Using new scanning techniques, archaeologists compared two sets of earthenware jars discovered in First Temple-era Judea and made a surprising discovery. Rossella Tercatin writes:

The archaeologists looked at jars carrying two different seal impressions, the [Hebrew] letters LMLK—forming the inscription l’melekh, to the king—and “Rosetta” jars, whose handles are imprinted with a small flower and petals that are surrounded by a circle. The vessels were used for commercial purposes and for tax collection. The LMLK jars date back to a period between the 9th and the 7th centuries BCE and were common in the area of what is now south-central Israel.

In 701 BCE, King Sennacherib of Assyria launched a vast military operation in the region that is well documented in the Bible and in Assyrian chronicles.

From the 7th century, the LMLK jars were not produced any more, while by the end of the century and the beginning of the 6th century the Rosetta jars appeared in Jerusalem and its surroundings and were used until the Babylonian destruction in 586 BCE. . . . The questions of how a new ceramic tradition completely separated from the previous one developed in the kingdom of Judah and who was the group and culture responsible for it—as well as whether it was connected to the Assyrian conquest—remain open.

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.