Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1998 - 43

photographer, and the experience was unforgettable.
We traveled by train from Palestine to Damascus and
then on to Mosul. On our way to the expedition headquarters in the village of Fahdiliyeh,we crossed the
Tigris and stopped on the river's eastern bank to visit Tell
Kuyunjik,the site of ancient Nineveh. That enormous
mound was beyond the imagination of any of us who
were familiar with the Palestinian tels like Megiddo or
Beth Shean, which we considered huge ancient cities.
Walking on the surface of Nineveh, I recalled the
description of the city in the Book of Jonah, which,
according to the KingJames version of the Bible "was
an exceeding great city of three days' journey." The
Hebrew is even more expressive: "A large city to God"indeed the capital of an empire.
After my return from Mesopotamia, I came to know
another charismatic figure in the history of biblical
archaeology: Nelson Glueck of the Hebrew Union College (namesake of the archaeological institution I now
direct). Glueck's enthusaism was infectious. As an
ordained rabbi, experienced archaeologist and pioneering explorer of Transjordan, Glueck could turn a dry,
monotonous, detailed survey into a romantic, exciting,
and significant introduction to archaeological research
and its contribution to the history of ancient lands.
Glueck's enthusiasm for exploration never flagged,
even under difficultconditions. I joined him in 1937for an
initial reconnaisance through the Arava Valleydown to
Aqaba, to explore what he believed was an ancient
Israelite port at Tellel-Kheleifah.The overland trip southward took several days, and there were no hotels in the
towns we passed through. Yet because Glueck maintained excellent personal relations with the officers and
troops of the Arab Legion,they allowed us to stay in their
headquarters in the towering Crusader castle of Kerak.
When we finallyarrived at Aqaba, we conducted two
days of preliminaryexcavations at Tellel-Kheleifehthat
led Glueckto a major excavation at the site and to his
identification of it with Solomon's Red Sea port of Etzion
Geber. (It does not matter that subsequent research
proved otherwise.)
Albright,Petrie, Speiser, and Glueck were some of the
giants of an earlier age when the pioneers of the Palestine ExplorationFund,the American Schools of Oriental
Research, the Hebrew University,and other foreign institutions like the French École Biblique laid the foundations upon which all subsequent research grew and
developed.
Avraham Biran is director of the Nelson Glueck
School of Biblical Archaeology at the Hebrew Union
College in Jerusalem. He served as director of the
Israel Department of Antiquities from 1961 to 1974,
and has excavated at Tel Dan since 1966.

Septenber/October

1998

W.F.
1966, American biblical archaeologist
Albright described his field in almost impossibly
broad terms - extending from the Stone Age to the
In Middle Ages and from the Straits of Gibraltar to
India. There is something to be said for his intentional
exaggeration, because, as excavation and study of material
culture intensifies around the world, boundaries neatly
demarcating where one ancient civilization ended and
another began are harder than ever to establish. Fifty
years ago, the famous story of the Queen of Sheba's visit
to Jerusalem was dismissed by most historians as a folktale. Now with the continuing excavation of the cities,
temples, and caravan stops of the south Arabian kingdoms, the possible historical basis for that story has been
recognized. While archaeology cannot verify the visit of a
particular ruler, it may be able to develop a deeper kind of
historical reliability. In the tombs, pottery forms, and
architecture of the Bronze and Iron Age societies of the
eastern Mediterranean are the raw materials with which
archaeologists can reconstruct the economic, social, and
political forces of which the Bible speaks so eloquently.
Many challenges to the study and preservation of the
region's rich archaeological heritage lie ahead. The continuing threat of nationalistic exploitation of selected
sites and monuments imperils free and open discussion
of their historical meaning and poses a risk to those
remains considered less significant to modern nations.
No country in the modern Middle East is completely
innocent of such archaeological chauvinism; each sees
itself as a chosen people in a promised land. It can only
be hoped that regional cooperation will promote a
broader view. Religious fundamentalism and sectarian
strife also severely limit archaeological work; the respect-

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This inscription,found at Tel Dan in 1993,bears the words
"House of David"(fifthlinefromthe bottom),the first archaeologicalevidence of the founder of the Judean dynasty.
43

Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1998

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