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Three of the 1,900-year-old weapons, whose iron blades are 60-65cm long (24-26in), were still in wooden scabbards.They were found in a near-inaccessible crevice by a team photographing an ancient inscription on a stalactite.Archaeologists believe the swords were hidden by Judean rebels after they were seized from the Roman army as booty...Fifty years ago, a stalactite with an incomplete ink inscription written in ancient Hebrew script was found in a small cave high on a cliff above the Dead Sea, north of the En Gedi oasis in eastern Israel.Archaeologist Dr Asaf Gayer of Ariel University, geologist Boaz Langford of the Hebrew...

(Israel Antiquities Authority/YouTube) Israeli researchers made a rare find during a survey of a Dead Sea cave: Four perfectly preserved Roman swords thought to have been used in battle 1,900 years ago. The swords were likely "booty" hidden by rebels from an opposing faction, who would have been in danger if they were caught carrying the Roman weapons, Eitan Klein, one of the directors of the Judean Desert Survey Project who worked on the dig, said in a statement. Four Roman-era swords, their wooden and leather hilts and scabbards and steel blades exquisitely preserved after 1,900 years in a desert...

Tel Beth Shemesh was one of the first biblical sites to be excavated in the Land of Israel. The site is perched on a low hill overlooking the wide Soreq Valley, a main water source crossing lush agricultural land, on the border between the higher Shephelah (foothills) to the west and the Judean Highland to the east. Biblical Beth-Shemesh appears in the Books of Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles—notably as the place where the Philistines returned the briefly captured Ark of the Covenant to the Israelites (1 Samuel 6).In 1856, Edward Robinson...

They also discovered a partially mummified 6,000-year-old skeleton of a child.For the first time in 60 years, archaeologists have discovered a new fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a cache of ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts uncovered in the Qumran Caves on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. The Israel Antiquities Authority, which carried out the excavations, believes the new scroll, written in Greek, is actually a missing part of the “Book of the 12 Minor Prophets” scroll, first discovered in 1961. It contains verses from Zechariah 8:16-17 and Nahum 1:5-6. The minor differences in the wording compared...

Archaeologists in Israel have discovered a rare coin minted about 1,900 years ago, when the Jewish people revolted against Roman occupation, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced (IAA) last week. The bronze coin is so rare, that out of 22,000 coins found in archaeological excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem, just four are from the revolt, known as the Bar Kokhba revolt, Donald Tzvi Ariel, head of the Coin Department at the IAA, said in a statement. A cluster of grapes and the inscription, "Year Two of the Freedom of Israel," appear on one side of the coin, and on...

A rare cache of silver coins dating to the Hasmonean period, some 2,140 years ago, has been discovered in a salvage excavation in central Israel. The 16 coins, shekels and half-shekels (tetradrachms and didrachms), date from around 126 BCE. They had been minted farther north, in the city of Tyre, and bear the images of the king, Antiochus VII and his brother Demetrius Israeli, stated Avraham Tendler, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority... Closer analysis of the coins showed that the cache contains one or two coins from every year between 135 to 126 BCE... Aside...