version of the biblical name Judah.
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 letter a man named Hananiah writes to the Elephantine Jews to observe the Passover. Hananiah cites the authority of word sent from Darius himself to Arsames, the satrap of Egypt, that the Jewish festivals were to be celebrated on their traditional dates. It is possible that Hananiah was the brother of the Nehemiah that is known from the Bible (see, e.g., Neh. 7:2). The letter was written on both sides of the papyrus (customary for letters, as opposed to contracts, which were only written on one side).
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 very much like those from the Iron II period. That said, pottery forms do change over time, so the lamp in this photograph (in the center) is flatter, wider, and thinner-walled than those found 100 years earlier (in the Iron II period), and the juglet on the left is somewhat trimmer in profile than its Iron II counterparts.
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 Babylon, and he accuses Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king, of neglecting the gods of Babylon and oppressing its people. According to the cylinder, Marduk scoured the lands for a righteous ruler and chose Cyrus because of his good deeds and just heart. Scholars have long noted parallels between this text and Isaiah 40-55, a section of the Bible that was composed at about the same time, in which the biblical prophet Isaiah announces the fall of Babylon (though he says that it is because Yahweh, not Marduk, who chose Cyrus). Cyrus' acceptance and reinstitution of the local religion of Babylon presaged Persian imperial policy that allowed the Jews to return from exile and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. See also Ezra 1:2-4; 6:1-5 and 2 Chronicles 36:23.
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 non-sacred setting).
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 system (note the drain cutting across the street at an angle in the center of the picture) and was supplied by an aqueduct. Shops opened into the street on both sides, and apartments would have stood above the shops.
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 names: a lynx (left), a porcupine (center), and perhaps a rhinoceros (right).
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 showed them to the spiritual leader of the Jacobite Syrian Christians in Jerusalem, Metropolitan (Archbishop) Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, who is the man in this picture. Metropolitan Samuel purchased the scrolls from Kando for about $97.
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 side). Shechem's name was changed to Neapolis ('New City') in the late 1st century CE, and that name is still preserved in the modern Arabic name of the city, Nablus.
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 show a hunting scene.
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 200 years. The square-cornered tower at the upper left (below Nos. 1 and 2) were erected over the rubble of the 7th century BCE houses. The stepped structure immediately north of the tower (No. 3) goes back to early Israelite times, but its upper portion was reused as a post-Exilic fortification and was supplemented by additional new wall elements farther north (to the right of No. 3).
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.
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 a hunting dog spearing a leopard. The Greek inscription above the rider reads 'the white horse of the rider,' and the Greek word above the leopard says 'pardalos,' a variant of the Greek word for the animal ('pardalis').
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 the south.
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 'loculus,' which is where the bodies of the deceased were placed. There were 41 loculi in total.
Samaria Sabaste: Hellenistic Round Tower
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 occupation of the city at the time of Alexander the Great, as this style of tower had been used in Greece in the previous century and it became increasingly popular in later periods.
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.
The Hellenistic Kingdoms after 198 BCE: Map
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 the background.
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 <span class="tooltip" title=' A sect of Jews from the Second Temple period.who lived in many cities in the ancient world. However, t They are best known from the desert settlement of Qumran, which is nearand the nearby the caves in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. As a result, it is believed commonly held that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the particular subset ofthe Essenes who lived at Qumran between 150 BCE and 68 CE. Further Reading '>Essenes lived between ca. 150 BCE and 72/73 CE. Most scholars think that the people who lived here wrote and/or copied the Dead Sea Scrolls. The photo shows not just the settlement of Qumran but also the marl terrace (behind it), where Caves 4 and 5 were located. A total of 11 caves that contained scrolls were found by Bedouin and archaeologists in the 1940s-1950s. The settlement's proximity to these two caves constitutes one of the major pieces of evidence for the connection between the Qumran inhabitants and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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 of which many of the scrolls were found. Many of the scrolls and artifacts found at Qumran are displayed in the exhibition that is inside the building.
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 scholar to see them, and he did so across a barbed wire barricade separating Jewish and Arab sectors in the Old City during the last days of the British mandate over Palestine in 1948. He immediately recognized their importance and was able to procure three scrolls -the War Scroll, the Thanksgiving Psalms Scroll, and the second of two Isaiah scrolls (aka "1QIsaiah B").
Jerusalem: Temple Mount - Greek inscription
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 it is a 'keep out' sign that warns Gentiles (i.e., non-Jews) that they may not proceed beyond the entrance point at the risk of death.
Jerusalem: Bedouin discoverers of Cave 1
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 story goes that they were out shepherding their flock, saw a cave above them, threw a rock into the cave, and heard something break. Upon further investigation they found scrolls and carried three of them back to camp. They discovered four more scrolls in the cave in the following weeks. No other cave yielded as many complete scrolls, and only one other cave (Cave 11) yielded any complete scrolls.
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 discovered in the Qumran settlement, creating another link between the inhabitants of the settlement and the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves.
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 the picture, just beneath the top of the cliff face.
Jerusalem: Inscription from the Tomb of Matthias
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, which is very unusual. The inscription reads, 'I Abba, son of the priest E/leazar, son of Aaron the high [priest], I, / Abba, the oppressed and the persec/uted, who was born in Jerusalem,/ and went into exile in Babylonia and brought [back to Jerusalem] Mattath/iah son of Juda[h], and I buried him in the c/ave, which I acquired by writ.' The remains of an old woman who had been beheaded were buried in the ossuary.
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 where he won a battle in 40 BCE (Ant. 14.360; War 1.265) and recent excavations have found what is most likely his burial place, just as Josephus said (Ant. 17.199; War 1.419, 673): a mausoleum with an ornate coffin on the northern slope of the mound. In the background, the hills of the Judaean Desert descend east toward the Dead Sea, which is visible at the top right.
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 of the Jewish King Herod (1st century BCE). Several courses of a substantial stone wall built on bedrock and running beneath the walls of the Herodian and later periods dates to the days of the Hasmonaean kings (late 2nd-early 1st centuries BCE). This lower wall, in conjunction with information from other excavations, confirms that the city walls extended to their present western limits at least by the time of the Hasmonaean kings.
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 lived and died nearly 1,000 years before this tomb was built). The structure consists of a tomb below and a monument on top that combines several different styles typical of the Late Hellenistic period. The square base was carved out of the bedrock and has column bases and capitals of the Greek Ionic style, but the decoration of triglyphs and rosette metopes above the capital are borrowed from Doric style Greek buildings, and the concave cornice on top comes from Egypt. The combination of features in this building have no exact parallel among other known structures, and its date of construction is unknown, but probably dates to the 1st century BCE or the 1st century CE.
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 series of three rooms that descend from the top of the mountain and are built as if hanging on the cliffs. Masada was abandoned after his death, but rebels who escaped the Roman Army's attack on Jerusalem in 70 CE fled here and were later besieged. On the lower right side of the photo there is what looks like a sandy slope leading almost to the top of the mountain. This is the siege ramp that the Roman Army built over the course of two years (71-73 CE), with which they were finally able to take the fortress.
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 in 1947, were probably hidden by people living in the settlement of Qumran during the Jewish War against the Romans around 70 CE. This particular scroll preserves the text of the biblical book of Isaiah and is one long scroll that was constructed of 17 sheets of carefully prepared leather sewn together with linen thread. It measures 23.5 feet in length. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was one of the most important discoveries ever, not least because it is roughly 1,000 years older than any previously-known Hebrew text of Isaiah.