Burial cave dedicated to Jesus midwife Salome reveals treasures; will open to public

Ahead of opening a burial cave dedicated to Salome, the midwife of Jesus, to the public, archaeologists have recently uncovered a number of priceless artifacts from its courtyard, the Israeli Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday.

The tomb is a centuries-old Christian pilgrimage site, located in the Lachish region in central Israel.

“According to a Christian tradition, Salome was the midwife from Bethlehem, who was called to participate in the birth of Jesus,” said IAA archaeologist Zvi Firer. “She could not believe that she was asked to deliver a virgin’s baby, and her hand became dry and was only healed when she held the baby’s cradle.”

The burial cave was discovered in 1982 by antiquities looters and subsequently excavated in 1984 by Prof. Amos Kloner of the IAA. But, despite ample proof of its use as a sacred Christian site, it was never opened to the public.

For the past two months, archaeologists have excavated an elaborate courtyard of 350 square meters (almost 4,000 square feet) at the entrance to the cave, filled with intricate stone carvings, soaring arches, a mosaic floor, and the remains of a shop where pilgrims may have rented oil lamps to light their way inside the cave for their prayers.

“We found dozens of these lamps covered with carvings of pomegranates and intricate geometric designs,” said Firer.

The lamps, including more than two dozen found intact, were found together in an area that archaeologists identified as a small marketplace in the courtyard.

“We believe that pilgrims would come here, rent an oil lamp, perform their prayers inside, and go on their way. It’s like today when you go to the grave of a revered rabbi and light a candle there,” Firer said.

The cave was likely a Jewish burial cave for a wealthy family prior to its adaption as a Christian holy site. The first room of the burial cave dates to the Second Temple period, which stretches from the 6th century BCE to 70 CE. It has several chambers with multiple rock-hewn kokhim (burial niches) and broken ossuaries (stone boxes), which reflect a Jewish burial custom.

Local Christians first identified the site as the burial place of Salome in the Byzantine era and turned the spot into a pilgrimage site, explained Firer. Inner rooms of the burial cave are from the Byzantine era, from around 300 CE to 600 CE. The newly recovered oil lamps are from the 8th or 9th century CE in the early Islamic period.

Firer added that the name “Salome” or “Shlomit” was a common Jewish name in the Second Temple period in Hasmonean and Herodian families.

“The name Salome may possibly have appeared in antiquity on one of the ossuaries in the tomb, and the tradition identifying the site with Salome the midwife developed, with the cave becoming venerated by Christianity,” he said.

A trail built for kings

The work is being undertaken to open the cave to the public for the first time as part of the Judean Kings Trail, a 100-kilometer (60-mile) trail from Beersheba to Beit Guvrin featuring dozens of significant archaeological sites.

The burial cave is covered in ancient graffiti, including the words “Salome,” “Jesus,” the names of pilgrims, and crosses etched into the wall. The most impressive is an inscription in Greek that reads “Zacharia Ben Kerelis, dedicated to the Holy Salome.” Archaeologists believe that Zacharia Ben Kerelis was a wealthy Jewish patron who funded the construction of parts of the burial cave and the courtyard.

“We’re now working on ways to preserve all of these ancient carvings while opening the site to the public,” said Saar Ganor, the IAA director of the Judean Kings’ Trail Project. The current excavations are also being carried out in cooperation with the Ministry for Jerusalem and Heritage and the Jewish National Fund.

A few pilgrims still illegally enter the tomb, as evidenced by modern-day icons and candles in the altars in inner rooms, but Ganor hopes the cave’s official opening will allow greater numbers of people to safely experience the site.

“This trail, which crosses the Judean Shefelah [flatlands], is the backbone of the Jewish people’s cultural heritage, and it encompasses dozens of sites from the time of the Bible, the Second Temple, the Mishnah and the Talmud,” said Ganor. “This is a really important trail that combines tourism, history, and development.”

Early Christian Pilgrimage Site Excavated in Israel

Archaeologists have unveiled pilgrims’ lamps and other finds from the ”tomb of Salome”, a burial site named after a woman said to have assisted at the birth of Christ.

The tomb was discovered by grave robbers in what is now Tel Lachish national park, west of Jerusalem, in the 1980s.

Subsequent excavations by archaeologists have uncovered a Jewish burial chamber dating back to the Roman period that was taken over by a Christian chapel in the Byzantine era and was still drawing worshippers into the early Islamic period.

