Remains of an ancient cult to the goddess of love have come to light in the southern Golan Heights site of Susita

At the site, on a 350 meter-high-plateau overlooking the eastern shore of Lake Kinneret, archaeologists found a cache of three figurines of Aphrodite (whom the Romans called Venus), dating back about 1,500 years. The figurines, made of clay, are about 30 centimeters tall. They depict the nude goddess standing, with her right hand covering her private parts – a type of statue scholars call “modest Venus.”

According to Greek …

A large structure from the Roman period has been discovered in City of David in Jerusalem, the first of its kind to be found in Israel sheds light into Jerusalem in Roman times.

The Israel Antiquities Authority said it was excluded from an international archeological conference in Ramallah.
The IAA condemned the World Archeological Congress in a letter to its president. The conference, called “Overcoming Structural Violence,” discussed in part several regions in Jerusalem where excavations are being conducted by the IAA.
“In this way the organization is introducing the [Palestinian-Israeli] conflict into the professional side of archaeology,” the IAA said in a news release issued Thursday.
The IAA was informed of the conference by e-mail this week as the meeting was opening in the West …

New evidence from the site of Herod the Great’s planned mausoleum suggests that this was indeed the site of his grave in the late 1st century BC.
The mausoleum, among the remains of which a sarcophagus plausibly identified as Herod’s was found, was a two-storey structure with a concave-conical roof, about 25 metres (80ft) high — a lavish structure appropriate to Herod’s status and known extravagant tastes.
“The sarcophagus was found shattered all over the place. It seems it was taken from its place and was destroyed in a fit of rage,” …

King Herod is one of the greatest builders of the world, constructing, during his reign, a huge number of important cities and sites across the Middle East. Whilst many of his projects are highly visible, a mystery has surrounded his place of burial. For 35 years, Ehud Netzer, one of Israel’s leading archaelogists tried to find the tomb, and in 2007, he discovered what is thought to be it

When you build a house, you dont really think about where the materials are coming from. Yet Israeli archaelogists have discovered that King Herod had a large network of quarries in the Jerusalem area 2,000 years ago when he was building the Jewish Temple in the city.
A 1,000 sq ft quarry has been discovered in this network, where rocks which measure three meters long, two meters across, and two meters high would have been extracted – this makes them big enough for the Western Wall to be built from them, …