The final report of archaeological excavations conducted at Maresha SC 169 is out, and I am honored to be one of the contributors.

Ian Stern has been leading excavations at Maresha for many years. This great city is mentioned several times in the Bible and was the capital of Idumea more than two millennia ago. Subterranean Complex 169 has yielded countless artefacts that shed light on the culture, history and religion of this area and the biblical world.

Ian Stern notably entrusted Esther Eshel and myself mysterious Aramaic inscriptions, which we believe are, in fact, divination texts.

We present a summary of our research in chapter 12, which you can download below in PDF format:

Esther Eshel and Michael Langlois, “The Aramaic Divination Texts,” in Excavations at Maresha Subterranean Complex 169: Final Report, Seasons 2000–2016, ed. Ian Stern, Annual of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology 11 (Jerusalem: Hebrew Union College, 2019), 213–23.

SEE ALSO

Divine Names and Epithets in Aramaic Inscriptions, 12 July 2019 in Jerusalem The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Dead Sea Scrolls New Aramaic Divination Texts, 22 May in Uppsala Epigraphical Research Meeting in Berlin Interview for InterBible on Aramaic ostraca Hebrew and Aramaic Online Courses Interview for Le Monde de la Bible on the Maresha ostraca The Relations Between Israel and Aram in the Biblical Period