An inscription found on the walls of the grotto led the excavation team to conclude it was dedicated to Salome, a figure associated with the birth of Jesus in Eastern Orthodox tradition.

“In the cave, we found tonnes of inscriptions in ancient Greek and Syriac,” said the excavation director, Zvi Firer.

“One of the beautiful inscriptions is the name Salome … “Because of this inscription, we understand this is the cave of holy Salome.”

Salome’s role as an assistant to the midwife at Christ’s birth is recounted in the Gospel of James, a text dropped from the versions of the New Testament used by most western churches.

“The cult of Salome … belongs to a broader phenomenon, whereby the fifth-century Christian pilgrims encountered and sanctified Jewish sites,” the excavation team said.

Outside the grotto, the team found the remains of a colonnaded forecourt spanning 350 sq metres (3,750 sq ft), suggesting Salome was then a revered figure.

Shops selling clay lamps and other items intended for pilgrims were found around the courtyard, dating from as late as the ninth century, 200 years after the Muslim conquest.

“It is interesting that some of the inscriptions were inscribed in Arabic, whilst the Christian believers continued to pray at the site,” the team said.

An extremely Rare Half-Shekel Coin From Year Three of the Great Revolt discovered

Recent excavations by archaeologists from the Hebrew University in the Ophel area south of the Temple Mount uncovered the remains of a monumental public building from the Second Temple period that was destroyed in 70 CE.

Numerous Jewish coins, the majority of which were bronze, from the Great Revolt (66-70 CE) were discovered in the destruction layer. This collection also contained a particularly uncommon and rare discovery: a silver coin with a half-shekel denomination that dates to around 69/70 CE.

The Great Revolt was the first of several uprisings against the Roman Empire by the Jewish population of Judea.

The revolt was in response to the Romans’ increasing religious tensions and high taxation, which resulted in the looting of the Second Temple and the arrest of senior Jewish political and religious figures.

A large-scale rebellion overran the Roman garrison in Judea, forcing the pro-Roman King Herod Agrippa II to abandon Jerusalem.

A coin discovered in the ruins of a Second Temple-era building was most likely used to pay an annual tax for worship at the site; most coins of this type are bronze.

The dig was carried out by a team from the Hebrew University, led by Prof. Uzi Leibner of the Institute of Archaeology, in partnership with the Herbert W. Armstrong College in Edmond, Oklahoma, and with the support of the East Jerusalem Development Company, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

The rare coin was cleaned at the conservation laboratory of the Institute of Archaeology and identified by Dr. Yoav Farhi, the team’s numismatic expert and curator of the Kadman Numismatic Pavilion at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv.

“This is the third coin of this type found in excavations in Jerusalem, and one of the few ever found in archeological excavations,” said the researchers.

During the Great Revolt against Rome, the Jews in Jerusalem minted bronze and silver coins. Most of the silver coins featured a goblet on one side, with ancient Hebrew script above it noting the year of the Revolt.

Depending on its denomination, the coins also included an inscription around the border noting either, “Israel Shekel,” “Half-Shekel,” or “Quarter-Shekel.” The other side of these coins showcased a branch with three pomegranates, surrounded by an inscription in ancient Hebrew script, “Holy Jerusalem.”

Throughout the Roman era the authority to produce silver coins was reserved solely for the emperor. During the Revolt, the minting of coins, especially those made of silver, was a political statement and an expression of national liberation from Roman rule by the Jewish rebels.

Indeed, throughout the Roman period leading up to the Great Revolt, no silver coins were minted by Jews, not even during the rule of King Herod the Great.

According to the researchers, half-shekel coins (which had an average weight of 7 grams) were also used to pay the “half-shekel” tax to the Temple, contributed annually by every Jewish adult male to help cover the costs of worship.

Dr. Farhi explained, “Until the revolt, it was customary to pay the half-shekel tax using good-quality silver coins minted in Tyre in Lebanon, known as ‘Tyrean shekels’ or ‘Tyrean half-shekels.’ These coins held the image of Herakles-Melqart, the principal deity of Tyre, and on the reverse they featured an eagle surrounded by a Greek inscription, ‘Tyre the holy and city of refuge.’ Thus, the silver coins produced by the rebels were intended to also serve as a replacement for the Tyrean coins, by using more appropriate inscriptions and replacing images (forbidden by the Second Commandment) with symbols.

