The presence of Middle Kingdom Egyptian scarabs bearing private names and titles of officials in Middle Bronze Age Canaan generated a scholarly controversy regarding the relations between Egypt and Palestine during that period. Analysis of distinctive characteristics of the scarabs, and of the contexts (whenever available) in which they were found in Egypt, indicates that their original function was primarily as funerary amulets. Examination of the inscriptions and the archaeological contexts of officials' scarabs found in Palestine demonstrates that the scarabs reached Canaan, after having been plundered from tombs in Egypt, no earlier than the time of the 13th Dynasty, and that their main use in Canaan was, similar to Egypt, as funerary amulets.

It is suggested that scarabs, including those bearing private names and titles of officials, initially arrived in Palestine through the Asiatics who settled in the eastern Delta during the late Middle Kingdom.

The analysis of material recovered by flotation has the potential to produce considerable information concerning patterned human activities. Several problems relating to significant differences in quantities and types of material culture and other human debris are examined within the framework of differing archaeological contexts and periods at Tell Ashkelon, lvrael. In particular, debris analyzed from two types of living surfaces at the site--a Persian-period courtyard and a room in a Philistine building--provide evidence for sharply defined domestic and industrial activities. Taken together, these analyses demonstrate the utility of flotation as a method for more precise understanding of specific archaeological strata.

The first part of this article is the final report on the excavations at the Iron Age site on a high hill near Quseima, dominating the Dharb Ghazza road to Eilat and Sinal. The second part returns to an old archaeological controversy: who built the sites known as "Israelite fortresses," when, and why? The article argues that the model of self-initiated nomad sedentarization recently proposed by Finkelstein, Herzog, and Eitam has many weak points and does not answer the questions.

Roman North Africa remained Phoenician in language well into the Common Era. Nor was the local culture bereft of its literary heritage. Classical Canaanite poetry continued to be cultivated in the province of Tripolitania as late as the fourth century A.D. as evidenced by a surviving three-verse lyric poem by the soldier-poet Iulius Nasif, written in Latin letters and inscribed on his tombstone in the necropolis at Bir el-Drider. In form and style, the composition is essentially identical to the ancient lyric poetry of Israel. It is unique, however, in being the only poem of the Canaanite literary tradition to come down to us fully vocalized and textually intact from the time of composition. Notable also is the metrical (rhythmic) composition of the poem.

A number of early mosques associated with a widevpread system of settlements that existed during the sixth to eighth centuries c.E. have been discovered in recent years throughout the Negev Highlands. Thus far, 12 mosques of different types have been recorded. These include mosques built either within urban settlements or adjacent to rural settlements, and mosques connected with nomadic populations in the southern Negev Highlands. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that the source of the open mosques constructed near rural and nomadic sites in the Negev Highlands is to be sought in the stele cult that was widely disseminated in Nabataean and Byzantine times. The chronological framework of the early mosques, their connection to dated settlements, and the formal relations between the stele cult and the mosques seem more consistent with a picture of gradual Islamic penetration into southern Palestine than with a swift adoption of canonical Islam in the wake of a single wave of conquest.