Israel displayed for the first time Wednesday a collection of rare coins charred and burned from the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple nearly 2,000 years ago.
About 70 coins were found in an excavation at the foot of a key Jerusalem holy site. They give a rare glimpse into the period of the Jewish revolt that eventually led to the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in A.D. 70, said Hava Katz, curator of the exhibition.
The Jews rebelled against the Roman Empire and took over Jerusalem in A.D. 66. After …

As usual during the Jewish holidays, the Israeli public has been inundated with reports of “amazing discoveries” in excavations in Jerusalem. One might dismiss them as a combination of public relations and the need to fill the holiday newspapers, but in fact they attest to a worrying process whereby archaeological research in Jerusalem is being made shallow and subordinated to narrow interests of time and place.
After a period of official and programmatic archaeology following the unification of the city in 1967, it appeared that Israeli archaeology had found the correct …

Israeli archaeologists say they have uncovered a ritual bath in Jerusalem that was likely used by Jewish pilgrims coming to the Temple two millenia ago.
The bath is located next to the Temple Mount, the compound in Jerusalem’s Old City where two Biblical Temples stood. The second was destroyed by Roman legions in 70 A.D.
The Israel Antiquities Authority says the stone bath was likely used for ritual purification by pilgrims who came to the Temple three times a year.
Similar ritual baths are still used by Jews for purification.
The site that once …

Madonna wrapped up her world tour with a sightseeing trip to Jordan’s famed ruins in Petra.
The Queen of Pop was flown by helicopter into the ancient Roman-era city carved out in red stone in a trip arranged by Queen Rania, the wife of Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
The pop star, in a white shirt and trousers, was escorted by Jordanian security and an armed bodyguard during her 15-minute tour.
Madonna, who has been on her Sticky And Sweet world tour, made no comment to reporters as she walked in almost total darkness. Security …

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.

U.S. archaeologists have found an extremely rare 2,000-year-old limestone cup inscribed with 10 lines of Aramaic or Hebrew script near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Such ritual cups are common, especially in areas that were inhabited by priests, but usually they are unmarked or bear only a single line of text, such as a name, said archaeologist Shimon Gibson of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who led the dig along with James Tabor of the same school.
“To have 10 lines of text is unprecedented,” he …

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, …