The unique legacy left behind by late Marcel Mazliah is something to boast about when it comes to a historical scope. Over the years, the electric company worker had made a personal collection of priceless artifacts (with one of the items being around 3,500-years old) that were salvaged from the Mediterranean Sea bordering Israel. And…
A stunning 1,700-year-old ornate mosaic, unearthed last year in Israel, will be showcased to the public for the very first time, this week. Discovered in the city of Lod, around 15 km (or 9 miles) southeast of Tel Aviv, this mosaic fragment was originally part of the courtyard pavement in a plush villa, during the…
A 3000-year old earthenware restored to its original glory gave up a few fascinating secrets from the Iron Age era. The chief among them was the name inscribed on the jar which read - Eshba’al Ben Bada. Initially found at the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa, in the Valley of Elah west of Jerusalem (the very…
Israel Antiquities Authority is surely having a fine run in the last few weeks. Last month, they (initially aided by amateur divers) came across a stash of over a 2,000 gold coins dating from 11th century AD. And now, the archaeologists have discovered an enviable cache of jewelry and silver coins from an ancient epoch…
At its zenith during the 11th century, the Fatimid Caliphate with its later royal capital based in Cairo (al-Qāhira), spanned most of North Africa (also known as Maghreb), the sea-bordering Hijaz (west of the Red Sea), Levant (by Asiatic Mediterranean) and even Sicily. The Shia faith-fueled empire was mostly known for its cultural achievements, religious tolerance…
Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University have unearthed 3,000-year-old fabric samples that point to the earliest instance of chemical dyeing in history. Discovered at the Timna Valley of Israel’s Arava desert, the cloth fragments likely belong to the period between 13th and 10th centuries BC. The findings of the research, recently published in the PLOS ONE…
An ancient papyrus fragment, recovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), contains what is believed to be the earliest reference to Jerusalem apart from the Bible. Dating back to around 7th century B.C., and therefore older than the Dead Sea Scrolls, the document features two lines in ancient Hebrew that state: From the king's maidservant,…
The Middle East, it seems, is home to a mysterious prehistoric monument that is as almost old as the famed Stonehenge in England. Located in the Golan Heights region, this spectacular monument, called “Wheel of Giants”, features five concentric circles made of heaped stone rubble, with a burial mound situated right at the center. (more…)
An amazingly-detailed mosaic, aged over 1500 years, was publicly showcased, for the first time today, at a festival in Israel. Discovered two years ago at the Kiryat Gat Industrial Park in the southern part of the country, the artifact depicts the map, of an ancient Egyptian city, complete with streets and buildings. According to the…
Back in July, we talked about a 2000-year old ritual bath (or mikveh) found hidden underneath a family’s living room, in Ein Karem, an ancient village in south-west Jerusalem (district). This discovery was pronounced as being significant, since the bath lends some support to the long-standing claim that the region was historically the birthplace of Jesus’s…