This Week in the Ancient Near East

What Pairs Well with Extreme Desert Conditions? or New Evidence for Wine in the Late Antique Negev

The discovery of grapes pips at Late Antique Avdat in the northern Negev has us asking questions, like who makes wine in the desert anyway, and how do you get the wine from the desert to the people? Is this a story of wine fancying monks or Breaking Bad style middlemen? Pour a glass and settle in with our contestants!

Iron Age Religion East of the Jordan, Or, Ammon, Moab, and Edom Have Entered the Chat.

A new report on Iron Age temples in Jordan has us puzzled. How different are the cults to national gods and their shrines on both sides of the Jordan River, you know, really? And if a Moabite walked into a Judean bar, would you know? Watch us go from a very small building to huge questions about world religions!

The Little Tavern at Lagash, or, The Real Craft [and Beer] Revolution?

The discovery of a tavern at Early Dynastic Lagash has us asking questions. Who drank there, who ran the joint, and how did you pay come to mind, along with the obvious problems of drunks and pickled eggs. With a special shoutout to wise bartenders everywhere from Siduri to Sam Malone!

New Jerusalem Inscription Points to (Previously Known) Iron Age Spice Trade, Or, Solomon and Sheba Get Spicy?

The discovery of an Iron Age pot in Jerusalem with an inscription in a South Arabian language has us flustered. We knew there was an ancient spice trade between the Levant and Yemen, but does this mean that Solomon and Sheba were real? It’s a spicy discussion with breathless notes of labdanum. Come for the world systems theory, stay for all the aunts in a cloud of Shalimar!

The Book of the Dead Club, Or, If a Lion-Hippo-Crocodile Comes to the Door, Don’t Open It.

A 52 foot long Book of the Dead sounds like a super deluxe edition, but if you’re traveling from death to judgment and into the afterlife you can’t be too careful. But did anyone in ancient Egypt actually believe this stuff? What about the non-believers? Where did they fit in? Our contestants slide effortlessly into Spinoza mode, but still worry a little about Ammit, devoureress of the dead.

It’s This Week in the Ancient Near East at the Movies! The Special Inadvertent Pre-Holiday Biblical Epic Edition!

In 1923 Cecil B. De Mille made The Ten Commandments on a huge Egyptian set in the California dunes, which archaeologists have excavated. So obviously we’re asking, what’s the deal with Biblical movies? Ripping yarns or morality tales with Nazi punching? And would a picture about the backbreaking scientific tedium of real archaeology be a crowdpleaser? With a special shoutout to our friends Donny Osmond and Walter Benjamin!

The Archaeology of Ancient Fingerprints, or Profiling Potters for Fun and Profit

Fingerprints on ancient pottery? Like from the potters? Ok, we’re not cops but we are a little curious. Who are these potters at Byzantine Moza, Tell Leilan, Tell en Nasbeh, Tell es Safi, and other Bronze and Iron Age sites around the Near East? Who's producing what and why are they using child labor to decorate pottery? Maybe we really should call the cops. 

A Mediterranean Metal Mystery, or, Those Tin Ingots from Uzbekistan? Yeah, Well, They’re at the Bottom of the Ocean

Central Asian tin in a Late Bronze Age shipwreck at the bottom of Mediterranean raises questions like, “who brought the tin thousands of kilometers west from what’s now Uzbekistan,” and “who’s tin was it when the boat sank.” Ok, they’re not questions like, “what is best in life” or “are you going to eat that sandwich” but they’re what we’ve got.