I recently came across three such lists. Each had its own perspective. I am going to choose my top ten from the various lists, in no particular order.
1. Several scrolls were discovered at Nahal Hever, near the Dead Sea. These scrolls were hidden at the time of the Bar-Kochba revolt (132-136 CE). The scrolls contain Greek translations of verses from the Books of Zechariah and Nachum. (The original Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in caves at nearby Qumran. They span from the late third century B.C.E. to around 70 C.E. when Qumran was destroyed by the Romans.)
The caves at Nahal Hever were first investigated in 1953 and 1955. Then they were investigated more thoroughly in 1960 and 1961. In 1955, 24 human skeletons were found in one of the caves, leading this cave to be called the “Cave of Horrors.” This cave was where the 2021 findings were from. (The skeletons found in 1955 were surely the remains of allies of Bar-Kochba who had taken refuge there with their families.)
2. An inscription on a jug from around 1100 BCE was discovered in central Israel, near Lachish, bearing the name ירבעל. The Tanach tells us that this was an alternate name of Gideon. See, e.g., Judges 6:32. Although 1100 BCE is the period of the Judges, it is very unlikely that the jug belonged to our Biblical figure. The one-word name match alone is obviously not significant enough, without a father’s name, title or epithet. Moreover, Gideon’s area of activity was not this location. Still, this is a very old inscription. If one looks at a photo online of this inscription (in the Old Hebrew alphabet), one can see that there is a dot in the small circle that represents the “ayin” letter. This was the earliest form of the letter and it reflects the look of an eyeball. In the later Old Hebrew of the First Temple period, the dot was omitted.
3. In the late eighth century BCE, when King Hezekiah knew that Sennacherib’s armies were going to attack Jerusalem, he set about preparing the city to withstand a siege. One of the tasks he undertook was to repair and strengthen the city wall. See 2 Chronicles 32:5. Parts of the wall were unearthed in the 1970s by Israeli archeologist Nahman Avigad. In 2021, a previously unknown section of the wall was unearthed.
4. At Lachish, an inscription written in the Canaanite-Old Hebrew alphabet was discovered that dates to the 15th century BCE. It appears to include a personal name and possibly the Canaanite word for nectar. It had previously been thought that alphabetic writing did not appear in ancient Israel until two centuries later. (The alphabet seems to have been invented in the area of Egypt-Sinai around 1700 BCE.)
5. Archeologists excavating in the City of David Archeological Park in Jerusalem discovered a weight used to cheat people in the First Temple period. This practice was condemned in the Torah. See Deut. 25:13: “You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, large and small.”
6. A monument was discovered in a field in northeastern Egypt that bears the name of Pharaoh חפרע (mentioned by name in a prediction at Jer. 44:30). He was the king of Egypt from 589-570 BCE. (In Herodotus he is called “Apries.”) At Jer. 37:4, we are told that an army came out from Egypt to attempt to fight the Babylonians who were surrounding Jerusalem. Although he is not mentioned by name in this verse, this army activity would have been at his order.
The monument that was found contains 15 lines of hieroglyphics, so far untranslated. It has been described as a border stele that the king erected during military campaigns toward the east. This raises the possibility that it might relate to the above expedition.
7. The modern city of Yavne, located between Tel Aviv and Ashdod, has been a prolific site for archeological discoveries recently. Because the city is growing quickly, large tracts of land are prepared for new construction, resulting in these new discoveries.
About 1,500 years ago, Yavne was a center for wine production, producing approximately a half million gallons of wine per year. In 2021, archeologists uncovered five huge winepress production areas, along with four huge warehouses, and kilns (=ovens) that made wine storage jars. They also found an older winepress dated to around 300 BCE.
Also, a building from around 400 CE has been identified with a large, beautiful mosaic. The mosaic is being restored. The building seems to have been a wealthy residential home near the industrial zone.
The rarest Yavne discovery was an intact chicken egg from 1,000 years ago. Eggshell fragments from chickens are known from earlier periods (e.g., in the City of David). But due to chicken eggs’ fragile shells, hardly any whole chicken eggs have been preserved in the world. (Archeological digs occasionally uncover ancient ostrich eggs, whose thick shells preserve them.)
8. A synagogue from the first century at the city of Magdala, located on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, has now been discovered, the second such synagogue at this location. The first Magdala synagogue was discovered a dozen years ago. This second synagogue is located less than 200 yards from the first. This one was discovered as part of a road-widening project. Only a handful of first-century synagogues have been discovered in Israel. Synagogues were perhaps more like Jewish community centers in their early days, before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the subsequent increase in liturgy. (Magdala is believed to be the birthplace of Mary Magdalene.)
9. At the site of the Cave of Horrors (see #1 above), a 6,000-year-old skeleton of a buried child was found, wrapped in cloth. A shallow pit was dug to bury this child. The child was covered with a cloth around its head and chest, with its feet protruding. A CT scan suggested that the child was 6-12 years old.
10. While examining colored textiles from the Timna Valley in southern Israel, a study that lasted several years, researchers were surprised to find remnants of fabric dyed with royal purple. Carbon dating confirmed that the finds date from approximately 1000 BCE. This dye, produced from a species of mollusk found in the Mediterranean, is often mentioned in Tanach. It is ארגמן. This is the first time that purple-dyed Iron Age textiles have been found in Israel or indeed throughout the Levant.
(If one goes to the website of the Israel Antiquities Authority and their top ten list for 2021, one can find more information on items 1, 7, 9 and 10.)
2021 was also the year of the passing of Hershel Shanks, the Jewish lawyer who founded Biblical Archeology Review magazine in 1975. Most of the readers of this magazine are Christians.
Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected]. I will always be thankful to Hershel Shanks for accepting the blind submission of my article on the “peh preceding ayin” order and publishing it in a 2012 issue. (Peh precedes ayin in the acrostics of Eichah Chapters 2 through 4, and there is now much ancient archeological evidence for this order.)
