Tell en-Naṣbeh, excavated under the Direction of the late William Frederic Badè@@@Tell en-Nasbeh, excavated under the Direction of the late William Frederic Bade

Here is the long-awaited definitive publication of the results of five expeditions between the years 1926 and 1935. The first volume includes a critical study of the literary evidence concerning " Mizpah of Samuel " and other Hebrew towns which have been identified with Tell en-Nasbeh; an evaluation of the archaeological results; a description of the excavation of the tell and surrounding tombs and of the discoveries made, which belong chiefly to the Early Bronze Age and the Iron Age, with additional tomb material of the period from Hellenistic to Byzantine times. The second volume presents a full description and discussion of the 1842 pottery types discovered during the excavations, with a list of similar types found elsewhere in Palestine. It thus constitutes a valuable corpus of Palestinian pottery. These two volumes throw a great deal of new light on the history and civilization of ancient Palestine. Noteworthy is the new evidence for the ceramic culture of southern Palestine about the end of the fourth millennium B. C. Here we have also the first relatively complete town plan of the Monarchy of Israel, with a beautifully preserved city gate of the ninth century B. C. From pre-exilic times come also such unique objects as a cuneiform inscription mentioning a hitherto unknown ancient ruler. There is a mass of new archaeological data from the obscure Babylonian and Persian periods, which will help to fill out gaps in our knowledge. Thanks to generous subventions it is possible to offer these two beautiful volumes for a price only about half as much as has usually been charged for comparable material and probably less than a third of the price which will be charged in the next few years.