Ancient Israel

By: Nathan Steinmeyer

Following their whirlwind tour of major museums around the world, the ancient Lod mosaics have returned home. The mosaics—which date to the late third or […]

By: Nathan Steinmeyer

For more than a century, the Hasmonean dynasty (167–37 B.C.E.) extended its power from the Negev in the south to the Galilee in the north. […]

By: Ellen White

The open-air altar shrine, called a bamah (plural bamot), is known through several books of the Biblical canon. Often referred to as “high places” in translations of the Bible, bamot were worship sites that usually contained an altar.

By: Nathan Steinmeyer

Excavations near the town of Rahat in the Negev Desert shed new light on the transition from the Byzantine to Islamic periods in the southern […]

By: Nathan Steinmeyer

“Jacob the convert swears upon himself that any who open this grave will be cursed.” Thus reads a gravestone discovered in the ancient necropolis of […]

By: Nathan Steinmeyer

For much of the past 2,000 years, the Jerusalem aqueduct has provided water to the ancient city, with portions still used well into the 20th […]

By: Nathan Steinmeyer

For more than six centuries, the ancient spice trade route passed through much of the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. Centered on the Nabatean city of […]

By: Biblical Archaeology Society Staff

Does this fragmentary hieroglyphic inscription contain the first mention of Israel? According to a recently published article by Manfred Görg, Peter van der Veen and Christoffer Theis, the name-ring on the right may indeed read “Israel,” and they date it almost 200 years earlier than the reference to Israel on the Merneptah Stele.

By: Nathan Steinmeyer

Evidence of ancient board games in the biblical world dates back millennia. While in some regions these games took on religious significance, they were no […]

By: Marek Dospěl

What does the Bibleclaim about the Israelites’ forced labor for the Pharaoh? Looking for the most plausible match in ancient Egyptian architecture.