Unearthed
Stones, tablets, tunnels, scrolls and books from the world of the Bible — where each was found, what it says, and where you can go and see it. More surfaces every year.
- Items
- 99
- Named outside the Bible
- 39
- Fixed date
- 5
- Disputed
- 16
Each item is labelled for what it is. Named outside the Bible: an independent ancient source names a person or place. Confirmed by the ground: excavation shows the setting the text describes. Fixed date: an outside record pins an event to the calendar. Disputed: specialists still argue about the reading — those say so.
Out of the ground
Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
- Bronze Age
Jericho and the argument about its walls
Jericho has fallen walls and a burn layer; the date of that destruction, and whether anyone was living there when Joshua is set, is disputed.
- c. 1360–1330 BC
The Amarna letters
The towns of the conquest narratives were real city-states with named rulers, writing to Egypt in the century before Israel first appears in the record.
- 13th century BC
The burning of Hazor
Hazor was the largest Canaanite city in the region and was destroyed by fire in the Late Bronze Age, with its statues mutilated.
- c. 1208 BC
The Merneptah Stele
A people called Israel existed in Canaan by about 1208 BC — named by a hostile Egyptian king with no interest in flattering them.
- Iron Age I
Shiloh, the sanctuary before Jerusalem
Shiloh was an active cult and storage centre in the period of the judges and was destroyed by fire, after which it ceased to matter.
- c. 1020–980 BC
Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified town about 1000 BC
A fortified town with urban planning existed in the Judahite hill country around 1000 BC, in the valley 1 Samuel names.
- c. 925 BC
The Bubastite Portal — Shoshenq I's campaign in Canaan
An Egyptian campaign into Canaan at roughly the biblical date is recorded by the pharaoh himself, on a temple wall still standing.
- 10th–9th century BC
Megiddo's gates and stables
Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer all carry monumental gates and fortifications from the early Iron Age.
- 9th century BC
The high place at Dan
A major state sanctuary stood at Dan in the period of the northern kingdom, on the scale of a royal cult centre.
- Iron Age
The pool of Gibeon
Gibeon is identified by inscribed jar handles from the site itself, and it has a great pool of the kind 2 Samuel and Jeremiah both mention.
- c. 852 BC
The Kurkh Monolith — Ahab at Qarqar, 853 BC
Ahab king of Israel was a real regional power in 853 BC, dated to the year by the Assyrian eponym canon.
- c. 848 BC
The bronze gates of Balawat
Tyre and Sidon were paying tribute to Assyria in the ninth century BC, pictured and named by the king who took it.
- c. 827 BC
The Black Obelisk — Jehu bows to Assyria, 841 BC
Jehu of Israel paid tribute to Assyria in 841 BC — a date fixed independently of the Bible, and one that anchors the chronology of Israel's kings.
- c. 840 BC
The Tel Dan Stele
Ninth-century BC neighbours of Israel knew Judah as "the House of David" — a dynasty named after a founder, a century and a half after David's traditional date.
- c. 840 BC
The Mesha Stele (the Moabite Stone)
Israel's king Omri, his dynasty, his rule over Moab, and the name of Israel's God all appear in a hostile neighbour's monument written within living memory of the events.
- 9th century BC
Gath: a Philistine capital and its siege
Gath was a very large Philistine city, and it was besieged and destroyed in the ninth century — the period and the event 2 Kings reports.
- c. 796 BC
Adad-nirari III's stele naming Joash of Samaria
Joash king of Israel is named, with his capital, in an Assyrian king's own record of tribute.
- 8th century BC
The Samaria ostraca
Palace receipts from Samaria show a working administration and a population carrying both Yahwistic and Baalistic names.
- 8th century BC
"Shema, servant of Jeroboam"
A royal official's seal from Megiddo names a king Jeroboam of Israel and shows the court apparatus around him.
- c. 891–648 BC
The Assyrian Eponym Canon and the eclipse of 763 BC
Kings of Israel and Judah appear in Assyrian records that are dated to the exact year by this list. Biblical chronology is not dated in isolation — it is pinned to the same astronomical anchor secular historians use for the whole ancient Near East.
- c. 730 BC
Tiglath-Pileser III's tribute lists — Menahem and Ahaz
Two kings of Israel and Judah appear by name in Assyrian tribute records, in the reigns the Bible places them.
- 6th–5th century BC copy
The Babylonian Chronicle on the fall of Samaria
Babylon's chronicle names Shalmaneser and the breaking of Samaria.
