In 2004, a team of archaeologists obtained thousands of tons of dirt that had been illegally removed from the Temple Mount and began sifting through it—with the help of amateur volunteers—to retrieve whatever ancient artifacts might be found. The Temple Mount Sifting project, as the endeavor is now known, has chosen twelve of these items by which to tell the history of the site. The first, discovered in 2011, is an amulet with Egyptian hieroglyphics on it, bearing an official epithet for Pharaoh Thutmose III and likely dating to his reign, centuries before the putative date of the Exodus. Daniel Shani writes:

Thutmose III reigned in Egypt from 1479 to 1425 BCE. He was a member of the 18th dynasty, which ruled in the beginning of the era in Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom. . . . Meanwhile, in the land the Egyptians knew as Retjenu, and which the Bible calls “Canaan,” the Late Bronze Age was in full swing, and the country was divided among local “kings”—rulers of city-states.

Thutmose III helped turn Egypt into a superpower by extending his empire from southern Syria, through Canaan, all the way to Nubia. . . . The first, and probably largest, of Thutmose III’s seventeen military campaigns took place in Canaan. The Canaanite city-states revolted against pharaonic attempts at hegemony but were soundly trounced by Thutmose’s superior forces and tactics at the battle of Megiddo in 1457 BCE.

And so the Egyptians ruled the land until the mid-12th century BCE, leaving their mark on archaeological sites throughout the country. [Egyptian] archives relate a rich correspondence between the pharaoh and the rulers of the city-states of Canaan, including the king of Jerusalem, Abdi-Heba. In his six letters, Abdi‑Heba beseeches the pharaoh for help against the Habiru people, and against the rulers of cities such as Shechem, Gezer, and Lachish who, unlike himself, show no loyalty to the pharaoh.

Strangely enough, when reading each of the other rulers’ letters, one finds that each claims to be the only one truly loyal to the pharaoh.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.