Archaeologists working in the ancient city of Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel have found a detailed miniature sculpture of a head. Owen Jarus reports:
The sculpture depicts a man with long, black hair and a beard who is wearing a yellow and black headband. He has dark, almond-shaped eyes and a serious expression on his face. Carved in a glazed ceramic called faience, the head is only about 2 inches by 2.2 inches in size and was once part of a small statuette, now lost, that was 8 to 10 inches [high]. . . .
The quality of the carving and its seemingly careful placement inside a possible administrative building at the peak of the city indicate that it depicts an elite person. . . . “We’re guessing probably a king, but we have no way of proving that,” said Robert Mullins, [one of the excavation’s directors].
If this was a king, which one? Radiocarbon dating of organic material found in the same room as the sculpture suggests that the object was constructed sometime between 902 and 806 BCE, Mullins said. At this time, he noted, the borders of three different kingdoms—Israel, Tyre, and Aram-Damascus—were near Abel Beth Maacah. . . . Given the long stretch of time during which the sculpture could have been created and the fact that control of Abel Beth Maacah changed throughout this period, the sculpture could depict numerous kings . . . Three possibilities are King Ahab of Israel, King Hazael of Aram-Damascus, and King Ethbaal of Tyre, but there are many other candidates, [Mullins] said.
Read more on Live Science: https://www.livescience.com/62758-biblical-king-sculpture.html