Beginnings & the Patriarchs — biblical archaeology discoveries

Mesopotamia, the great archives, Middle Bronze Canaan, Avraham to Yosef. 46 archaeological finds from this period that run alongside the biblical story: what was found, who found it, why it matters, the Hebrew word to know, and the Scripture passages each discovery touches.

• Ebla Tablets
  A 4,500-year-old royal archive from northern Syria · found 1974
• Mari Archives
  20,000 letters from a kingdom on the Euphrates in Avraham's world · found 1933
• Nuzi Tablets
  Family law texts that echo patriarchal customs · found 1925
• Royal Tombs of Ur
  The wealth of the city Avraham's family left behind · found 1926
• Ziggurat of Ur
  The moon-god's temple tower in Avraham's home city · found 1854
• Eridu
  Mesopotamia's 'first city' and its long temple sequence · found 1854
• Etemenanki, the Ziggurat of Babylon
  The historical tower behind the Tower of Babel tradition · found 1913
• Sumerian King List (Weld-Blundell Prism)
  Long-lived kings before the flood, and kingship after it · found 1922
• Gilgamesh Flood Tablet (Tablet XI)
  The Babylonian flood story that shook Victorian London · found 1872
• Atrahasis Epic
  Creation of humans and a flood in one Old Babylonian poem · found 1876
• Enuma Elish (Babylonian Creation Epic)
  Seven tablets on how Marduk made the world · found 1849
• Beni Hasan Tomb Painting of Semites
  A caravan of 'Asiatics' entering Egypt in the days of the patriarchs · found 1828
• מִשְׁנֶה
  Statue of an Asiatic Official at Avaris
  A Semitic dignitary honored with a tomb-statue in Egypt · found 1986
• Tall el-Hammam
  A huge Bronze Age city proposed as Sodom—and a retracted 'airburst' claim · found 2005
• Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira
  Burned Early Bronze towns southeast of the Dead Sea · found 1924
• Tel Dan Canaanite Gate ('Abraham's Gate')
  A mudbrick arched gateway from the age of the patriarchs · found 1979
• Ashkelon Canaanite Gate and Rampart
  The oldest known arched city gate, from a giant Middle Bronze port · found 1992
• Beersheba and the Well at Tel Sheva
  A deep well at the gate of the city named for Avraham's oath · found 1969
• Hebron (Tel Rumeida)
  Cyclopean walls of the Canaanite city where Avraham settled · found 1964
• Cave of Machpelah (Herodian Enclosure)
  Herod's monument over the traditional tomb of the patriarchs · found 1119
• Shechem (Tell Balata) Temple-Fortress
  The great Canaanite temple in the city of Avraham's first altar · found 1913
• Jacob's Well
  A deep well near Shechem tied by tradition to Yaakov · found 333
• Dothan (Tell Dothan)
  The town where Yosef's brothers sold him · found 1953
• Hazor: The Middle Bronze City Named at Mari
  Canaan's largest city, already famous in Avraham's world · found 1955
• Hittite Archives at Hattusa
  The lost empire that proved the Bible's 'Hittites' were real · found 1906
• Alalakh Tablets and the Statue of Idrimi
  A Syrian city's archives and a king's story that reads like Genesis · found 1937
• Egyptian Execration Texts
  Curses on Canaanite cities and chiefs from the patriarchal age · found 1926
• Laws of Hammurabi
  A Babylonian king's law stele from the patriarchal age · found 1901
• Nineveh (Kuyunjik)
  The city of Nimrod's kingdom and Ashurbanipal's library · found 1847
• Kish and Its 'Flood' Deposit
  The city where the King List says kingship resumed after the flood · found 1923
• Tell Brak and the Haran Region
  Early cities of the Khabur plain where Avraham's family settled · found 1937
• Bahr Yussef ('Joseph's Canal')
  A canal into the Fayum that tradition credits to Yosef · found 1888
• גָּמָל
  Camel Domestication and the Patriarchs
  An honest look at when camels reached Canaan · found 2013
• Haran
  The crossroads town where Terach died and Yaakov found a wife · found 1951
• Gaza: Tell el-Ajjul and Its Gold Hoards
  Petrie's Bronze Age city at the mouth of Wadi Ghazzeh, the richest gold find in Canaan · found 1930
• Tel Haror (Tell Abu Hureira): Gerar
  The Middle Bronze city with a Canaanite temple, most often identified as Abraham and Isaac's Gerar · found 1982
• Tel Kabri: Canaanite Palace and the Oldest Wine Cellar
  A Middle Bronze ruler's palace with Minoan-style frescoes and forty jars of spiced wine · found 1986
• Lachish Ivory Comb: The Earliest Canaanite Sentence
  A 3,700-year-old lice comb inscribed 'May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard' · found 2016
• Tel Shimron Corbelled Vault
  A 3,800-year-old mudbrick passage in the Canaanite city of Shimron (2023) · found 2023
• The Temple of Melchizedek ("Temple Zero") — City of David Rock-Cut Sanctuary
  Rock-cut sanctuary rooms beside the Gihon Spring that excavator Eli Shukron identifies as Jerusalem's earliest shrine, from the days of Malki-Tzedek · found 2010
• Megiddo Round Altar and Early Bronze Temples
  A stepped stone altar and a row of temples in Canaan's oldest sacred area · found 1933
• Tananir Sanctuary on Mount Gerizim
  A Middle Bronze courtyard building above Shechem, once called 'Joshua's altar' · found 1931
• Durupınar Site ('Noah's Ark' boat-shaped formation)
  A ship-shaped mound in eastern Turkey promoted by Ron Wyatt and recent scan teams · found 1959
• Mount Ararat Ark Expeditions: Navarra's Wood, the 'Anomaly' and the 2010 NAMI Claim
  A century of searches on the summit ice, none confirmed · found 1955
• Shuruppak (Fara) and Its Flood Layer
  The Sumerian flood hero's home city, with a river-flood deposit of about 2900 BCE · found 1902
• כֹּפֶר
  The 'Ark Tablet' (Old Babylonian round-ark instructions)
  A palm-sized cuneiform text giving the flood hero a coracle to build · found 1985

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