The silver coins from the Great Revolt were the first and the last in ancient times to bear the title ‘shekel.’ The next time this name was used was in 1980, on Israeli Shekel coins produced by the Bank of Israel.”

The precious silver coins are thought to have been minted inside the Temple complex, according to a Monday statement from the Armstrong Institute.

Dyed Cotton Fibers Found at Neolithic Village Site in Israel

Around 7,000 years ago, somebody arrived in a prehistoric village in today’s northern Israel with a luxurious novelty: cotton.

Cotton was not known to the earliest civilizations rising in the Near East because it isn’t indigenous to the region, and where and when it was first domesticated remains a mystery. But now traces of this alien plant with its exquisitely soft bolls have been detected in Tel Tsaf.

This is the earliest trace of cotton found in the Near East to date by centuries, the researchers say. They believe it originated in the Indus Valley, though do not rule out an African origin.

How did cotton get to Tel Tsaf 7,000 years ago from the Indus Valley (or North Africa)? By trading, suggest Li Liu of Stanford University, Maureece Levin of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Florian Klimscha of the Lower Saxony State Museum (Hannover, Germany) and Danny Rosenberg of the University of Haifa, writing in Frontiers in Plant Science.

Good times in the Late Neolithic

Tel Tsaf contains the ruins of a village that arose about 7,300 to 7,200 years ago and would thrive for about 500 years, after which it was deserted for reasons that remain unknown. That in itself is quite the mystery given the abundance of its environs in the central Jordan Valley, south of the Sea of Galilee, Rosenberg notes. But for its time, this had been some settlement.

The wonders found during half a century of excavation there include the most ancient copper object in this part of the Middle East (there’s somewhat older in Iraq), a clay model of a grain silo – possibly indicating ritual involving food cultivation and storage – and a stamped sealing from around 7,000 years ago. This all suggests, the archaeologists surmise, that Tel Tsaf was an extraordinarily wealthy place as Late Neolithic settlements went.

Now Liu, Rosenberg and colleagues have detected cotton microfibers, at least some of which were dyed, from 7,000 years ago. This may provide further indication of trading relationships at the cusp of the transition from the Late Neolithic to the Early Chalcolithic in the valley.

It bears adding that the earliest cotton reported previously was in Dhuweila, eastern Jordan, and dates to centuries later – sometime between 6,450 years ago to around 5,000 years ago.

To be clear, it isn’t that humans strolled around in the altogether with their bits flapping in the breeze until discovering the delights of cotton. The thinking, says Rosenberg, is that the earliest garb was animal skins, whether worn to preserve modesty, for reasons of status, for warmth or for some other reason.

But hmo-kind discovered plant fibers at least tens of thousands of years ago. In 2020, archaeologists found no less than three-ply cord in a Neanderthal context in France, taking the crown from 23,000-year-old string found in Ohalo, Israel. What the Neanderthals or humans from Ohalo were doing with string, we do not know. However, the archaeologists note that the ability to create cord is the prerequisite for a host of potential developments, including textile weaving.

Textiles do not preserve well in the archaeological record, to put it mildly. Yet moving on from the Ohalo cord, evidence of early weaving pops up here and there – including an extremely complex woven basket found in a cave in the Judean Desert from 10,500 years ago. Material made of oak bast (the innards of bark), meanwhile, was found in Çatalhöyük, Turkey, from 8,500 years ago.

In short, before cotton, people in the region were using bast and flax fibers. And now Liu, Rosenberg and the team report on cotton in Tel Tsaf – definitely from afar, and seemingly before the plant had even been domesticated. And it was dyed, to boot.

What colors were the fibers tinted, and can they speak to Neolithic tastes? They cannot. Rosenberg stresses that the sample of fibers from Tel Tsaf is small (123 microfibers in total), and 16 being observed to be cotton in shades of blue, three pink, one purple, one green and three brown/black means precisely nothing about their preferences. What it does mean, the professor qualifies, is that these late prehistoric peoples were not just making textiles and fibers – they were doing further manipulation and coloring their cloths.

By the way, the most frequently used fiber in ancient Tel Tsaf was bast, and they also used flax and jute, the archaeologists report.

A story from Pakistan

Let us move onto the cotton’s origin. Why couldn’t the cotton fibers of Tel Tsaf be local? And why do they think it’s Pakistan, not North Africa?

