These lectures investigate the numerous miniature baked clay images from Canaan, Israel and Judah (c. 1600-600 BC). They constitute vital evidence for the imagery and domestic rituals of ordinary people, but significantly are not explicitly mentioned in the Old Testament. These terracottas are treated as a distinctive phenomenon with roots deep in prehistory and recurrent characteristics across millennia. Attention is focused on whether or not the female representations are worshippers of unknown deities or images of known goddesses, particularly in Early Israelite religion.

This is the first systematic attempt to survey in detail the archaeological evidence for the crafts and craftsmanship of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians in ancient Mesopotamia, covering the period ca. 8000-300 B.C.E. As creators of some of the earliest farming and urban communities known to us, these people were among the first pioneers of many crafts and skills that remain fundamental to modern ways of life. Many of the raw materials for crafts had to be imported from outside the river valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, providing an unusually sensitive indicator of the commercial and cultural contacts of Mesopotamia. In this book, Dr. Moorey reviews briefly the textual evidence, and then goes on to examine in detail the material evidence for a wide range of crafts using stones, both common and ornamental, animal products-from hippopotamus ivory to ostrich egg-shells-ceramics, glazed materials and glass, metals, and building materials. With a comprehensive bibliography, this will be a key work of reference for archaeologists and those interested in the early history of crafts and technology, as well as for specialist historians of the ancient Near East.

This historical survey of the relationship between archaeology and biblical studies in the archaeological excavations in Palestine at Tell el-Hesi from 1840 to 1990 concentrates on the work of major excavators and scholars. It is a panoramic overview of the methods and theories that served to illuminate the archaeology of the Holy Land, beginning with and introductory chapter that covers the early pioneering years before the work of Pitt Rivers and Petrie.