UNESCO meeting of the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (April 1, 2026). Courtesy UNESCO.

In a decision prompted by a request from the Lebanese government, UNESCO granted enhanced protection status to 39 sites across Lebanon under the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. The designation places these sites under the highest level of legal safeguarding during armed conflict, meaning that any intentional damage could be considered a war crime. UNESCO has committed over US$100,000 for measures on the ground, including training for staff and military personnel.

Included in the press release is a quotation from Lazare Eloundou Assomo, UNESCO’s acting Assistant Director-General for Culture: “Cultural heritage must be protected. It is the backbone of people’s identity, trust and hope, and it carries the promise of peace and recovery. When heritage is destroyed anywhere, moral standards are undermined, social cohesion is eroded, and trust and resilience are jeopardized.”

Amid heightened regional tensions, the move is widely understood as a proactive effort to safeguard Lebanon’s heritage from the threat of escalating conflict. Yet beyond its legal and geopolitical dimensions, this decision highlights the enduring global significance of Lebanon’s past.

For those interested in biblical history, Lebanon holds a special place. The area’s natural resources played a direct role in one of the Bible’s most iconic building projects: According to 1 Kings, the famed cedars of Lebanon were used to construct Solomon’s Temple. Ancient cities along Lebanon’s coast, such as Tyre and Sidon, were central to the Phoenicians, who were renowned seafarers and traders in the biblical world. Both cities also appear as powerful maritime centers in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. The Gospels recount that Jesus traveled in their vicinity (e.g., Matthew 15:21–28). Such references correspond to real locations whose archaeological remains still stand today. For archaeologists and historians, these sites provide crucial context, helping to illuminate the political, economic, and cultural environment in which biblical narratives unfolded.

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Lebanon’s significance extends far beyond its role in biblical history, however. Its lands have been a crossroads of civilization for millennia, shaped by trade, migration, and cultural exchange long before and alongside the rise of empires—Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and Ottoman. Phoenician innovations, including the spread of alphabetic writing, revolutionized human communication. Lebanon has witnessed the development of early Christianity, vibrant Islamic cultures, and the enduring contributions of many other communities, such as the Druze. Lebanon’s rich and diverse past offers profound testament to human creativity and interconnectedness; this long history belongs to the people of Lebanon, but it also resonates globally.

Tyre, one of the UNESCO-protected sites, has withstood centuries of conflict. Famous for enduring sieges by Nebuchadnezzar (early sixth century BCE) and Alexander the Great (late fourth century BCE), its ruins bear witness to both devastation and resilience across generations. Protecting Tyre means preserving the stories, identities, and memories of those who are connected to it, while also offering an opportunity to confront—and, ideally, learn from—the enduring consequences of war. War does not only erode cultural sites; it also erodes the connections people feel toward each other. The call, then, is not just to protect Lebanon’s heritage, but to cultivate empathy in the face of war—to recognize Lebanon’s history, as indeed anyone’s, as all of ours.

Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.

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Related reading in Bible History Daily

Biblical Sidon—Jezebel’s Hometown

Lebanese Cedar—The Prized Tree of Ancient Woodworking

The House of Tyre

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Cedars of Lebanon: Exploring the Roots

The post 39 Sites in Lebanon Gain UNESCO Protection appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The life-sized funerary monument found at Pompeii. Courtesy Pompeii Archaeological Park.

While carrying out excavations in the Porta Sarno necropolis of ancient Pompeii, archaeologists discovered the ruins of a first-century BCE tomb, partially destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. Depicted in high relief on top of the tomb were two life-size statues of a young married couple, presumably the tomb’s owners.

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Commemorating the Dead at Pompeii

The tomb at Porta Sarno is one of more than 50 cremation burials discovered in the necropolis that served the ancient city. Consisting of four separate niches for cremation burials, the tomb was partly destroyed in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, when earthquakes caused part of the structure to collapse. The two stone reliefs were damaged during the collapse, causing the head of the relief of the woman to break off.

A cluster of laurel leaves marking the woman as a priestess. Courtesy Pompeii Archaeological Park.

The reliefs, positioned over two of the niches that likely housed the couple’s remains, were both elegantly carved out of separate stone slabs framed in carved stone, presumably by a master sculptor. Likely true to life, the relief of the man stands 5 feet 7 inches tall, while the wife stands slightly taller at 5 feet 8 inches. The height, however, was not the only lifelike detail, as the man wears a toga, signifying his position as a Roman citizen, while the woman is adorned with rings, bracelets, and earrings. Most remarkable is the cluster of laurel leaves the woman holds in her hand, known as an aspergillum. The aspergillum was a ceremonial instrument used by priestesses to disperse incense inside sacred spaces.