It isn’t likely to have been grown locally because cotton is happiest in tropical and subtropical regions with ample water. It apparently didn’t grow in prehistoric Israel, and the thinking is that like the “invention” of agriculture itself – the cultivation of cotton arose independently around the world, including in the Indus Valley and North Africa. “But cultivation in North Africa was later,” Rosenberg explains.

The earliest archaeological evidence of cotton’s use is in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period at the Mehrgarh burial site in central Balochistan, Pakistan. Cotton threads were used to string copper beads about 8,500 to 7,500 years ago. It bears clarifying that the earliest known cotton fabric is a tiny fragment of actual cloth (albeit stuck to the lid of a silver vase), which was discovered at Mohenjo-daro, also Pakistan, from 5,000 to 4,750 years ago.

So, cotton was known in some context in prehistoric Pakistan at the time of its appearance in Tel Tsaf, Rosenberg says.

What cotton? Wild cotton. The plant apparently wouldn’t be domesticated for at least 2,000 years more, he explains. “Based primarily on evidence from seeds, domestication is thought to have occurred during the time of the Harappan civilization (2600-1900 B.C.E.),” the authors write.

And how might the wild cotton have been used, aside from making threads to string crude copper beads? Weaving textiles is a reasonable assumption, because cotton isn’t the stuff for baskets. As for another clothing source staple, the sheep did join our human story about 10,000 years ago, in parallel with the start of the Neolithic Revolution. However, the archaeological record of perishables is spotty at best and the earliest recognition of the charms of wool as opposed to mutton stew is not clear. Some think wool-shearing and related technology arose in the Chalcolithic; some think that in Mesopotamia it began as much as 9,000 years ago.

The invisible technology

Now let us confuse the issue. Archaeological evidence of microfibers – mainly bast but wool too – have been detected going back tens of thousands of years: for instance, in 30,000-year-old Upper Paleolithic deposits in Georgia, and from 28,000 to 13,500 years ago in northern China. Traces of bast have been found in the weird Natufian “boulder mortars” in Israel’s Rakefet Cave from about 13,000 years ago. Uses of these fibers remain mysterious, ditto the mortars.

The thing is that in contrast to stone tools and even bones, textiles decay really fast under most circumstances. It’s extraordinary for any of this “invisible technology” to survive the eons, Rosenberg says. One of the earliest examples of real-McCoy fabric was found in the so-called warrior’s grave by Jericho, from the late Chalcolithic or Early Bronze Age. He was buried with a bow and a big piece of fabric.

As for the thought that the cotton could have reached Tel Tsaf by trade thousands of years before the horse was domesticated – it isn’t a stretch. An obsidian blade originating in Turkey was found in a Neolithic settlement next to Jerusalem from 9,000 years ago and other examples of ancient stuff being where it shouldn’t abound. Asked if there’s any evidence whatsoever of trade between Tel Tsaf specifically with prehistoric Pakistan, Rosenberg has an intriguing answer: maybe.

“The only thing is beads made of olivine crystals, which we think were from Africa from around 7,000 years ago. Chemical testing shows they’re like olivine in Africa – but olivine also exists in Pakistan,” he says. “Maybe we were wrong and the olivine was from Pakistan.” Tel Tsaf also has obsidian beads hailing from Turkey and there’s also that ancient copper artifact: its origins aren’t clear, but they think it’s probably Anatolian.

“Trade” doesn’t have to mean that merchants were walking from Tel Tsaf to Anatolia or Baluchistan; artifacts may change hands over centuries before being lost or otherwise winding up in ruins that we thrill at finding thousands of years later.

In the late Neolithic and early Chalcolithic, there were massive movements of peoples, and there may have been good reason why Tel Tsaf was so prosperous in that early time – hundreds of years before metals and other accoutrements of advancing civilizations would seriously arrive. It was smack on the route of long-distance exchange networks in the southern Levant. Including, maybe, with the Indus Valley.

The earliest known depiction of biblical heroines Jael and Deborah was discovered at a Jewish synagogue in Israel

The earliest known depiction of biblical heroines Jael and Deborah was discovered at a Jewish synagogue at Huqoq in Israel,

A team of specialists and students led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Jodi Magness recently returned to Israel’s Lower Galilee to continue unearthing nearly 1,600-year-old mosaics.

The team continues its 10th season of excavation this summer at a synagogue in the ancient Jewish village of Huqoq in Lower Galilee. Discoveries made this year include the first known depiction of the biblical heroines Deborah and Jael as described in the book of Judges.

