Biblical Archaeology

Excavations and Documentation

The science of uncovering a buried city. The early pioneers in archaeology had not developed the scientific methods that have been used by the twentieth- century excavators. Now it is customary for each occupational level of earth to be removed and everything found in it recorded before the next deepest level is uncovered. Everything found is alw...

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What is Biblical Archaeology?

WHAT IS ARCHAEOLOGY? Archaeology is the science of antiquities, or the study of the relics of early races in order in understand as much as possible about the life they lived. Bible archaeology limits the study to Bible lands and to those discoveries that have definite bearing upon the Scriptures. Much of the work of Bible archaeology, we shall...

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Archaeological Periods in Ancient Israel

Archaeological periods in Palestine. There is not exact agreement among archaeologists regarding the various datings of archaeological ages in the Holy Land. The following dates are suggested. Details concerning the Stone Age have not been included because there has been so much speculation regarding many of the early dates. New discoveries cau...

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Buried Cities, Mounds, and Tells

How cities have become buried, and why they are in the form of a mound (or tell). When the ancients would build a new city, they often chose a hill located near a spring. They would build a wall around the city to protect it against an enemy. The city thus built might be occupied for several centuries and then be destroyed by an enemy, or by ea...

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Some Bibliographic Resources for the Rosetta Stone

Ira M. Price, The Monuments and the Old Testament, ed. 1925, pp. 15-17; J. A. Hammerton, ed., The Wonders of the Past, ed. 1937, pp. 250, 251. George G. Cameron, "Darius Carved History on Ageless Rock," The National Geographic Magazine, Dec. 1950, pp. 825-844....

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Glossary of Biblical Archaeology Terms

Cartouche - An oval figure on an Egyptian monument containing the signature of a king. Cuneiform - Babylonian wedge-shaped writing done by use of a stylus, and not alphabetic but rather syllabic in character. Graffiti - Wall scribbling. Hieroglyphics - The word means "sacred engraving," because the Egyptian priests used them on monuments, and th...

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Careful Examination of a Site

Evaluating discoveries. Since excavators seldom, if ever, find a building in a perfect state of preservation, it becomes necessary for them to make a very careful study of what remains they do find in relation to the vicinity where they were found in order to "reconstruct" a picture of the building as it once appeared. Such "reconstructions" of ...

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Dating Every Level of Occupation

Dating a city-level. The giving of a date to each occupational level is largely determined by the remnants of pottery found there. It was Sir Flinders Petrie, about the turn of the century, who discovered that each archaeological period had its own typical pottery. Thus he was the first to state the principle that the successive levels of occupa...

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Related Bibliography

1. For interesting introduction to study of archaeology, see Edward Chiera, They Wrote on Clay. 2. William F. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1933), pp. 127-128. 3. Joseph Free, Archaeology and Bible History, p. 1. 4. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine, pp. 16-18; Adams, Ancient Reco...

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The Discovery of the Rosetta Stone

The discovery of the stone. For many centuries travelers to Egypt saw on the ruins of ancient temples, palaces, or tombs, or on the walls, pillars, or ceilings of old buildings, many inscriptions which were in the old hieroglyphic or pictorial language of old Egypt, which no scholar knew how to read. When Napoleon invaded the land of Egypt in 1...

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