Based on the aspergillum and other details, archaeologists identified the woman as a priestess of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture and motherhood. Priestesses held a prestigious position in Roman society, possibly the highest to which a Roman woman could aspire. It had previously been unknown how important the cult of Ceres was in Pompeii itself. Based on the impressive tomb sculpture, however, it is clear that the cult was an official part of Pompeii’s religious practices.

In front of the tomb, excavators found numerous ceramic and glass vessels for ointments, a mirror, and a coin. Although all of these items had a place in funerary rituals, the many ointment vessels demonstrate that there had been frequent visits to the tomb for the pouring of libations to the dead. While Pompeii has provided many incredible archaeological discoveries over the years, these funerary reliefs are remarkably rare and provide new insight into the religious and funerary life of the city a century before its destruction.

This article was first published in Bible History Daily on April 14, 2025.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Luxurious Private Bath Uncovered at Pompeii

Pompeii Reborn

Excavating Pompeii’s Middle Class

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The Destruction of Pompeii—God’s Revenge?

How to Find a Brothel in Pompeii

Climbing Vesuvius

The post Life-size Statues from Pompeii’s Necropolis appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Make your own mudbrick. Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

While perhaps not all BAR readers have the time and resources to replicate an Iron Age gate or Byzantine mosaic, anyone can make a mudbrick! The recipe is simple—and the ingredients common: As long as you have access to mud, water and straw (or another type of organic material), you, too, can mimic the manufacturing process used by ancient Egyptians—and Israelite slaves—to make mudbricks.

In the summer of 2013, archaeologists at Tell Timai made mudbricks to conserve the ancient walls at their site in the Nile Delta. Robert Littman, Marta Lorenzon, and Jay Silverstein describe the process in “With and Without Straw: How Israelite Slaves Made Bricks,” published in the March/April 2014 issue of BAR.

Their efforts produced great results, and although time-consuming, their procedures can be followed to create mudbricks of your own:

1. Mix topsoil and water to create a thick mud.
2. Add straw. While the composition of the mud will affect the exact proportions, as a general rule, add a half pound of straw for every cubic foot of mud mixture. If you have access to grain chaff (a byproduct of threshing), you can use that as temper. If not, chop straw into very small pieces—called straw chaff—and use that.
3. Knead the mud mixture with your bare feet for four days.
4. Once it has fermented (after four days of kneading), leave the mixture alone for a few days.
5. Knead the mixture again on the day you plan to form your mudbricks.
6. Pour the mud mixture into molds (the shape of your choosing) and let them solidify in the molds for at least 20 minutes.
7. Remove from molds and deposit on a drying floor layered with sand and straw to prevent the bricks from sticking to the floor itself.
8. Let the bricks dry for a week.

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After the bricks have dried, they are ready to be used—whether to build something new or to reconstruct ancient walls!

Take a close look at the process below:

Workers at Tell Timai gathered straw and mixed it with water and mud from nearby fields.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

With their bare feet, the workers at Tell Timai kneaded the mud mixture for four days. Once it had fermented, the mixture was left alone for a few days.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

On the day the mud-bricks were formed, the mud mixture was kneaded again.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

Red dye was added, so that the new mudbricks were a different color than the original, ancient mudbricks.
Photo: Courtesy Jay Silverstein.

The mud mixture was pressed into wooden molds.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

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The bricks took the shape of the molds.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

Still in their molds, the bricks were carried to the drying floor. They were then removed from their molds and left to dry for a week.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

In two days, the team at Tell Timai produced almost 2,000 mudbricks.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

As an experiment, they made some bricks without straw. These bricks were fragile and easily broken, demonstrating the importance of straw in brickmaking. When Pharoah stopped giving the Israelite slaves straw for their bricks, it was still necessary for them to gather it on their own (Exodus 5:6–8, 10–13).
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

The bricks with straw dried well and were significantly sturdier than the bricks without straw.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

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BAR author Marta Lorenzon injected mortar with a syringe into the ancient walls at Tell Timai to ready the walls for conservation.
Photo: Courtesy Jay Silverstein.

With their large supply of mudbricks, the team at Tell Timai conserved and refortified the ancient walls at their site.
Photo: Courtesy Jay Silverstein.

BAR author Marta Lorenzon joins in the action.
Photo: Courtesy Jay Silverstein.

The layers of mudbricks and mortar are flush against the ancient structures.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

The team’s wall continues to grow—brick by brick, row by row.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

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It is easy to see the difference between the new red mudbricks and the ancient ones in the reconstructed walls.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

The new mudbricks reinforced the ancient walls.
Photo: Courtesy Jay Silverstein.

Tell Timai’s walls—both the new mudbricks and the original—were encased in mud plaster.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

BAR authors Jay Silverstein, Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon stand in front of the mudbrick walls at Tell Timai—now properly conserved for posterity.
Photo: Courtesy Robert Littman and Marta Lorenzon.

