An inscription with six paleo-Hebrew letters has been found in the City of David.  The Israel Antiquities Authority strangely has a press release after the item has already been published in the Israel Exploration Journal (58:48-50) and Biblical Archaeology Review (March/April 2009).  You can download a photo of the inscription here.  The question of interest to Bible readers is whether the inscription preserves three letters of the name of Hezekiah.  For analysis, I recommend Chris Heard’s blogpost and comments.

A press release from the American Friends of Tel Aviv University describes a Late Bronze Age plaque that may depict a female king, known in the Amarna Letters as the “mistress of the lionesses.”  A copy of the article includes a high-res version of the plaque drawing.

The British Museum has plans to expand, but the Louvre had more visitors in 2008.

The Turkish Riviera Magazine covers the ancient city of Perge (Perga) in an article that includes some good photographs and diagrams.  Paul visited the city on his first missionary journey (Acts 13:13-14; 14:25).

If you like to read the OT in Hebrew or the NT in Greek, but struggle with the vocabulary, you may have been attracted to one of the new “reader’s Bibles” that defines the less common vocabulary on the same page as the text.  Now John Dyer has created a “make your own” version that looks like it could be quite useful.  Even if you have a “reader’s Bible,” you could print off a chapter of the text instead of carrying multiple Bibles to church.  (It’s a new site, and there may be bugs.  Currently it’s not loading for me in Internet Explorer, but works in Firefox.  To change the reading, select the chapter at the top and type over it.)

Hattips to Joe Lauer, Explorator, and Justin Taylor