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[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Archaeology – III. Art History and Ethnology I. Religious Studies Masks are artifacts that cover the face, head, or body of the wearers, disguising them and thus making them unrecognizable. But they are also employed without being worn – mounted, hung up, or fastened to a base (masks of the dead or mummies). They serve to let human or (more usually) nonhuman figures represented by the mask, often out of mythology, appear in the midst of the human community. Scholars…

[German Version] (Heb. יִזְרְעֶאל/ Yizriʿēal), is attested in the Hebrew Bible as a place name for an unlocated settlement in Judah (Josh 15:56; 1 Sam 25:43, etc.) and a city in northern Israel (1 Kgs 21; 2 Kgs 9f.; Hos 1:4, etc.), modern Tell Jezreel on the western edge of the plain by the same name. Excavations (1990–1997) have yielded settlements in the Early Bronze I/III, Middle Bronze II, Late Bronze and Early Iron I periods, but, especially, a carefully planned and constructed approx. 4.5-hect…

[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Archaeology – III. Bible I. History of Religions Jewelry, attested since the Middle Paleolithic (75,000 bce), is part of the primarily visual repertoire of signs expressing group membership, social roles (such as gender, office, status or function) and identity, and used for communicating hopes, wishes, obligations and the like. Depending on whether jewelry is worn openly or concealed, the positive effect on the person her- or himself, intimate identity or its function…

[German Version] mountain tapering to a high plateau (588 m) on the northeast edge of the Valley of Jezreel (Israel). Tabor appears in the Old Testament as a boundary marker between tribes (Josh 19:12, 22, 34), a military rallying point (Judg 4:6, 12, 14f.), and in the toponyms Chisloth-tabor and Aznoth-tabor (Josh 19:12, 34). A cultic significance of Tabor cannot be demonstrated from the biblical text (vague references in Ps 89:13*; Hos 5:1), archaeological evidence, or the etymology of the name…