Subscribers: Read more about mudbricks in the ancient world in “With and Without Straw: How Israelite Slaves Made Bricks” by Robert Littman, Marta Lorenzon, and Jay Silverstein in Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2014.

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Watch videos from the 2014 excavations at Tell Timai:

Week One: Tell Timai archaeologists provide a look at their dig site and their research goals for the 2014 season while giving viewers a taste of travel in Egypt and the atmosphere on an archaeological field crew.

Week Two: Meet Kufti archaeologists, explore ancient streets and the preserved mudbricks that shaped them and dive into the port of Alexandria with rare underwater video footage.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in February 2014.

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Pharaoh’s Brick Makers

A Canaanite Corbelled Vault

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Brick by Brick

The post How to Make a Mudbrick appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

DID LAMECH KILL CAIN? How did Cain die? This 12th-century column capital from the Cathedral of Saint-Lazre in France depicts Lamech hunting with his son Tubal-Cain. They accidentally shoot and kill Cain, mistaking him for a wild animal. Photo: Cathedral Museum of St. Lazare, Autun, Burgundy, France/The Bridgeman Art Library.

What happened to Cain in the Bible? In the Book of Genesis, we are told about Cain’s birth, his violent act of fratricide and his subsequent exile. We learn that he married and had descendants, but the Bible is strangely mute about his death.

How did Cain die? If he did not die naturally, who killed Cain? In the Bible, do we have any clues? John Byron, professor of New Testament at Ashland Theological Seminary, tackles these questions in his Biblical Views column “Did Cain Get Away with Murder?” which appears in the May/June 2014 issue of BAR.

Byron explains that ancient interpreters were not afraid to change the story of Cain in the Bible to fit with their sense of justice, ensuring that he was adequately punished for killing his brother Abel. One of the most popular interpretations credits Lamech—Cain’s great, great grandson—with killing Cain.
Lamech admits to having killed a man in Genesis 4:23–24. Ancient interpreters believed that this passage sheds light on who killed Cain in the Bible, and they identified the man Lamech killed in verse 23 with Cain.

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How and why did Lamech kill Cain? According to the Lamech legend—which was based on Genesis 4 but which evolved over the centuries—Lamech accidentally killed Cain while he was hunting with his son Tubal-Cain. In the legend, Lamech is a blind but skilled hunter, and Tubal-Cain accompanies him to direct his bow and arrow. Hearing a noise in the bushes, they shoot what they think is a wild animal. Upon investigation, though, they discover that Lamech’s arrow has killed Cain.

In this version of events, how did Cain die? Like an animal. Justice is served.

However, the Lamech legend is just one of the ways ancient interpreters sought to answer the question: How did Cain die? Did Cain die in the flood? Did he die naturally? Did Lamech kill Cain? If Lamech did not, then was there someone else who killed Cain? In the Bible, we will not find a definitive answer.

To find out more about the Lamech legend and other interpretations that seek to explain what happened to Cain in the Bible, read the full Biblical Views column by John Byron, professor of New Testament at Ashland Theological Seminary, in the May/June 2014 issue of BAR.

Subscribers: Read the full Biblical Views column “Did Cain Get Away with Murder?” by John Byron, professor of New Testament at Ashland Theological Seminary in the May/June 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 28, 2014.

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Was Cain Angry or Depressed?

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The post What Happened to Cain in the Bible? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Divine love bringing an end to an illicit trust between Cupid and the Devil. An artistic representation of love being corrupted and God bringing it to an end. Divine Love Conquering Earthly Love by Giovanni Baglione. Public Domain.

Sandwiched between the genealogies of Adam’s descendants and the tale of Noah’s flood are a few enigmatic verses that leave many of us scratching our heads and wondering what it’s all about:

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in[a] man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. (Genesis 6:1–4)

More often than not it’s just easier to shrug our shoulders and move on to the story of Noah and his family. But the questions remain all the same: Who are these “sons of God” and their Nephilim children, and why would the author of Genesis choose to mention them at all?

In the text we discover that the “sons of God” (Hebrew Benai-Elohim) succumbed to their passions for the “daughters of Men” and had children with them. These offspring were known as the Nephilim (literally, “the fallen ones”), and they were the “mighty ones of old” and “men of renown.”

