Browse Items (337 total)

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 map of Jerusalem during time of the Crusades highlights the 3 religious foci in the city: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (the yellow circle) and the two additional crusader structures that were erected on Temple Mount: the crusaders converted…

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 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 map of Jerusalem has a circle around the location of the modern Damascus Gate, one of the northern gates into the Old City of Jerusalem. The modern gate, which was built during the Ottoman period, sits atop a Roman gate that was built in 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 map represents the common scholarly opinion about what the layout of Jerusalem looked like after the Second Temple period. The Jewish Temple has been destroyed and, as many scholars believe, a new temple to the Roman god Jupiter has been erected…

This map shows the demographics of modern Jerusalem by color. The total population is over 800,000 with about 65% Jewish (blue) and 32% Arab (yellow). Pictured also are two important lines: (1) the red-dotted line marks the municipal boundary of the…

This close-up aerial photo of the Old City of Jerusalem depicts the complex of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (at the bottom left, with the two grey domes). In the middle background is the Temple Mount and the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock.…

This photograph shows the earliest fortification structure thus far discovered anywhere in the world. It is a circular tower that was probably built around 7,000 BCE and was connected to a massive stone wall. The position of the tower would have…

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…

The city of Jericho sits in the Jordan River Valley, in the Judaean Desert. It has been continuously inhabited since at least 9,000 BCE. Though the Jordan River is nearby (ca. 5 miles away), the city of Jericho gets its water from a prolific local…

This painting, called Napoleon At The Pesthouse of Jaffa, was painted by Antoine-Jean Gros in 1804. It is a fantastical representation of Napoleon meeting lepers when he arrived at Jaffa after being beat in battle by Jazzar Pasha.

Izz ad din Al-Qassam was a controversial Muslim religious activist in the 1920–30s. He opposed foreign influence on Arab lands and led resistance movements in multiple countries against the French, Italians, British, and Zionists. After immigrating…

This map shows the Rhodes Armistice Line, which delineated Israel from Transjordan after the 1948-1949 War. The armistice line provided Israel with the area that is shaded blue; the West Bank and Gaza were given to Jordan and Egypt, respectively,…

In this view from the hill of Hattin, looking NE, the cliffs of Mt. Arbel and the Sea of Galilee are in the background. The valley to the left of Arbel is the valley that the army of Saladin climbed from Tiberias to the plateau underneath Hattin…

This photograph shows the Horns of Hattin (or Hill of Hattin), which is the large, flat hilltop in the top center of the photograph. It is an extinct volcano that, from the ground, looks like two horns. Recent archaeological research has revealed a…

This image shows a reconstruction of homo erectus (“upright man”). Behind homo erectus is a map of migration routes— beginning in Africa, near the origins of the Nile in Kenya and Uganda, and extending north, along the Syrian-African Rift, through…

This is the skull of homo erectus (“upright man”), the predecessor to the homo sapien. The skull is now held at the University of Michigan, Museum of Natural Sciences. Evidence for homo erectus has been found in Israel at various sites, in particular…

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 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 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 photograph shows the upper panel of the mosaic floor in the center of the fourth century synagogue at Hammat Tiberias. It is the last panel that a worshipper would see/walk across as he walked toward the standing Torah shrine on the southern…

This photograph shows a close-up of the figure at the center of the zodiac that is in the central panel of the mosaic floor in the fourth century synagogue at Hammat Tiberias. This very fine mosaic shows a depiction of the sun god Helios riding his…

This photograph shows the central panel of the mosaic floor in the fourth century synagogue at Hammat Tiberias. The stones running through the middle of it are a later wall that was built in such a way as to destroy the mosaic. At the center of the…

This is a photograph of the synagogue of the ancient city of Tiberias. Several synagogues were built on this site over the centuries; much of the architecture that you see here dates to the 5th-8th centuries CE. The mosaic floor that you will see in…

The Yarmuk River, which is barely visible in the bottom right corner of this picture, marks the southern boundary of the Golan Heights, separating it from the region that is the modern country of Jordan. It flows west out of the Golan Heights and…

This view, looking from the ancient city of Gamla in the Golan Heights southwest toward the Sea of Galilee (visible in the background) illustrates just how quickly the high plateau that makes up the Golan Heights drops down to the Sea of Galilee. The…

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…

Pictured here, looking west towards the Mediterranean, are the modern neighborhoods of Gaza city [population of over 515,000], the largest city in the Palestinian Territories. Gaza is historically significant as a nexus of ancient Mediterranean…

This map shows the region of Galilee. The circle is around the city of Nazareth, where Jesus grew up. The arrows point to the places that Jesus went during his ministry: toward Tyre and Sidon, on the Phoenician coast, and around the Sea of Galilee.

This map shows the 3 political powers in the Mediterranean world on the eve of the Crusades: Catholic Europe (yellow); the Byzantine Empire (orange); and the Arab kingdoms of the Middle East and North Africa (red). The arrows represent the various…

These three figurines are characteristic of Late Bronze Age molded plaque figurines. All tend to be nude and standing in frontal position. They probably represented the Canaanite goddess Ashtaroth in her role as goddess of love and procreation.…

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…

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…

Six of the eleven altars that were found during the excavation of Tel Miqne (biblical Ekron) stand in front of the excavation's directors, Trude Dothan and Sy Gitin. They concluded that Ekron had a primarily Philistine population in the 7th century…

This photograph shows Nebi Musa, located in the Judaean Desert, on the road from Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea. It was used as a stopping point for Muslims on their way from Jerusalem to Mecca. A hospice was in place for this purpose by the end of…

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…

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 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 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 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…

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.

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 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…

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 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 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 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 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.