- c. 710 BC
Sargon II on Samaria: 27,290 taken away
The deportation of the northern kingdom and the resettlement of foreigners in Samaria are both recorded by the king who carried them out.
- 8th century BC
The dismantled horned altar of Beersheba
A monumental sacrificial altar at a Judahite provincial centre was deliberately dismantled and its stones reused, in the eighth century.
- c. 691 BC
Sennacherib's Prism — Hezekiah shut up "like a bird in a cage"
The invasion of Judah in 701 BC, Hezekiah by name, the siege of Jerusalem and the tribute are all recorded by the invader himself — and the city's survival is implicit in his own silence about taking it.
- c. 700–692 BC
The Lachish Reliefs and the destruction of Lachish
A siege the Bible mentions in a single verse can be seen carved by the besieger and dug out of the ground at the place it happened.
- late 8th century BC
The lmlk storage jars
A kingdom-wide store of stamped royal jars, concentrated in the year Sennacherib invaded.
- late 8th century BC
The Broad Wall
A massive wall thrown up across the western hill, cutting through demolished houses, in the years Assyria was coming.
- c. 700 BC
The Siloam Inscription and Hezekiah's tunnel
The tunnel described in one line of Kings exists, was cut in Hezekiah's era, and its diggers left a note inside it.
- c. 727–698 BC
The seal impression of Hezekiah
A named king of Judah, sealing documents in Jerusalem — recovered from stratified excavation rather than bought on the market.
- c. 700 BC
Dating the Siloam tunnel without the inscription
The tunnel under Jerusalem was cut around 700 BC — the years the Bible assigns to Hezekiah's waterworks — on evidence that owes nothing to either text.
- c. 670 BC
Esarhaddon on his father's murder
The murder of Sennacherib by his own sons, and Esarhaddon's succession, are recorded by Esarhaddon himself.
- c. 673 BC
Esarhaddon's building list — Manasseh of Judah
Manasseh of Judah appears in two Assyrian kings' records as a vassal of Nineveh.
- c. 680–655 BC
The Ekron royal inscription
A Philistine city the Bible names repeatedly is identified by its own inscription, in place, with a dynasty of named rulers.
- late 7th century BC
A field worker's petition about his cloak
A working man in seventh-century Judah appeals over a seized cloak — the exact case the law in Exodus and Deuteronomy legislates for.
- 6th century BC
The Babylonian Chronicle on Carchemish, 605 BC
The battle Jeremiah uses to date a prophecy is recorded, to the year, in Babylon's own chronicle.
- late 7th–early 6th century BC
The Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls
Words still read in synagogues and churches today were being written on silver in Jerusalem before the city fell to Babylon.
- claimed late 7th century BC
The "Baruch son of Neriah" bullae
Unprovenanced: bought, not excavated. No stratified example of this seal is known, and its authenticity is questioned by epigraphers.
- c. 600 BC
The Arad ostraca — "the house of YHWH"
Everyday army paperwork from a Judahite fort refers to the temple of YHWH and carries the same stock of personal names as the biblical books of the period.
- c. 600 BC
The seal of Gemariah son of Shaphan
A named official from the book of Jeremiah appears on a sealing dug out of the burnt debris of the city, in the right decade.
- 6th century BC
The Babylonian Chronicle — Jerusalem taken, 16 March 597 BC
The first fall of Jerusalem is datable to a single day — 16 March 597 BC — from Babylon's own records, and the replacement of one king by another matches 2 Kings 24 exactly.
- c. 592 BC
The Jehoiachin ration tablets
The exiled king of Judah, and even his sons, appear in Babylon's own ration lists — exactly the situation 2 Kings describes when it says he ate at the king's table.
- c. 590 BC
Two officials from Jeremiah 38, in clay
Two men named together in a single verse of Jeremiah turn up as two sealings from the same excavation area.
- c. 588 BC
The Lachish letters — "we are watching for the signals of Lachish"
Letters from the last weeks of Judah, found in the ash of the gate they were written in, name the two cities Jeremiah names — one of them apparently already dark.
- 6th century BC
Belshazzar in the Nabonidus texts
A figure once cited as proof that Daniel was fiction turns out to be documented in Babylonian records — including the co-regency that makes the book's odd detail about "third ruler" make sense.
- c. 539 BC
The Cyrus Cylinder
The Persian repatriation policy behind the return from exile is documented in Cyrus's own words — the general policy, independently attested; the specific decree for Judah, only in the Bible.
