Topic studies

Museum numbers, excavation numbers and catalogue identifiers are the addresses of the ancient world, and they are the reason most citations of it are unverifiable. How the system works, and where it fails.

Egypt ruled or raided Canaan for centuries and left records of it. What those records name, what they never mention, and why the silence about the exodus is less informative than both sides claim.

Tribute figures, army sizes and deportation counts almost never agree between the Bible and the external record — or between biblical passages. What the disagreements are worth, and which of them actually matter.

The chronicle tablets are the closest thing the ancient Near East has to a neutral dated record, and they are constantly cited for events they do not contain. A guide to which tablet covers which years.

Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian royal texts are the backbone of the external record for the Hebrew Bible — and they were written to be buried in walls, not read by historians. What that changes about how they are used.

A worked example of citation provenance: tracing the most quoted line in Assyrian royal inscriptions back from the web, through a 1927 translation, to a specific object with a catalogue number.

The Aramaic documents from the Judaean colony at Elephantine: what they contain, what they show about Persian-period Judaean practice, and the careful distinction between corroborating a setting and confirming a text.

Where the dates for the Babylonian capture and destruction of Jerusalem come from: the Jerusalem Chronicle, the Babylonian calendar, and what is firm as against what is reconstructed.

The kings of Israel and Judah who are named in Assyrian, Babylonian and other foreign records — what each mention establishes, what it does not, and why the list is shorter than most treatments imply.