Researchers working at Petra discovered a “rare 116-meter pressurized lead pipeline, an extraordinary feature in the eastern Mediterranean outside urban building interiors.”

An Iron Age Phoenician scarab seal was discovered on Sardinia.

“A recent study of the Ishtar temple at Assur has identified an unusual feature beneath the temple’s earliest floor: a thick layer of prepared sand.”

“A newly discovered chronicle from the early eighth century is giving medieval historians a rare new window onto the political shocks and religious debates that reshaped the eastern Mediterranean in the decades before and after the rise of Islam.” PaleoJudaica has more here.

“Imagine your car, your savings account, and your power grid were all the same thing, and alive. In the ancient Near East, that was the ox.” Lauren K. McCormick has written “an ode to oxen.”

Carlo Rindi Nuzzolo writes about the possibilities that 3D scanning opens up for the understanding of ancient artifacts.

Zoom lecture on Feb 21: “Piramesse – from the City of Wonders to Terra Incognita,” by Henning Franzmeier

Bible Archaeology Report shares the top three reports in biblical archaeology for the month of January.

HT: Agade, Arne Halbakken, Explorator