February 2018
Vol. 6, No. 2
The New Excavations of Beth She’arim
By Adi Erlich
Few Jewish sites in Israel are as renowned as Beit She’arim, which today receives many thousands of visitors a year. But while best known for its catacombs and tombs, Beit She’arim was much more than a cemetery. New excavations are bringing that living dimension into focus for the first time, and refining our understanding of the Jewish Galilee as a whole.
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Understanding Tophets: A Short Introduction
By Adriano Orsingher
Few historical issues are as controversial as child sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean and Biblical worlds. The Biblical term Tophet is conventionally used to refer to a type of open-air cremation sanctuary. The common element characterising Tophets is the presence of an open space where urns containing cremated remains of animals and/or children were deposited.
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Sumer and the Modern Paradigm
By Pedro Azara
Joan Miró used Son Boter, a 17th century mansion at Palma de Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain) as his studio for sculptures. On its walls were images of what most most scholars believed were ethnographic or traditional art. But in reality these were Sumerian masterpieces from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad.
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Echoes of Nabataean Seafaring
By Ralph Pedersen
When one thinks of the Nabataeans, the desert comes to mind, with wind-blown sands, the red rock-cut architecture of their capital of Petra, and trade routes carrying incense from Arabia to the Mediterranean. There is, however, another aspect of the Nabataeans, one that is only now coming into focus: Seafaring.
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The Missing Shade of Blue
By Shiyanthi Thavaplan
There are no ancient Near Eastern treatises that explain the nature of color. Did people think color was an immutable part of substances like stones and metals? Could it vary when subjected to forces like heat or light? We do not know. And yet, written documents suggest beyond any doubt that color was recognized as an essential aspect of natural and artificial substances.