This season, project director Magness, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of religious studies in Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences, and assistant director Dennis Mizzi of the University of Malta focused on the southwest section of the synagogue, which was built in the late fourth-early fifth century C.E.

The newly discovered mosaic panels depicting the heroines are made of local cut stone from Galilee and were found on the floor on the south end of the synagogue’s west aisle.

The story of Deborah, a judge, and prophet who helped Israelite general Barak defeat the Canaanite army, is found in the fourth chapter of the Book of Judges.

After the victory, the passage says, the Canaanite commander Sisera fled to the tent of Jael (Yael-a Kenite woman), where she drove a tent peg into his temple and killed him.

The uppermost register of the newly-discovered Huqoq mosaic shows Deborah under a palm tree, gazing at Barak, who is equipped with a shield. Only a small part of the middle register is preserved, which appears to show Sisera seated. The lowest register depicts Sisera lying deceased on the ground, bleeding from the head as Jael hammers a tent stake through his temple.

A fragmented Hebrew dedicatory inscription inside a wreath is also among the newly unearthed mosaics, which are flanked by panels measuring 6 feet tall and 2 feet wide and depicting two vases with budding vines. The vines form medallions that frame four animals eating clusters of grapes: a hare, a fox, a leopard, and a wild boar.

Sponsors of the project are UNC-Chapel Hill, Austin College, Baylor University, Brigham Young University, and the University of Toronto.

Students and staff from Carolina and the consortium schools participated in the dig. Financial support for the 2022 season was also provided by the National Geographic Society, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, the Kenan Charitable Trust, and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.

The mosaics have been removed from the site for conservation, and the excavated areas have been backfilled. Excavations are scheduled to continue in the summer of 2023.

Discovery of a rare lead sling bullet bearing a magic inscription for victory

During excavations of the Israel Antiquities Authority in Yavne, a rare lead sling bullet was discovered – possibly belonging to a Greek soldier, bearing a magic inscription for victory.

On the sling bullet was the Greek inscription “Victory of Heracles and Hauronas”.

“The inscriptions were part of psychological warfare, the main purpose of which was to terrorize the opponent, and in addition, to unite the warriors and raise their spirits,” says Prof. Yulia Ustinova of Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

Was the projectile used for warfare against the Hasmoneans?

New research has revealed a lead sling bullet from the Hellenistic period, a rare of its kind in Israel, with an inscription in Greek intended to ensure victory in battle.

The 2,200-year-old sling bullet, which bears the inscription – “Victory of Heracles and Hauronas,” was uncovered in excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in Yavne as part of the Israel Lands Authority’s initiative to expand the city, in cooperation with the Yavne Municipality. The length of the sling bullet is 4.4 cm, and it was intended to be used in an early sling.

“The pair of gods Hauron and Heracles were considered the divine patrons of Yavne during the Hellenistic period,” says Prof. Yulia Ustinova from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, who deciphered the inscription.

“The inscription on a sling bullet is the first archaeological evidence of the two guardians of Yavne, discovered inside Yavne itself. Until today, the pair was only known from an inscription on the Greek island of Delos.”

As a couple, the gods Heracles and Hauron were a perfect team of victory-givers. “The announcement of the future victory of Heracles and Hauron was not a call addressed to the deity, but a threat directed towards the adversaries,” says Prof. Ustinova. “Lead sling bullets are known in the ancient world beginning in the 5th century BCE, but in Israel, few individual sling bullets were found with inscriptions.

The inscriptions convey a message of unifying the warriors to raise their spirits, scare the enemy, or a call intended to energize the sling bullet itself magically. These inscriptions were part of psychological warfare, the main

Purpose of which is to terrorize the opponent, and in addition, to unite the warriors and raise their spirits.”

It seems that we will not be able to know for sure if the sling bullet belonged to a Greek soldier,” said Pablo Betzer and Dr. Daniel Varga, the directors of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “but it may be related to the conflict between the Greeks and the Hasmoneans.

In the 2nd century BCE, pagan Yavne – an ally of the Seleucids (the Greeks who ruled Eretz-Israel), were subject to attacks by the Hasmonean armies.

The Hasmoneans sought to subjugate the other nations and create a homogeneous and ‘pure state’ from a religious-ritualistic point of view. The tiny lead sling bullets, announcing the imminent victory of the gods of pagan Yavne, are tangible evidence of a fierce battle in Yavne at that time.

