Ancient Legal Papyri Bring Lost World to Life
Everyone has heard of the ancient Jewish religious scrolls discovered at Qumran […]
Why 1 and 2 Kings?
Why were the books of 1 and 2 Kings written […]
Potent Potables of the Past: Beer and Brewing in Mesopotamia
In ancient Mesopotamia, people knew how to appreciate a good beer […]
A Response to Douglas Petrovich’s “Hebrew as the Language behind the World’s First Alphabet?”
Petrovitch’s blog does not offer any grounds for accepting his ideas. Many scholars have written […]
Hebrew as the Language behind the World’s First Alphabet?
What is the language behind the world’s first alphabet? For over 150 years, scholars have studied the world’s first alphabetic […]
Rabbinic Tales of Roman Origins
What stories do we tell about our own origins? What tales do we recount about the origins of others? What happens when our narratives […]
Do You Get to Keep What You Find?
There is one question that I am asked all the time, which has a short answer but is long on associated implications. The question is simply “Do you get to keep what you find?” […]
The Dead Sea Scrolls at Seventy
This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. […]
Kamid el-Loz – A Short Story in 900 Words
The people of Kamid el-Loz set up urban structures three times. The first and second were built during the Middle Bronze Age II period […]
‘Joy plants’ and the earliest toasts in the Ancient Near East
Inebriation is a cross-cultural habit whose origins can be traced back to Prehistory. But humans are not the only […]
Pirates in Fact and Fiction
When we think of pirates, we think of eye patches, peg legs, and hook hands; the Jolly Roger, drunkenness, wenches, good times, and buried treasure in the form of gold, pearls, and […]
The Practice of Repairing Vessels in Ancient Egypt: Methods of Repair and Anthropological Implications
Before mass production, the practice of repairing ceramic and stone vessels, as well […]
Lights on the “Dark Age”
Societal collapse has always been intriguing. For this reason, scholars have been attracted to the Early Bronze IV of the Southern Levant since the early 20th century. […]
The Generative Power of The Always-Yet-Never-Here Apocalypse
The funny thing about the apocalypse is that it has never happened, and yet it is always in our face and right around the corner. […]
A Rare Discovery at Tel Achziv: A Phoenician Clay Mask Mold from the Ninth Century B.C.E.
Renewed excavations on the tell of Achziv in the north of Israel by a French-Israeli team have led to the discovery […]
How to Use Photography to Document Ancient Sites and Why It’s Important
Archaeological excavation photography (AEP) is a means of documentation vital to both the historical and archaeological record. […]
Masculinities and Third Gender: Gendered Otherness in the Ancient Near East
Their masculine identity was considered to be ambiguous. These persons can be classified as belonging to a third gender. […]
Lessons Learned from a New Collaborative Archaeological Adventure
It all began over a decade ago. Then Director General of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (DoA), Fawwaz Al-Kraysheh, sat me down in his office, looked me straight […]
A Hellenistic Household Ceramic Assemblage from Tell el-Timai (Thmuis), Egypt: A Contextual View
Large deposits of domestic pottery from primary contexts in Ptolemaic Lower Egypt are uncommon and seldom presented in their entirety. […]
A Clay Bread Stamp from Khirbet et-Tireh
The clay bread stamp presented here was found at in a monastic complex dating to the Late Byzantine-Early Islamic period at Khirbet et-Tireh, approximately 16 km northwest of Jerusalem. […]