Archaeology catalogue

Shows a band of Semitic travellers entering Egypt in the patriarchal period, exactly the kind of movement Genesis describes.

An Egyptian household list in which nearly half the servants have Semitic names — including one matching Shiphrah, the Hebrew midwife of Exodus 1.

The earliest mention of Israel outside the Bible — already a people living in Canaan by the late 13th century BC.

The Bible mentions the Hittites dozens of times. In the 19th century some critics doubted they had ever been a significant people. Then their capital was found.

A non-Israelite text naming "Balaam son of Beor, a seer of the gods" — the same prophet Balak hired to curse Israel in Numbers 22.

Joshua 11 says Israel burned Hazor, the head of the Canaanite kingdoms. The great Canaanite city was violently burned, and its idols deliberately smashed.

A walled city with collapsed fortifications and a heavy burn layer — but the dating is one of the longest-running debates in biblical archaeology.

A fortified town with two gates, overlooking the valley where David fought Goliath, dated by radiocarbon to David's time.

An enemy king, writing about 150 years after David, refers to Judah's royal family as the "House of David".

1 Kings 9:15 says Solomon built Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer. All three have near-identical monumental gates — as if built to one royal plan.

Massive walls at the top of the City of David that their excavator identified as David's palace.

Pharaoh Shoshenq I lists the towns he took in Israel and Judah — the invasion 1 Kings 14 dates to Rehoboam's fifth year.

King Mesha of Moab tells his side of the revolt against Israel recorded in 2 Kings 3, naming Omri and Israel's God, YHWH.

Assyria's king Shalmaneser III lists "Ahab the Israelite" among the kings who fought him, with 2,000 chariots.

Hundreds of carved ivory inlays from the royal quarter of Samaria — the "ivory house" Ahab built and the "beds of ivory" Amos condemned.

A Phoenician burial ground holding thousands of urns of infant remains — the practice the Old Testament calls passing children through the fire to Molech.

The only known picture of a king of Israel: Jehu, or his envoy, bowing before the king of Assyria.

Assyria's records name Menahem, Pekah, Hoshea and Ahaz — four kings from 2 Kings 15–16, in the right order and the right relationships.

Isaiah 20:1 was for centuries the only known mention of an Assyrian king named Sargon. Then his palace was found.

The earliest mention of Bethlehem outside the Bible: a clay seal from a tax shipment sent from Bethlehem to the king in Jerusalem.

The 533-metre water tunnel Hezekiah cut through rock to keep Jerusalem supplied against Assyria — with the diggers' own record of breaking through.

Sennacherib boasts of taking 46 of Judah's cities and shutting Hezekiah up in Jerusalem — and pointedly does not claim to have taken the city.

Sennacherib decorated his palace with the siege of Lachish, Judah's second city — the same campaign recorded in 2 Kings 18.

A clay impression of a royal seal: "Belonging to Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, king of Judah."

A damaged bulla reading "Yesha'yah[u]" followed by letters that may — or may not — spell "prophet".

A seven-metre-thick city wall built in haste across demolished houses — just as Isaiah described Jerusalem preparing for Assyria.

Letters from a soldier in the last days of Judah: "we are watching for the signals of Lachish… for we cannot see Azekah."

Clay seal impressions naming Gemariah son of Shaphan, Jehucal son of Shelemiah and Gedaliah son of Pashhur — officials in the book of Jeremiah.

Babylon's official record of Nebuchadnezzar capturing "the city of Judah", replacing its king — dated to a single day: 16 March 597 BC.

Babylonian palace records listing oil rations for "Jehoiachin, king of the land of Judah" and his five sons — the exiled king of 2 Kings 25.

A Babylonian receipt naming a chief official, Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, who appears in Jeremiah 39:3 at the fall of Jerusalem.

Critics once said Belshazzar of Daniel 5 never existed. Babylon's last king prays here for "Belshazzar, my firstborn son".

Cyrus's own record of the policy behind Ezra 1 — sending deported peoples home and restoring their sanctuaries.

A letter from a Jewish community in Egypt names Sanballat, governor of Samaria, and Johanan the high priest — both from Nehemiah.

Two tiny rolled silver amulets carrying the priestly blessing of Numbers 6 — the oldest surviving text of any passage of the Bible.

A complete copy of Isaiah a thousand years older than the previous oldest Hebrew manuscript — and it reads, in substance, the same.

A scrap of John 18, from Egypt, that is probably the oldest surviving fragment of the New Testament.

Around 900 manuscripts, including copies of every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther, a thousand years older than anything known before.

The most authoritative manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, prepared by the Masoretes of Tiberias — the text the Dead Sea Scrolls were compared against.

The oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, and the basis of the printed Hebrew text most modern translations start from.

A single papyrus book containing most of Paul's letters, copied around AD 200 — evidence that his letters circulated as a collection very early.