- 6th–3rd century BC copy
The Nabonidus Chronicle — Babylon falls, October 539 BC
The fall of Babylon to Cyrus is dated to a single month by Babylon's own chronicle, and the co-regency arrangement behind Daniel's Belshazzar appears in the same body of texts.
- c. 520 BC
The Behistun Inscription
Darius, the king Ezra and Haggai date their events by, left his own account of his reign — and the same stone is what made Akkadian readable.
- 5th century BC
The Elephantine papyri — Sanballat's sons, 407 BC
Nehemiah's opponent Sanballat, governor of Samaria, and a high priest named Johanan both appear in Egyptian Jewish correspondence dated to 407 BC.
- 2nd century BC
The Nash Papyrus
The Ten Commandments and the Shema were being copied on papyrus in the second century BC.
- c. 125 BC
The Great Isaiah Scroll
The transmission of the Hebrew text across a thousand years can be checked directly, not assumed — and it holds up.
- 3rd century BC – 1st century AD
The Dead Sea Scrolls
The Hebrew text of the Bible can be compared directly across a thousand years of copying, instead of assumed.
- 2nd–1st century BC
Greek scripture before Christianity
The Greek Old Testament existed in Jewish hands, in writing, before the New Testament was written — so its readings were not produced to suit Christian argument.
- c. 100 BC – AD 68
The settlement at Qumran
A community organised around washing, communal meals and copied books lived beside the caves, in the century before and the century of the Gospels.
- 37–4 BC
Herodium, Masada and the Herodian building programme
Herod the Great's reign is visible in stone across Judaea, on the scale the sources describe.
- 22–10 BC
Caesarea Maritima and its harbour
The administrative capital Acts moves Paul to was a real Roman harbour city, and its praetorium, theatre and breakwaters have been excavated.
- 1st century BC–1st century AD
The Pool of Siloam, uncovered
The pool named in John 9 exists, is the right size for a public gathering place, and was in use in the first century.
- 1st century BC–1st century AD
The Pool of Bethesda and its five porticoes
An architectural detail that looked like a symbolic flourish turned out to be an accurate description of a real building.
- 1st century BC – 1st century AD
The Galilee boat
The kind of boat the Gospels put Jesus and the disciples in has been found, dated, and can be walked around.
- 1st century AD
A first-century house in Nazareth
Nazareth was an inhabited Jewish farming village in the first century, of the size and kind the Gospels assume.
- 1st century BC – 1st century AD
Sepphoris, the city over the hill from Nazareth
The Galilee of the Gospels was not a backwater: a city under construction stood within walking distance of Nazareth.
- 1st century BC – 1st century AD
The temple warning stone
The barrier Acts turns on existed, with the death penalty attached, in exactly the words the crowd's accusation assumes.
- AD 26–36
The Pilate Stone
The Roman governor who tried Jesus is named, titled and placed in Judaea by a stone cut during his own term of office.
- 1st century AD
The heel bone of a crucified man
Crucifixion in first-century Jerusalem is attested in the body of a victim — nailed, and then given ordinary burial.
- 1st century AD
The Magdala synagogue and its stone
Purpose-built synagogues stood in Galilean towns during the first century — the setting the Gospels take for granted.
- 1st century AD foundations
Capernaum: the black basalt under the white synagogue
Capernaum has a first-century synagogue foundation beneath its later one, and a first-century house that was venerated from very early on.
- 1st century AD
A ring from the Herodium reading "Pilatus"
A cheap sealing ring from a Herodian site carries the name Pilatus.
- 1st century BC – 1st century AD
The aqueduct Pilate paid for with temple money
The waterworks Josephus attributes to Pilate exist, on the route and the scale he gives.
- c. AD 20–31
The stepped street and Robinson's Arch
The road pilgrims climbed from the pool to the temple, and the stair off the Temple Mount, are datable to the years the Gospels describe.
- 1st century AD
"To the place of trumpeting"
A signposted corner of the Herodian temple, found in the debris of its demolition.
- 1st century AD
The Erastus pavement at Corinth
A city official named Erastus held office in Corinth in exactly the period Paul was writing from there and greeting a city official named Erastus.
- before AD 70
The Theodotus synagogue inscription
Synagogues used for scripture reading and teaching, and hosting travellers, existed in first-century Jerusalem — the institutional setting the Gospels and Acts take for granted.
- 1st century BC – 2nd century AD
The politarchs of Thessalonica
The unusual civic title Acts uses for Thessalonica's magistrates is the title the city's own inscriptions use.