“One can only imagine what that warrior who held the sling bullet 2,200 years ago thought and felt as he held on to the hope of divine salvation,” says Eli Escusido, Director-General of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The Yavne excavation is a ‘mega’ excavation – one of the largest conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority, has yielded fascinating discoveries that testify to a rich and varied history of 7,000 years, and we eagerly await future findings.”

‘Highway of ancient world’: Part of an 1,800-year-old Roman road found in Galilee

Antiquities Authority says it was paved during the reign of emperor Hadrian; excavation works also unearth pottery shards, metal vessels and coins.

Archeologists have uncovered part of an 1,800-year-old Roman road in northern Israel, built in the time of emperor Hadrian, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced.

In a statement, the IAA said the road section, measuring some 8 meters (26 feet) wide and 25 meters (82 feet) long, was found near the village of Rumat al-Heib, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of the city of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. It was discovered during development work on a walking trail.

The IAA branded the road as “the Highway 6 of the ancient world,” referencing Israel’s major north-to-south highway.

It said the road, which runs between Acre, Sepphoris and Tiberias, was paved in the 2nd century AD during Hadrian’s rule. The road was completed by his successors and later renovated in the Byzantine period.

The Roman empire established several major roads in the area as part of a need to quickly move military forces, mail and goods, the IAA said in its statement Thursday.

During excavation work in the area of the new road section, pottery fragments from the Roman and Byzantine periods were found, as well as metal items and coins dating back to the Roman period, the IAA said.

The excavation works are part of the development works of the Sanhedrin Trail, a 70-kilometer (43-mile) walking path that passes between sites associated with the assembly of 71 sages of the ancient supreme court of Israel.

How researchers unearthed 20 cities – ‘welcome to Armageddon’

Researcher Eric H. Cline has studied the excavation sites of Israel for decades, and writes in his book ‘Digging up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon’ of the fascinating finds made in a historic region.

The most revealing excavations were made between 1925-1939, when Egyptologist James Henry Breasted went to Israel in search of artefacts linked to the legend of Armageddon.

In the New Testament, Armageddon witnesses the ultimate battle between the forces of good and evil before the Day of Judgement — evolving into its use today as a term describing the end of the world.

At the site of Tel Megiddo, located just southwest of Nazareth, the remains of more than 20 cities have been unearthed. Megiddo is the Hebrew word for Armageddon, and is home to a mound in Northern Israel on which ancient forts were built.

The region according to some was built by King Solomon, and in 1928, researcher Breasted claimed he found stables belonging to the legendary king.

He cited the Old Testament, which states that Solomon had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horsemen stationed in “chariot cities”.

Mr Cline acknowledged in his book that today tour guides will welcome visitors to the site saying “welcome to Armageddon”.

The Tel Meggido site remains date back from about 5000 BC to the fourth century BC, and tourists often go to the region to pray and sing hymns. But the discoveries made there have also sparked debate between historians.

The stables of King Solomon were no different, as no remains from horses such as bones or conclusive evidence of grains have ever been shown.

Some excavators think the structure is not stable, but storehouses or barracks. Overall, Cline cautions: “Solomonic Megiddo has been extremely difficult to find.”

Some also believe the construction date of the stables was in the first half of the eighth century BC. Even the destruction of the city of Meggido has caused debate, as some scholars have proposed that Alexander the Great destroyed the city.

However, Cline highlights in his book that there is “no evidence for such a cinematic finale.”

Another revealing excavation site in Israel lies at Tel Lachish, where between 2013 and 2017, archaeologists were overwhelmed with stunning discoveries as they dug through a Canaanite temple from 12th century BC.

Among the artefacts was a pair of “smiting gods”, which took the form of unhewn standing stones representing temple deities.

According to the project report titled ‘The Level VI North-East Temple at Tel Lachish’, they were discovered inside the temple’s inner sanctum.

The author of the report, archaeologist Professor Yosef Garfinkel, tells of how the figurines are commonly identified with two Canaanite gods, Baal or Resheph, who are both known as war gods.

Mr Garfinkel said: “They are made of bronze with remains of a silver coating, especially on their faces.

“Both figurines represent a male figure in a marching stance with his right hand raised.

“Figurine A’s arm was preserved; it holds a weapon that seems to be a mace or club that is attached to the figure’s forehead. Both figurines wear a short kilt and a tall hat.

“Below their feet are pegs that were used to attach the figurines to wooden stands, as attested by the remains of wood.”