Annual of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology – serie

Tel Maresha is located in the foothills of Israel's Judaean Mountains. It was established in the Iron Age II (circa 700 BCE) and is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Josh 15:44; I Chron. 2:42). But it was mainly a Hellenistic-period town—a major Idumean political and administrative centre. One of the unique and fascinating aspects of Maresha is its subterranean city—hundreds of underground galleries and chambers filled to the gills with artifacts. This volume is a report of the excavations of one of these rich subterranean complexes—SC 169—which contained a full corpus of Hellenistic pottery forms, both local and exotic altars, figurines, amulets, seals and seal impressions, hundreds of inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic, coins, jewelry and much more. These finds tell the story of an affluent cosmopolitan society comprised of Idumeans, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Jews, who lived together in a vibrant urban setting until the city was destroyed, probably by the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom in 104 BCE.

In this comprehensive final report David Ilan and 12 other contributing authors present the rich finds from the Iron Age I (circa 1200-950 BCE) levels at Tel Dan, located at the headwaters of the Dan tributary of the Jordan River, in the northeastern Hula Valley in northern Israel. The early Iron Age levels at Tel Dan have particular resonance in the light of their perceived association with the biblical account of the migration of the tribe of Dan, described in Judges 18. Much of what is portrayed in this volume is still visible at Tel Dan, in the national park located in the far north of modern-day Israel. The finds described in this volume were gleaned in the course of Avraham Biran's 1966-1999 excavations at the site. The architecture, ceramics, metal, flint, bone and ground stone objects and ecofacts all contribute to the portrayal of a cosmopolitan society that thrived, initially, under Egyptian imperial rule, subsequently forging its own way following the departure of Egyptian hegemony. The early Iron Age levels at Tel Dan show material evidence for the presence of local peoples, Egyptians, Cypriots, Aegeans, and Syrians, who together, negotiated a new identity, as Danites. Illustrated in colour and black & white throughout, and with five plans folded and within a pocket at the back of the volume.