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Idol-quickening instructions, Babylonia, 6th century BCE. The “mouth-washing” ritual was a ceremony for transforming a newly manufactured idol into a living deity. The instructions include these…
In the eponymate of Dayan-Ashur, on the 14th of Aiaru (Iyyar), I set out from Nineveh . . .
I set out from the Euphrates and approached Aleppo. They (i.e., the inhabitants of Aleppo) were afraid of…
Caption Translated by Mordechai Cogan.
I besieged and captured Samaria. I took as spoil 27,290 people who live there; I organized (a contingent of) fifty of their chariots and I instructed the rest of them in correct conduct. I appointed…
Year 7. The month Kislev. The king of Akkad mobilized his troops and marched to Hatti.
He encamped against the city of Judah and in the month Adar, day 2, he captured the city; he seized the king. He…
Harvesting and threshing in Egyptian painting, from the tomb of Pa-heri (New Kingdom, 18th dynasty, 15th century BCE). In the lower register, on the right, reapers are followed by a woman and child…
Lot (puru), Assyria, 8th century BCE. The inscription identifies this as a lot (puru—the Akkadian form of Hebrew pur, the word used in Esther 3:7) that belonged to an Assyrian official named Yahalu…
On the day of my abundant joy
illness suddenly overcame me
Birth pangs and rupture
overwhelmed me
I gave birth and died, like a blossom
I turned away
And the fruit of my womb was
brought with me to…
Mikri (“little one”) Wife of Yehuda Hamon (d. 1642)
Yesterday I was playing on the earth, in my husband’s embrace, like a tiny lamb, And an angel came and preyed upon me in his wrath…
The first Jewish community was established in Kingston, Jamaica by refugees from Spain and Portugal after 1492. This tombstone in the cemetery of She‘are Shalom Synagogue marks the grave of Abraham…