Though centuries of rabbinical and church tradition would say otherwise, the audience to whom the text was intended would have understood the “sons of God” to be the members of the divine assembly mentioned throughout the literature of the ancient Near East, including the Bible (see Job 6:1; Job 38:7; Psalm 29:1; Psalm 82). In the biblical texts, the “sons of God” are usually described as lesser heavenly beings in the service of the Most High. In the texts of the cultures that surrounded Israel, like the Canaanite literature found at Ugarit, the “sons of God” similarly appear as divine beings in the service to the king of the gods, El, and his queen, Asherah. They include the likes of Baal, Anath, Astarte, Yam, and Mot. The audience of Genesis would have definitely understood these so-called “fallen ones” to be the offspring of celestial beings and human women. (Coincidentally the root of the word Nephilim is used elsewhere for miscarriages and other strange births. Exodus 21:22)

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The reason the author chose to mention the Nephilim can be found in their description, which translated means something to the effect of “ancient champions who made a name for themselves.” Every society has myths and legends about gods having children with humans who become epic heroes and legendary kings. Many of us in the West are familiar with the exploits of Hercules, Achilles, and Perseus, and the Classical versions of their tales have been told and retold for well over two thousand years. However, many famous Classical stories are merely reimagined from earlier Near Eastern ones. There was a vast corpus of heroic literature available from Babylon to Egypt, including such tales as the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the ancient Israelites would have likely known these stories.

Readers of the Bible will be quick to point out the obvious problems with the Israelites’ enjoying the epic tales of demigods’ slaying monsters—they glorify a pagan culture filled with a slew of gods and goddesses far removed from the one true holy God of Israel. And just as my eighth grade Bible teacher thought my deep love of Star Wars was going to lead me into witchcraft one day, the religious leaders of ancient Israel likely feared the stories of Gilgamesh and other demigods would lead the people into idolatry. Unlike my teacher, however, the leaders of Israel did not threaten school detention. Instead, they chose a much more diplomatic solution to the Israelites’ love of stories about epic heroes. They gave an orthodox explanation for them and wove them into the context of their own narrative.

Instead of denying the existence of famous heroes altogether, the author labels them “the fallen ones” and all but blames them for the utter depravity that fell upon the world and necessitated the flood. As to how they corrupted the world we can only guess, but the concept of “making a name for oneself” is clearly at odds with the worldview found within the pages of the Bible, specifically the Book of Genesis, and calls to mind the human pride and wickedness that began in the Garden of Eden. Just after the flood, in Babel (Babylon), a place with a long association with epic tales and legendary kings, human beings decided to band together and build a tower to heaven to make a name for themselves (Genesis 11:1–9).

Were they trying to create their own legends to cement themselves in history alongside the Nephilim? We can only speculate. What we do know is that it isn’t the son of a god or goddess that steps onto the biblical stage soon after the folly of Babel, but a childless man with no strength or glory to speak of. His gift is not the power given by his divine lineage, but a promise of a future for his descendants. And it is God, not the man, who gives him a new name that will be remembered throughout the generations—Abraham.

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The legacy of the Nephilim did not end with the flood, however, as the biblical texts go on to attribute them as the ancestors of some of the Israelites’ most feared enemies (Numbers 13:33).

Another feared group that was legendary by the time the Israelites settled the land was the Rephaim, who were known to be powerful giants (Deuteronomy 2:11, 20, 3:11; Joshua 12:4, 13:12). It’s unknown if the Israelites originally equated the Rephaim with the Nephilim, but it is clear that by the Intertestimental period (the fourth–first centuries B.C.E.) the Nephilim were thought to be the monstrous giant offspring of fallen angels and humans, as described in the pseudographical Book of Enoch and Jubilees, as well as others found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The authors of the Greek Septuagint even chose to use the word gigantes in their translation of Genesis 6, a word that also invokes the monstrous Titans—the legendary giants that were destroyed by the gods in Greek myth. And like the Titans of old, the legend of the Nephilim only continues to grow in modern times.

To discover more about the “sons of God,” and learn of other interpretations, read Jaap Doedens’s full article “Exploring the Story of the Sons of God,” published in the Summer 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Subscribers: Read the full article, “Exploring the Story of the Sons of God,” by Jaap Doedens in the Summer 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This story was first published in Bible History Daily in July, 2020

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Who Are the Nephilim?

On the Shoulders of Giants

The Aramaic Afterlives of Genesis’s Giants

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

When the Sons of God Cavorted with the Daughters of Men

Did Eve Fall or Was She Pushed?

Hercules in Galilee

Adam Meets the Evil Archon

The post The Nephilim and the Sons of God appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Dated to c. 1219 B.C.E., the Merneptah Stele is the earliest extrabiblical record of a people group called Israel. Set up by Pharaoh Merneptah to commemorate his military victories, the stele proclaims, “Ashkelon is carried off, and Gezer is captured. Yeno’am is made into nonexistence; Israel is wasted, its seed is not.” Ashkelon, Gezer and Yeno’am are followed by an Egyptian hieroglyph that designates a town. Israel is followed by a hieroglyph that means a people. Photo: Maryl Levine.

Is the biblical Exodus fact or fiction?

This is a loaded question. Although biblical scholars and archaeologists argue about various aspects of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, many of them agree that the Exodus occurred in one form or another.

