Dr Paul Allen

A team of scientists sequenced genomes from people who lived in a port city on the Mediterranean coast of Israel between the 12th and 8th centuries B.C. Sometime in the 12th century B.C., a family in the ancient port city of Ashkelon, in what is today Israel, mourned the loss of a child. But they didn’t go to the city’s cemetery. Instead, they dug a small pit in the dirt floor of their home and buried the infant right in the place where they lived. That child’s DNA is now helping scholars trace the origins of the Philistines, a long-standing, somewhat contentious mystery. In accounts from the Hebrew Bible, the Philistines appear mostly as villainous enemies of the Israelites. They sent Delilah to cut the hair of the Israelite leader Samson and thus stripped him of his power. Goliath, the giant slain by David, was a Philistine. The Philistines’ reputation as a hostile, war-mongering, hedonistic tribe became so pervasive that “philistine” is still sometimes lobbed as an insult for a...

2 Kings 24:1–20 Nebuchadnezzar II , one of the greatest and longest-reigning monarchs of Mesopotamia, ruled Babylon from 605 to 562 B.C. He is mentioned some 90 times in the Old Testament , more than any other foreign king. The Bible records his campaigns against Jerusalem in 605, 597 and 586 B.C., culminating in the captivity of Judah . The first four chapters of Daniel detail events in Babylon during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. Outside the Bible we have many contemporary records from Babylon, as well as later writings extolling Nebuchadnezzar’s accomplishments: hundreds of contracts, several inscriptions, detail from classical historians and the Babylonian Chronicle , which documents Nebuchadnezzar’s accomplishments from his first through his eleventh year. However, there are still large gaps in our knowledge about his reign. Nebuchadnezzar distinguished himself while still crown prince by defeating the Egyptians at Carchemish (southern Turkey) in 605 B.C. (see Je...