n>Recently three anthropomorphic male figurine heads were excavated from the sites of Khirbet Qeiyafa and Moẓa, located in the Kingdom of Judah. Two similar male heads from the antiquities market found their way to the Moshe Dayan Collection, amassed by Israel’s former legendary ministry of defense, and now appear in the Israel Museum. Together the five objects create a new type of male figurine, with three of them seeming to represent a rider on a horse. The figurines date to the tenth and ninth centuries B.C.E., the earlier period of the Kingdom of Judah. The combination of archaeological contexts, time periods, geographic distribution, iconography, Ugaritic texts, and the biblical tradition indicates that these figurines represent a male god—but which god? Read Full Article »