Ghassulian refers to a culture and an archaeological stage dating to the Middle and Late Chalcolithic Period in the Southern Levant. Its type-site, Teleilat Ghassul, is located in the eastern Jordan Valley near the northern edge of the Dead Sea, in modern Jordan. It was excavated in 1929-1938 and in 1959–1960, by the Jesuits. Basil Hennessy dug at the site in 1967 and in 1975–1977, and Stephen Bourke in 1994–1999.
Replica of bronze sceptre from the Nahal Mishmar hoard (at Hecht Museum, Haifa)
Ghassulian ossuary, ca. 3500 BC, Canaan (at the British Museum)
The Ghassulian star
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, the Red Sea to the south, Egypt to the southwest, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and the Palestinian territories – the West Bank along the east and the Gaza Strip along the southwest. Tel Aviv is the country's financial, economic, and technological center. Israel’s governmental seat is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is of limited international recognition.
The Merneptah Stele (13th century BCE). The majority of biblical archeologists translate a set of hieroglyphs as Israel, the first instance of the name in the record.
3rd-century Kfar Bar'am synagogue in the Galilee
Jews at the Western Wall in the 1870s
The First Zionist Congress (1897) in Basel, Switzerland