The question “Did the Exodus happen” then becomes “When did the Exodus happen?” This is another heated question. Although there is much debate, most people settle into two camps: They argue for either a 15th-century B.C.E. or 13th-century B.C.E. date for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt.

The article “Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History” from the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review¹ wrestles with both of these questions—“Did the Exodus happen?” and “When did the Exodus happen?” In the article, evidence is presented that generally supports a 13th-century B.C.E. Exodus during the Ramesside Period, when Egypt’s 19th Dynasty ruled.

The article examines Egyptian texts, artifacts and archaeological sites, which demonstrate that the Bible recounts accurate memories from the 13th century B.C.E. For instance, the names of three places that appear in the biblical account of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt correspond to Egyptian place names from the Ramesside Period (13th–11th centuries B.C.E.). The Bible recounts that, as slaves, the Israelites were forced to build the store-cities of Pithom and Ramses. After the ten plagues, the Israelites left Egypt and famously crossed the Yam Suph (translated Red Sea or Reed Sea), whose waters were miraculously parted for them. The biblical names Pithom, Ramses and Yam Suph (Red Sea or Reed Sea) correspond to the Egyptian place names Pi-Ramesse, Pi-Atum and (Pa-)Tjuf. These three place names appear together in Egyptian texts only from the Ramesside Period. The name Pi-Ramesse went out of use by the beginning of Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period, which began around 1085 B.C.E., and does not reappear until much later.

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These specific place names recorded in the biblical text demonstrate that the memory of the biblical authors for these traditions predates Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period. This supports a 13th-century Exodus during the Ramesside Period because it is only during the Ramesside Period that the place names Pi-Ramesse, Pi-Atum and (Pa-)Tjuf (Red Sea or Reed Sea) are all in use.

A worker’s house from western Thebes also seems to support a 13th-century Exodus. In the 1930s, archaeologists at the University of Chicago were excavating the mortuary Temple of Aya and Horemheb, the last two pharaohs of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty, in western Thebes. The temple was first built by Aya in the 14th-century B.C.E., but Horemheb usurped and expanded the temple when he became pharaoh. (He ruled from the late 14th century through the early 13th century B.C.E.) Horemheb chiseled out every place where Aya’s name had been and replaced it with his own. Later—during the reign of Ramses IV (12th century B.C.E.)—the Temple of Aya and Horemheb was demolished.

During their excavations, the University of Chicago uncovered a house and part of another house belonging to the workers who were tasked with demolishing the temple. The plan of the complete house is the same as that of the four-room house characteristic of Israelite dwellings during the Iron Age. However, unlike the Israelite models that were usually constructed of stone, the Theban house was made of wattle and daub. It is significant that this house was built in Egypt at the same time that Israelites were constructing four-room houses in Canaan. The similarities between the two have caused some to speculate that the builders of the Theban house were either proto-Israelites or a group closely related to the Israelites.

Is this a proto-Israelite house? This plan shows the 12th-century B.C.E. worker’s house in western Thebes next to the Temple of Aya and Horemheb. The house is undoubtedly a four-room house. In Canaan, the four-room house is considered an ethnic marker for the presence of Israelites during the Iron Age. Is the Biblical Exodus fact or fiction? This favors “fact,” so the question becomes, “When did the Exodus happen?” The presence of such a house in Egypt during the 12th century B.C.E. seems to support an Exodus during the Ramesside Period. Photo: Courtesy of Manfred Bietak.

A third piece of evidence for the Exodus is the Onomasticon Amenope. The Onomasticon Amenope is a list of categorized words from Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period. Written in hieratic, the papyrus includes the Semitic place name b-r-k.t, which refers to the Lakes of Pithom. Even in Egyptian sources, the Semitic name for the Lakes of Pithom was used instead of the original Egyptian name. It is likely that a Semitic-speaking population lived in the region long enough that their name eventually supplanted the original.

Watch full-length lectures from the Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination conference, which addressed some of the most challenging issues in Exodus scholarship. The international conference was hosted by Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego in San Diego, CA.

Another compelling piece of evidence for the Exodus is found in the biblical text itself. A history of enslavement is likely to be true. The article explains:

The storyline of the Exodus, of a people fleeing from a humiliating slavery, suggests elements that are historically credible. Normally, it is only tales of glory and victory that are preserved in narratives from one generation to the next. A history of being slaves is likely to bear elements of truth.

Exodus: Fact or fiction? This four-room house from Izbet Sartah, Israel, shares many similarities with the 12th-century B.C.E. worker’s house uncovered in western Thebes. Photo: Israel Finkelstein/Tel Aviv University.

So, is the biblical Exodus fact or fiction? Scholars and people of many faiths line up on either side of the equation, and some say both. Archaeological discoveries have verified that parts of the biblical Exodus are historically accurate, but archaeology can’t tell us everything. Although archaeology can illuminate aspects of the past and bring parts of history to life, it has its limits.

