Over the last hundred years or so, a number of theories have been proposed to explain the origins of ancient Israel. All these have been informed to some degree by the biblical text and all have considered the role of New Kingdom Egypt and the collapse of empires throughout the Near East circa 1200-1100 BCE. The lecture will present a radical new proposal: that Egypt itself instigated “Israelite” settlement.
About the Speaker: David llan is the director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. He has excavated at Tel Arad, Tel Megiddo, and Tel Dan. He teaches at Hebrew Union College and has taught at Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University, and at Johns Hopkins University. He specializes in mortuary archaeology, religion, and ritual in the Chalcolithic period, the Middle Bronze Age and the early Iron Age of the southern Levant. Since 2005, he has directed the excavations at Tel Dan in northern Israel. He is also the editor of the journal NGSBA Archaeology.
Moderator: Aaron Burke (UCLA)
Lecture in Archaeology of Ancient Israel Series
Sponsored by
The UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies
Funding provided by the
Viterbi Program in Mediterranean Jewish Studies
Cosponsored by the
UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures
UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
UCLA Center for the Study of Religion
