Last weekend the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) arrived in my mailbox. I have been planning on writing this post, but it has been a busy week. I have finally found the time to look through the magazine and am now ready to write the post.

This is the seventh post in my In the BAR series, I will provide links at the end of this post to the previous ones.

For this issue I will focus on two articles.

The first article is The Other “Philistines” by Ephraim Stern.

The article discusses the different Sea Peoples who settled in Israel. When we think of the Philistines we usually think of the five cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath and Ekron. However, there are other groups like the Sikils, Sherden, Danunu and Weshesh that the Bible also refers to as Philistines. They lived throughout the land of Israel, not only in the south.

In the article is a picture of the Ashdoda figurine that is in the picture above.

The Ashdoda figurine was found at Ashdod by Moshe Dothan. The figurine is on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The article has a lot of great pictures of archaeological finds that show the difference between the different groups of sea people.

For more about my visit to the Israel Museum, click on Unfolding History.

The second article is a short editorial titled Archaeological High Horse by Hershel Shanks.

The article is about Hippos/Sussita and gives an update on some of the excavations that are taking place. It was really interesting to see the pictures.

We only drove by this site while touring around the Galilee Sea.

In the first picture you can see the winding road that goes up the summit of Hippos. Here you can see a little of the detail. Since we were in a big bus, it was impossible for us to make the trek to the top.

The name Hippos (Greek) and Sussita (Aramaic) both mean horse. Now do you get the title? When I first saw the title my guess was that it would be about Hippos. When I saw the picture I knew for sure. It does have a distinctive look.

In this picture you can barely see the ruins of something on top of the hill. If you take a look at the current issue of BAR you can see what is actually on top of the hill.

Sussita was one of the cities of the Decapolis and later became a Christian city.

Hippos/Sussita is now on the list of places that I would like to take a closer look at in the future.

If you are taking a tour of Israel you will know when to look for this site. When your tour guide starts to talk about the pigs that ran into the sea, you will be close.

For more about the sites we visited near here click on: Galilee Sea

Would you make the climb up the hill to Hippos?

Steven

Here are the previous In the BAR posts:

In the BAR

In the BAR II

In the BAR III

In the BAR IV

In the BAR V

In the BAR VI