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To learn more about evidence for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, read the full article “Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Subscribers: Read the full article “Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 10, 2016.

Notes

1. This BAR article is a free abstract from Manfred Bietak’s article “On the Historicity of the Exodus: What Egyptology Today Can Contribute to Assessing the Biblical Account of the Sojourn in Egypt” in Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider and William H.C. Propp, eds., Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture and Geoscience (Cham: Springer, 2015). In Bietak’s article, the scholarly debate about the archaeological remains and the onomastic data of Wadi Tumilat is more elaborately treated.

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Iron blooms found in the Dor Lagoon, south of Haifa along the Carmel Coast in Israel. Courtesy Tzilla Eshel et al., “Earliest Iron Blooms Discovered off the Carmel Coast Revise Mediterranean Trade in Raw Metal ca. 600 BCE,” npj Heritage Science 14 (2026), CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0. Photo by Marko Runjajić.

In the ancient world, producing iron was an intricate, labor-intensive process. Iron ore was removed from the earth and then heated with charcoal in a furnace, stopping just short of melting the metal completely. This process, called smelting, caused the iron to separate from impurities, forming a porous, spongy mass called a bloom. Smiths would then hammer the bloom repeatedly to remove the impurities (the “slag”), leaving bars of iron that could be forged into tools, weapons, and other objects.

Historians have assumed that blooms were worked immediately after smelting in antiquity, but a new study off the Carmel coast reveals something surprising: some blooms were left intact, intended not for immediate forging but for transport and trade. This changes how scholars understand the movement of iron through early Mediterranean economies in the age that takes its name from this metal: the Iron Age.

The Iron Age (c. 1200–586 BCE), which followed the Bronze Age and the Stone Age, serves as the historical backdrop for much of the Hebrew Bible, including the rise of early Israelite society and neighboring kingdoms. These periods are named for the dominant materials used for weapons and tools, reflecting how advances in technology reshaped human life. In the Stone Age, implements were made from stone; in the Bronze Age, humans learned to alloy copper with tin to produce stronger, more versatile tools; and in the Iron Age, iron became the defining material, driving major technological, economic, and social transformations.

Iron was stronger and more available than bronze, allowing smelting to spread beyond elite centers. Yet, it did not come into widespread use until later because it was more difficult to extract and work. Smelting iron requires higher, more controlled temperatures than bronze, and the process produces blooms as opposed to fully molten metal. Once iron extraction, smelting, and forging were mastered, however, iron rapidly overtook bronze as the dominant material: It revolutionized agriculture with more efficient plows and axes, transformed warfare through the mass production of weapons, and enabled expanded settlement through improved abilities in construction.

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The team behind this discovery was excavating in the Dor Lagoon, a shallow coastal site near the ancient harbor of Tel Dor, when they uncovered nine iron blooms, each weighing between 11 and 22 pounds. Unlike most iron artifacts from the ancient world, these blooms were unworked and still encased in slag. The scholars found no signs of hammering, indicating that these blooms had never undergone the expected processes of ironworking aside from being smelted.

Fortuitously, one of the Dor blooms had a charred oak twig embedded in its slag. This enabled researchers to perform radiocarbon dating—a method only possible when carbon is present, such as in organic matter—and determine that the plant was last alive in the late seventh to early sixth centuries BCE. This provides a close estimate for when the bloom was smelted. Further, the slag adhering to the bloom’s surfaces acted as a protective shell, shielding the iron from corrosion during centuries underwater. This cargo seems to contain the earliest securely dated industrial iron products yet identified in the Mediterranean.

The Dor evidence demonstrates that iron blooms were transported as a tradable commodity. The recent study suggests iron moved along maritime routes well before being crafted into finished goods. Moreover, the Dor cargo was found with Cypriot and Aegean‑style amphorae, hinting at broader Mediterranean trade connections between the Levant, Cyprus, and the Aegean.

Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.

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Adoration of the Golden Calf by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). Public Domain.

Why did the Israelites make a golden calf? It’s a question that has puzzled readers of the biblical Book of Exodus for millennia.

As Exodus tells us, after Yahweh is victorious over the gods and armies of Egypt and delivers the Israelites from slavery, he brings them to Mt. Sinai to initiate a covenant. The covenant process is initiated by a theophany in which God himself descends upon the trembling mountain in fire and smoke. Before this happens, however, the people are given three days to consecrate themselves and prepare for the divine experience, lest they perish. Once God descends in his fiery magnificence, he speaks the famous Ten Commandments to the gathered Israelites. The experience is so terrifying that the people no longer want to hear the voice of God and plead with Moses to talk to God on their behalf. Moses complies and the laws of the covenant that began with the Ten Commandments continue.

