Tomb Security in Ancient Egypt: How and Why Did the Egyptians Protect
Tomb Security in Ancient Egypt: How and Why Did the Egyptians Protect
Protecting the dead from abuse is an ancient human instinct but Egypt raised this concern to levels never seen before or since. Tomb robbery […]
A successful Digital Library of the Middle East will present the stories of a diverse group of people whose culture is often misunderstood. We need look no further than the Cradle of Civilization to understand how important […]
In April, visitors to Trafalgar Square could touch a second century Roman triumphal arch – even though they were 4,000 miles away from where the arch was built, in the ancient city of Palmyra, now […]
Since this text associates this blessing with the Israelite priesthood, both Jewish and Christian traditions refer to it as the “priestly blessing.” Jewish and Christian literature shows that the blessing came to hold a central place in the liturgies of both […]
Banqueting is a powerful means of communication. Throughout human history, men and women have always done their best to enjoy food as much as possible in social settings in order to communicate […]
What did the ancient Israelites eat and how did they cook? Unfortunately, the Hebrew Bible doesn’t contain as much information on daily cooking and meals as one would like. The limited amount of information […]
The corrugated steel garage door clamored as it rose. We stood on a dusty road in a small town in Turkey and peered into the darkness of our excavation depot. Anxious to get reacquainted with our artifacts […]
Sometimes a single image can be made to carry more weight than it was intended. For over a century, one painting in the Middle Kingdom tomb complex at Beni Hasan—located […]
There is a dream of anyone working in a museum to find a forgotten object or even an overlooked collection. Amazingly this dream has come true for me, twice. But once […]
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, that is, southern Mesopotamia, during the third millennium BCE. But what is Sumerian, really? A short glance at any modern Sumerian grammar comes across […]
Interest in the archaeology of South East Arabia arose a little more than fifty years ago. The region – the gateway to the Indian Ocean - had previously been left at the margins of Ancient Near East’s history […]
Who was Moses and what was the Exodus? The Book of Exodus contains 40 chapters but the very human desire to express these narratives in imagery has been evident for millennia […]
Manetho had already known about the Exodus tradition, so I doubt whether his work can help solve the riddle of Exodus. As far as I can judge, the Exodus traditions […]
The sun and moon have been in the news lately; Pastor John Hagee has claimed that recent blood moons have biblical significance of cataclysmic proportions concerning modern day Israel […]
Intelligence personnel tend to have a view of events that differs from historians, even other people in government, and certainly from the general public. They are often accused of being realpolitikers […]
The recent celebration of World Toilet Day in Novembershone a spotlight on the variety of modern sanitation systems. Some 35% of the world’s population has no access to clean […]
Many, but not all, excavations demonstrate that text and spade point in different directions. If, therefore, archaeology is allowed to tell its own story some parts […]
In the spring of 1967, a team of archaeologists led by the late Paul Lapp concluded excavations at the small Iron Age site of Tell er-Rumeith in northern Jordan. Nearly 50 years later, his widow, Nancy Lapp, and I published the final report of […]
Many know Harran from the biblical story of Abraham and his family’s wanderings. Today the huge tell of Harran, the mound of the ancient city, measures over one kilometre across and is surrounded by ancient walls […]
Prayer is ubiquitous in human societies, including ancient Mesopotamia, but it often appears alien or distant to our modern sensibilities. A closer look shows that this seemingly arcane topic tells us much about Mesopotamian hopes, fears […]