Biblical Archaeology
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 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 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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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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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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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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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 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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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 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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