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Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a rare sarcophagus featuring a slender face and a scarab ring inscribed with the name of an Egyptian pharaoh, Israel's Antiquities Authority said Wednesday. The mystery man whose skeleton was found inside the sarcophagus was most likely a local Canaanite official in the service of ancient Egypt, Israeli archaeologists believe, shining a light on a period when pharaohs governed the region. "This is a really beautiful face, very serene," said Edwin van den Brink, an Egyptologist and archaeologist with Israel's government antiquities authority. "It's very appealing." Van den Brink said archaeologists dug at Tel Shadud, an...

Perspectives on ancient chronology and the Old Testament—part 2 by Murray R. Adamthwaite 6-5-2019 It is well known that dates for the first millennium BC are fairly firm, and that the Assyrian Eponym Canon has a full record of years as far back as 912/911 BC. However, prior to that the chronology is very much ‘up for grabs’. For Egypt, the resort has traditionally been to the so-called ‘Sothic cycle’ and fixing dates by the few astronomical references in Egyptian records. However, the neat scheme established by this method has in recent years started to come unstuck, and serious challenges...

A New Chronology Synopsis of David Rohl's book "A Test of Time" by John Fulton The concept of time for us today is taken to be an absolute unchangeable system. We measure time from the fixed point of Christ's birth so that this is the one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seventh year since he was born. The ancients, however, could not look forward to Christ's birth; instead, they worked on a regnal dating system where events happened in the Nth year of the reign of a particular king. For most of the Old Testament, we can find a good...

Ancient ruins found in the Israeli wilderness could solve the biblical mystery of the Exodus, archaeologists claim. According to the Bible, Moses liberated the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and led them through the wilderness of Sinai, before they crossed the River Jordan into the promised land of Canaan. Yet no historical basis for the legend exists, and experts generally agree the Israelites were in fact native to Canaan - an ancient region covering modern day Israel. However, scientists are now analysing whether ruins near the River Jordan are proof of a nomadic Israelite people crossing into the ancient land...

The Iron Age Israelites weren't known for their artistic tradition -- so much so that, according to the Bible, King Solomon had to outsource to the Phoenicians wood-cutting in the construction of the Jerusalem Temple and bronze-working for his other buildings (1 Kings 5:6-9; 1 Kings 7:13-14). But the discovery of an Iron Age basalt workshop at Tel Hazor in northern Israel reveals that the Israelites actually cultivated a basalt-carving craft, which they seem to have inherited from the Canaanites of the preceding Bronze Age... In 2010, the archaeologists at Tel Hazor discovered a basalt workshop dating to the ninth...

Archaeologists unearth 3,300-year-old coffin at Tel Shadud thought to hold Canaanite official in service of Egyptian pharaoh :snip: Found alongside the new sarcophagus was a scarab seal ring encased in gold, carved with the name of Pharaoh Seti I, who ruled ancient Egypt in the 13th century BC. Seti I conquered the region of today's Israel in the first year of his reign in order to secure Egyptian trade routes and collect taxes for Egypt, said Ron Beeri, an archaeologist who participated in the dig. The man buried in the sarcophagus might have been a tax collector for the pharaoh,...

An inscription carved into a limestone slab found at Tel Miqne, 23 miles southwest of Jerusalem, confirms the identification of the site as Ekron, one of the five Philistine capital cities mentioned in the Bible. The inscription is unique because it contains the name of a biblical city and five of its rulers, two of whom are mentioned as kings in texts other than the Bible. The only such inscription found in situ in a securely defined, datable archaeological context, it has far-reaching implications for our understanding of the history of Ekron and Philistia... The inscription was found in the...