A nearly complete papyrus codex of John's Gospel from around AD 200.

The oldest copy of Luke, running straight into John, with the title "Gospel according to John" — and a text almost identical to Codex Vaticanus, copied 150 years later.

The oldest complete New Testament in existence, in a Bible written within a generation of Constantine.

Perhaps the oldest near-complete Bible in the world, and the single most valued witness to the text of the New Testament.

The oldest surviving list of New Testament books, naming the four Gospels, Acts and thirteen letters of Paul — and rejecting forgeries.

Thirteen leather-bound books of Gnostic and other texts — the source of most "lost gospels" — whose contents show how different and how late those works are.

Hundreds of thousands of papyrus scraps from a town's rubbish dumps — early New Testament fragments, and the letters and receipts that showed the New Testament was written in everyday Greek.

The burial place of the king who ruled when Jesus was born, found on the hill-fortress he built within sight of Bethlehem.

Some sceptics claimed Nazareth did not exist in Jesus' day. Houses from the period have since been excavated there.

The coin in common use when Jesus asked, "Whose image and inscription is this?" — inscribed "son of the divine Augustus".

A synagogue in use when Jesus was "teaching in their synagogues" in Galilee, in the hometown of Mary Magdalene.

A fishing boat from the time of Jesus, big enough to carry around a dozen people — the kind of boat the disciples used.

A first-century house that Christians venerated from very early on, beneath a church, a stone's throw from the synagogue where Jesus taught.

John says the pool had five porches. Critics called it symbolic. Excavation found two pools divided by a central wall — colonnades on four sides and one across the middle.

The pool where Jesus sent the man born blind to wash, found by accident when a sewer crew hit its steps.

A dedication stone naming "Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judea" — the governor who sentenced Jesus, with his correct title.

An ornate bone box inscribed "Joseph son of Caiaphas" — very likely the family tomb of the high priest who handed Jesus to Pilate.

A family tomb of Jews from Cyrene, with an ossuary inscribed "Alexander son of Simon". Mark names Simon of Cyrene as "the father of Alexander and Rufus".

The heel bone of a crucified man, the iron nail still in it — and evidence that a crucifixion victim could receive an honourable family burial.

The traditional site of the crucifixion and tomb lay outside the city wall in AD 30, in an old quarry used for burials — as John describes.

John says Pilate judged Jesus at a place called "the Stone Pavement". The pavement visitors are shown is real but later; the true site is probably Herod's palace.

A Roman official's funeral inscription saying he governed Syria "for the second time". Some argue it is Quirinius — which would bear on the census of Luke 2.

An imperial edict ordering the death penalty for anyone who moves bodies from tombs. Some have linked it to reports of Jesus' empty tomb.

A bone box inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus". The box is ancient; whether all of the inscription is genuine has never been settled.

"No foreigner may enter within the barrier… whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his death." The barrier Paul was accused of breaching.

A Greek inscription from a Jerusalem synagogue built "for the reading of the Law", with guest rooms for pilgrims from abroad.

Inscriptions naming members of the Sergius Paulus family, including a Lucius Sergius Paullus under Claudius. Acts 13 names Sergius Paulus as proconsul of Cyprus.

Luke calls Thessalonica's officials "politarchs", a title unknown in classical literature. Inscriptions show it was exactly right.

A letter of Claudius naming Gallio as proconsul of Achaia, which dates Paul's time in Corinth to within a year or two.

A pavement at Corinth laid by an Erastus "at his own expense" in return for public office. Paul sends greetings from "Erastus, the city treasurer" of Corinth.

The 24,000-seat theatre where the silversmiths' riot of Acts 19 took place, in a city whose economy revolved around Artemis.

A second-century shrine over a grave in a pagan cemetery, exactly where a Roman writer around AD 200 said Peter's "trophy" stood.

A pagan cartoon mocking a Christian for worshipping a crucified man with a donkey's head: "Alexamenos worships his god."

One of the oldest known Christian worship spaces, with a mosaic dedicating a table "to God Jesus Christ as a memorial".

A Roman tomb enshrined in a church near the octagonal Martyrium of Philip, where a bishop writing around AD 190 said the apostle Philip was buried.

The oldest securely identified church building in the world: an ordinary house remodelled for worship, with a baptistery painted with scenes of Jesus.

The Acts of Thomas sends Thomas to a king named Gundaphorus. The name was thought to be fiction until coins of a real first-century Indian king, Gondophares, were found.

King Ezana of Aksum's inscriptions switch from the old gods to "the Lord of heaven", and his coins replace the pagan crescent with the cross — one of the first states to adopt Christianity.

A three-metre limestone monument in Chinese and Syriac recording that Christian missionaries reached the Chinese capital in AD 635.

Over a hundred wall paintings rescued from a Nubian cathedral, including portraits of its African bishops — a Christian kingdom that lasted for eight centuries.