The final portion of the covenantal promise has a particularly militaristic air to it, in which God promises to send an angel to act as a divine general that will bring the Israelites a victory over their enemies. Moses writes all the stipulations of the covenant down and then returns to read everything to the people, who agree fully to God’s terms and make the proper blood sacrifices. The ceremony is finalized with a sacrificial meal eaten by Aaron, his sons, and the 70 elders. Afterwards, Moses leaves his brother and the elders to ascend to the mountain’s summit so he can receive the sacred documents written in stone. Terrifying fire and smoke cover the mountain again and Moses doesn’t return (Exodus 24:15–18).

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The reader stays with Moses as God gives him instructions for the construction of the Tabernacle and other sacred items, including the Ark of the Covenant. Meanwhile, the Israelites have no idea what has been going on over the past 40 days while God’s terrifying presence has been consuming the mountain. Having been told from the beginning how dangerous the situation was, they naturally assumed that Moses had fallen afoul of God’s wrath and died. What follows is the infamous Golden Calf episode in which the people beg Aaron to make them a god to worship.

It is easy to read this story and pass judgment on the faithless Israelites who quickly fall into idolatry after having just promised not to do so. Although a grievous covenantal transgression to be sure, it is also understandable. They had been promised a new land and that divine power would march before them and bring them victory over their enemies. After agreeing to the covenant, they are immediately left without leadership or answers. The man who had stood up to the mighty pharaoh and led them out of Egypt was seemingly dead. What were they to do? After generations of living in Goshen, they were now nomads, lost in the deserts of Sinai with no home to call their own. How could they achieve great victories and gain the lands that Yahweh had promised? They did what any people in that day would have done—they took matters into their own hands.

Thanks in large part to the famous scene in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, we picture the Israelites fashioning their golden calf to look like many of the bovine idols known from Egypt—the Apis bull in particular. This depiction seems all the more likely considering that they had just spent many generations living among the Egyptians, with some Israelites perhaps even being employed as idol makers. Aaron seems to already have the knowledge of how to construct the golden calf when the people come to him with their request. We also aren’t told much about the religious beliefs of the Israelites during their years in Egypt. Many assume that they kept to the ancestral religion of the patriarchs, passing on the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but it is just as likely that many engaged in the worship of Egyptian deities as well.

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Stela from the site of Arslan Tash in northern Syria that depicts the storm god Adad astride a bull. Reign of Tiglath-Pileser III (744–727 BCE). Credit: John G. Drummond.

Baal iconography would have been very familiar to the Israelites, even during the time of their Egyptian sojourn. During the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000–1550 BCE), Canaanites from the southern Levant took over Egypt and settled at their new capital of Avaris in the Nile Delta. From ancient texts, we know the Egyptians lamented that their new rulers did not worship Amun-Re but instead venerated Baal-Hazor, whom they identified with the Egyptian god Set. Until that point, Set was often considered a chaotic enemy of the gods but in the centuries following the Hyksos period, his image softened. Pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty, including Ramesses II and his father Seti I, even had a particular fondness for the deity. Regardless of when in time one places the Exodus, it is clear that the Hyksos introduced a form of Baal worship into Egypt, particularly in the region of the Nile Delta, and that the Israelites would have been familiar with Baal and perhaps even engaged in his worship. They might have even known of the connection between the Hyksos, their god, and the lands of Canaan—the very lands they were meant to conquer. With this in mind, deciding to fashion a golden calf to be used as the footstool of Yahweh seems like a natural conclusion. Their god should be worshiped in the manner of the powerful gods of Canaan.

Bronze bull discovered at the 12th-century BCE cult site of Dhahrat et-Tawileh in the West Bank. Credit: Nathaniel Ritmeyer/Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites frequently struggle with Baal worship. The first instance occurs just after the 40 years of wandering while they are camped in the plains of Moab (Numbers 25). Apart from a few bright spots, the cycle of idolatry continues until the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century BCE. From the prophets, we can even see that the people sometimes considered Baal and Yahweh to be the same deity (Hosea 2:16–17). Could this struggle have existed from the very beginning, even before the events of Sinai? Like the Hyksos, could some of the early Israelites have been worshiping Baal alongside the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or did they perhaps equate the two? Considering the golden calf episode, it certainly seems plausible.

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BAS Library Members: Read the full article “Between Moses and the Ancestors: Israelite Religion in Egypt” by Ralph K. Hawkins in the Spring 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This article was first published in Bible History Daily on April 9, 2025.

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The Golden Calf

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Moses

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Alexandre Cabanel, CC0,, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Nephilim, the product of the sons of god mingling with the daughters of Adam, the great biblical giants, “the fallen ones,” the Rephaim, “the dead ones”—these descriptions are all applied to one group of characters found within the Hebrew Bible. Who are the Nephilim? From where do the “heroes of old, the men of renown” come?

