Sample Sources
The sources below are those contained in our three curated collections—covering themes of Passover, Gender Roles, and Holocaust Resistance. They represent a fraction of the thousands of sources that will be available when the full site launches in 2024.
Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter
The cemetery in the village of Silwan, on the hill east of the City of David, included some aboveground tombs, cut out from the cliffs on three or four sides so that they look like buildings. These…
Messages from My Father
I remember the moment when it dawned on me that my father did not impress the world at large as a powerful figure. We were at a camera store on the Plaza—a faux-Andalusian shopping district that…
Wedding Song: Memoirs of an Iranian Jewish Woman
If I had to pick one defining moment in my Iranian life, it would be 5:00 a.m. one Friday in the fall of 1968. I was fifteen. Normally I woke to the sounds of a peddler selling green almonds and fava…
Ivory-openwork Panel with a Sphinx Striding through Lotus Flowers
Sphinxes are among the most ubiquitous images on Iron Age Levantine ivories. The sphinx combines the features of several animals; it has the head of a human, the wings of an eagle, and the body of a…
Dress Parade
I have a great coat. I have round black eyes. I have a cap. I raise my hands. I am the boy whose hands are raised in the picture.
Coin with Lily/Falcon
On the front is a lily, commonly found on Yehud coins. On the back is a bird that most ornithologists consider to be a falcon; there is no consensus on its symbolism. With wings spread, this falcon…
Assemblage of Containers from Ketef Hinnom
About a thousand items that had accumulated over time were found in the repository of Cave 25 in the Ketef Hinnom cemetery. They included jewelry, ivory and bone inlays, arrowheads, tools, and a large…
Men Doing Obeisance to Sennacherib
The six men from Lachish in this section of Sennacherib's palace relief are dressed quite differently from the men shown in other sections. They are clad in the simplest of short-sleeved, unbelted…
Bone Comb
This comb is from a Philistine site at Ekron, but combs looked the same throughout the region.
Tin Soldiers on Jerusalem Beach
On a very hot summer’s day, at noon, I am in the kibbutz in which both my father, who died in 1972, and my brother-in-law, who was killed in the…
The Revelation at Mount Sinai
On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone forth from the land of Egypt, on that very day, they entered the wilderness of Sinai. [ . . . ] Israel encamped there in front of the…