Tel Dan High Place

This video by BYU professor Bill Hamblin is about the high place at Tel Dan in northern Israel. The structure was made by Jeroboam who was the first king of the northern kingdom of Israel following the death of Solomon. He had the structure built to prevent his people from traveling to Jerusalem to visit the temple there. Jerusalem was the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah and the two kingdoms were bitter rivals at times.

Lachish Temple

I just found this fantastic video made by Professor Bill Hamblin of BYU who is currently teaching at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. It is about an Israelite temple found in Lachish.

Ancient wall found in Jerusalem

BBC - Ancient wall found in Jerusalem

A 3,700-year-old wall has been discovered in east Jerusalem, Israeli archaeologists say.

The structure was built to protect the city's water supply as part of what dig director Ronny Reich described as the region's earliest fortifications.

The 26-ft (8-m) high wall showed the Canaanite people who built it were a sophisticated civilisation, he said.

Critics say Israel uses such projects as a political tool to bolster Jewish claims to occupied Palestinian land.

Excavations at the site, known as the City of David, are in a Palestinian neighbourhood just outside the walls of Jerusalem's old city.

It is partly funded by Elad, a Jewish settler organisation that also works to settle Jews in that area.

Open to the public

The wall dates from a time in the Middle Bronze Age when Jerusalem was a small, fortified enclave controlled by the Canaanites, before they were conquered by the Israelites.

Its discovery demonstrated Jerusalem's inhabitants were sophisticated enough to undertake major building projects, said Mr Reich.

"The wall is enormous, and that it survived 3,700 years - this is, even for us, a long time," said Mr Reich, an archaeology professor at the University of Haifa.

The excavation team said the wall formed part of a structure that protected a passage from a hilltop fortress to a nearby spring - the area's only water source.

Israel's Antiquities Authority said the site would be open to the public on Thursday.