Genesis 6:1–4 tells the readers that the Nephilim, which means “fallen ones” when translated into English, were the product of copulation between the divine beings (lit. sons of god) and human women (lit. daughters of Adam). The Nephilim are known as great warriors and biblical giants (see Ezekiel 32:27 and Numbers 13:33).

It was once claimed that the mating of the sons of god and the daughters of Adam that resulted in the Nephilim caused the flood, and this caused the Nephilim to have a negative reputation. This was believed because the next verse (Genesis 6:5) is the introduction to the flood narrative and because their name means “fallen ones.” It is unlikely that this interpretation is correct because Genesis 6:4 presents nothing but praise for the Nephilim and no criticism is present. In addition, the name “fallen ones” is likely a reference to their divine paternity transforming—falling—into the human condition, albeit an almost superhuman condition.

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Genesis 6, Ezekiel 32, and Numbers 13 are the only passages that mention the Nephilim by that term. So where do the names Rephaim and “the dead ones” originate? The first thing to recognize is that these are not two separate titles, but rather a name, Rephaim, and a meaning, “dead ones.” The Bible refers to two groups as the Rephaim. The first are dead people who have achieved an almost divine status, similar to the concept of Saints. The second is a term that is applied to races of biblical giants. It is this second usage that is often conflated with the Nephilim.

The Rephaim appear in Deuteronomy 2:11; 3:11; 2 Samuel 21:19 and Joshua 11:22 and almost always take the form of one member of the Rephaim (Anaqim, Og, Goliath) being in opposition with Israel or its representative. In this sense, the Rephaim live up to their name, as their purpose in each narrative is to die. The juxtaposition of the mighty biblical giants defeated by the underdog, God’s chosen, is foreshadowed in the very name attributed to these characters.

Ellen White, Ph.D. (Hebrew Bible, University of St. Michael’s College), formerly the senior editor at the Biblical Archaeology Society, has taught at five universities across the U.S. and Canada and spent research leaves in Germany and Romania. She has also been actively involved in digs at various sites in Israel.

This Bible History Daily article was originally published on November 19, 2014.

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Does the Church of the Redeemer (pictured here) provide evidence that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the authentic site of Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified? Where is Golgotha today in Jerusalem?

According to the New Testament, Golgotha was the name of the site where Jesus was crucified. Where is Golgotha located in Jerusalem? In their Archaeological Views column “Golgotha: Is the Holy Sepulchre Church Authentic?” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Marcel Serr and Dieter Vieweger discuss past and current investigations into the site where Jesus was crucified.

Where is Golgotha today? The exact location where Jesus was crucified is disputed. In the fourth century C.E., the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built at the site of Golgotha as identified by Roman emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena. Scholars began to question this identification in the 19th century, however, since the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is inside the city walls of the present-day Old City of Jerusalem. Golgotha would have to have been located outside the city in accordance with Roman and Jewish customs of the time. The Gospels, too, seem to suggest that Jesus was crucified outside of the city (Mark 15:20; Matthew 27:31ff; John 19:17ff). So where is Golgotha located?

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Where is Golgotha? Was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site where Jesus was crucified, located within or outside of the city walls when it was built in the fourth century C.E.? The drawing here depicts the present-day Old City of Jerusalem (shaded in gray) as well as the proposed location of the so-called Second Wall that would have stood during Jesus’ time. Drawing: Leen Ritmeyer.

It’s important to note that the current Old City walls are not the ones from Jesus’ time. As Serr and Vieweger note in their Archaeological Views column, “Efforts to find a so-called Second Wall south of the Holy Sepulchre Church that had served as the northern wall of Jerusalem in Jesus’ time (and would have moved the site of the church outside the city in Jesus’ time) proved elusive—although Josephus, the knowledgeable first-century Jewish historian, does refer to such a wall (The Jewish War 5.146).”

Eminent scholars Conrad Schick and Louis-Hugues Vincent thought they had found the Second Wall in 1893 when a wall was uncovered during the construction of the Church of the Redeemer just south of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. For almost a century this seemed to solve the problem of authenticity—the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was located at Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified!

But in the 1970s, German archaeologist Ute Wagner-Lux of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology in Jerusalem excavated under the Church of the Redeemer and determined that this wall could not have been the Second Wall. Why? “This wall was only five feet thick—far too narrow to be a city wall,” say Serr and Vieweger. So the search began anew.

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To learn what evidence leads Serr and Vieweger to believe the Church of the Holy Sepulchre could be the authentic location of Golgotha, read their full Archaeological Views column “Golgotha: Is the Holy Sepulchre Church Authentic?” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

BAS Library Members: Read the full Archaeological Views column “Golgotha: Is the Holy Sepulchre Church Authentic?” by Marcel Serr and Dieter Vieweger in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on May 23, 2016.

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The post Where Is Golgotha, Where Jesus Was Crucified? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.