An ancient Moabite incense altar, dated around 800 BCE and bearing two inscriptions, has just been published.

These inscriptions were first presented by my esteemed colleague Chris Rollston and recently published by a team of scholars with PhD student Adam Bean.

The altar was found in modern-day Khirbet Ataruz (Jordan), which may correspond to the ancient city of Atarot, mentioned in the Bible. I visited Ataruz with the excavator, Chang-Ho Ji, back in 2010, the very same year that the altar was discovered.

Journalist Amanda Borschel-Dan wrote a piece in the Times of Israel to announce the discovery and interviewed me on this occasion. You can read her article online, and I include a PDF archive just in case.

I want to congratulate my colleagues Adam Bean, Chris Rollston, Kyle McCarter and Stefan Wimmer for their research and publication of this important discovery; I also want to thank Amanda Borschel-Dan for her well-researched article.

Enjoy! 🙂

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