- 1st–3rd century AD
Corinth: the synagogue lintel and the meat market
Corinth has a synagogue inscription and an excavated meat market — the two institutions Paul's Corinthian correspondence assumes.
- 1st century AD
Sergius Paulus and the proconsuls of Cyprus
Acts gives Cyprus the right kind of governor with the right title; the name is carried by real men of the period.
- AD 52
The Gallio Inscription — the clock of Paul's life
A named Roman official in Acts can be dated to within a year from a stone in Greece — which is why Paul's letters can be placed on a calendar at all.
- 1st century AD
Ephesus: the theatre, the temple, and the silversmiths
The theatre, the cult, the officials called asiarchs and the silversmith trade in Acts 19 are all attested at Ephesus.
- 1st century AD
The Caiaphas ossuary
The family, and very probably the man, who presided at Jesus' hearing is documented by an inscribed ossuary from an excavated Jerusalem tomb.
- 1st–2nd century AD
The "first man" of Malta
The odd title Acts gives the leading man of Malta is the title Malta's own inscriptions use for that office.
- 1st century AD (inscription disputed)
The "James" ossuary
Unprovenanced. The box is ancient; whether the reference to Jesus is ancient is disputed, and an acquittal in court did not settle it.
- AD 70
The Burnt House, AD 70
The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is preserved in a single burnt basement, down to the household's name and the last moments in it.
- AD 73–74
The Roman siege works at Masada
What a Roman siege of a Judaean stronghold looked like, in the generation the Gospels were written, is visible in full plan.
- 1st–3rd century AD
Roman roads and milestones in Judaea
The road network that made the journeys of Acts ordinary is still on the ground, dated by its own inscriptions.
- AD 94–132
Babatha's papers
Roman provincial registration, and the legal world an ordinary Jewish family lived in, survive in that family's own papers.
- 2nd century AD
Rylands Papyrus P52 — a scrap of John
A copy of John's Gospel was circulating in Egypt within roughly a century of the events it describes.
- 2nd–3rd century AD
Zeus and Hermes at Lystra
The specific pairing of Zeus and Hermes that the crowd at Lystra reaches for is attested as a local cult in that district.
- c. AD 175–225
P46 — Paul's letters, about AD 200
Paul's letters were copied and bound as a collection within roughly a century and a half of being written.
- c. AD 200
P66 and P75 — John and Luke on papyrus
The Gospels of Luke and John were being copied at length around AD 200, in a text very close to the great fourth-century codices.
Handed down
Never buried — copied by hand, generation after generation, until printing.
- 1st century AD records
Quirinius, the census, and a date that will not settle
Roman provincial censuses are well documented, and Quirinius is a real governor with a datable census — but that census falls about a decade after Herod's death, and the two datings have not been reconciled.
- c. AD 93–94
Josephus on James, the brother of Jesus
A first-century Jewish historian, writing within living memory, refers to Jesus and to his brother James as ordinary matters of public record.
- c. AD 93–94
Josephus on Herod, the high priests and John the Baptist
A first-century Jewish historian independently describes the rulers, priests and executions the Gospels and Acts are set among — including the death of John the Baptist.
- c. AD 112
Pliny the Younger reports on the Christians
Within eighty years of the crucifixion, a Roman official investigating Christians as a legal problem describes worship of Christ as divine, already established across a distant province.
- c. AD 116
Tacitus on the execution of Christus
A hostile Roman historian records the execution of Christus under Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, and the movement's spread to Rome within a generation.
- c. AD 121
Suetonius on Claudius expelling the Jews from Rome
The expulsion of Jews from Rome under Claudius that Acts mentions in passing is recorded by a Roman biographer.
- 1st–3rd century AD
The letter of Mara bar Serapion
A non-Christian Syriac writer refers to the execution of a Jewish "wise king" as a known event, and links it to the fall of the kingdom.
- c. AD 165
Lucian of Samosata on the Christians
A hostile pagan satirist, writing to entertain, takes the crucifixion in Palestine and the character of the Christian communities as common knowledge.
- mid-4th century AD
Codex Sinaiticus
A complete New Testament survives from the fourth century, and every correction later scribes made to it can be seen.
- mid-4th century AD
Codex Vaticanus
A fourth-century Greek Bible has been continuously held and catalogued since the fifteenth century.
- AD 930 and 1008
The Aleppo and Leningrad codices
The Hebrew text used today descends from copies whose scribes counted letters and verses in the margins to keep it fixed — and those copies can be compared against Qumran a thousand years earlier.
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.