Replacement theology (also known as supersessionism) essentially teaches that the church has replaced Israel in God’s plan. Adherents of replacement theology believe the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people, and God does not have specific future plans for the nation of Israel. All the different views of the relationship between the church and Israel can be divided into two camps: either the church is a continuation of Israel (replacement/covenant theology), or the church is completely different and distinct from Israel (dispensationalism/premillennialism).

Replacement theology teaches that the church is the replacement for Israel and that the many promises made to Israel in the Bible are fulfilled in the Christian church, not in Israel. So, the prophecies in Scripture concerning the blessing and restoration of Israel to the Promised Land are “spiritualized” or “allegorized” into promises of God’s blessing for the church. Major problems exist with this view, such as the continuing existence of the Jewish people throughout the centuries and especially with the revival of the modern state of Israel. If Israel has been condemned by God, and there is no future for the Jewish nation, how do we explain the supernatural survival of the Jewish people over the past 2000 years despite the many attempts to destroy them? How do we explain why and how Israel reappeared as a nation in the 20th century after not existing for 1900 years?

The view that Israel and the church are different is clearly taught in the New Testament. Biblically speaking, the church is completely different and distinct from Israel, and the two are never to be confused or used interchangeably. We are taught from Scripture that the church is an entirely new creation that came into being on the day of Pentecost and will continue until it is taken to heaven at the rapture (Ephesians 1:9-11; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17). The church has no relationship to the curses and blessings for Israel. The covenants, promises, and warnings are valid only for Israel. Israel has been temporarily set aside in God’s program during these past 2000 years of dispersion.

After the rapture (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), God will restore Israel as the primary focus of His plan. The first event at this time is the tribulation (Revelation chapters 6-19). The world will be judged for rejecting Christ, while Israel is prepared through the trials of the great tribulation for the second coming of the Messiah. Then, when Christ does return to the earth, at the end of the tribulation, Israel will be ready to receive Him. The remnant of Israel which survives the tribulation will be saved, and the Lord will establish His kingdom on this earth with Jerusalem as its capital. With Christ reigning as King, Israel will be the leading nation, and representatives from all nations will come to Jerusalem to honor and worship the King—Jesus Christ. The church will return with Christ and will reign with Him for a literal thousand years (Revelation 20:1-5).

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament support a premillennial/dispensational understanding of God’s plan for Israel. Even so, the strongest support for premillennialism is found in the clear teaching of Revelation 20:1-7, where it says six times that Christ’s kingdom will last 1000 years. After the tribulation the Lord will return and establish His kingdom with the nation of Israel, Christ will reign over the whole earth, and Israel will be the leader of the nations. The church will reign with Him for a literal thousand years. The church has not replaced Israel in God’s plan. While God may be focusing His attention primarily on the church in this dispensation of grace, God has not forgotten Israel and will one day restore Israel to His intended role as the nation He has chosen (Romans 11).

A carving of the Tower of Babel has been found on a stone tablet dating back over 2,500 years.

It comes from the newly published book Cuneiform Royal Inscriptions And Related Texts In The Schøyen Collection.

The collection is owned by Norwegian businessman Martin Schøyen, who has amassed over 13,000 ancient manuscripts and tablets.

One of the images shows King Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled Babylon 2,500 years ago, standing next to a huge ziggurat – a pyramidlike structure dedicated to the god Marduk that some scholars believe is the Tower of Babel of Biblical fame.

Professor Andrew George writes that this drawing is one of ‘the stars in the firmament of the book’.

The depiction of Nebuchadnezzar is one of only four in the world.

Professor George says: ‘The others are carved on cliff-faces in Lebanon at Wadi Brisa (which has two reliefs) and at Shir es-Sanam.

‘All these outdoor monuments are in very poor condition and their depictions of the king are much less impressive than that on the stele [stone tablet].’

Elsewhere in the book is an interesting translation of a 3,000-year-old copy of the law code of Mesopotamian king Ur-Nammu.

Within this scholars discovered an ‘eye for an eye’ rule, predating Hammurabi’s famous 1780BC code by hundreds of years.

However, Ur-Nammu’s version was less cruel and stated that blinding someone should result in a fine, not the losing of an eye.

Bar tabs were also enshrined in law. If, for example, you told a ‘female tavern-keeper’ to put a beer on a tab in the summer, she could order you to pay a tax in the winter – though it doesn’t specify how much.

Miguel Civil translates the text as follows: ‘If a female tavern-keeper gives [in] summer one beer-jar to someone on credit its nigdiri-tax will be [...] in win[ter]…’

The tiny scroll will be shown for 10 days at the Discovery Times Square exhibition space before returning to Israel.

The parchment, which dates to between 50 B.C. and 1 A.D., was discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea in 1952. It must be kept in a light-and-humidity-controlled environment to avoid deterioration, exhibit organizers said.

“The Ten Commandments scroll is actually in very good condition considering it’s 2,000 years old,” exhibit curator Risa Levitt Kohn said. “And if someone was able to read modern Hebrew they could actually look at this scroll and make their way through the text.”

The scroll’s Israeli conservator, Tatina Treiger, said the parchment is “fragile, so brittle.”

Written in Hebrew, the scroll contains the text of the Ten Commandments from Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Old Testament, and is considered to be the best-preserved artifact with the biblical principles. The scroll likely was used as a prayer leaflet.

It is on display with about 900 other scrolls also discovered in caves near the Dead Sea by Bedouin shepherds between 1947 and 1956.

The exhibit has the largest collection of biblical artifacts ever displayed outside Israel. It has been on display around the world.

The writers of the scrolls are still a mystery and topic of debate among scholars and historians.

The Bible is a progressive revelation. If you skip the first half of any good book and try to finish it; you will have a hard time understanding the characters, the plot, and the ending. In the same way, the New Testament is only completely understood when it is seen as being built upon the foundation of the events, characters, laws, sacrificial system, covenants, and promises of the Old Testament. If we only had the New Testament, we would come to the gospels and not know why the Jews were looking for a Messiah (a Savior King). Without the Old Testament, we would not understand why this Messiah was coming (see Isaiah 53); we would not have been able to identify Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah through the many detailed prophecies that were given concerning Him (e.g., His birth place (Micah 5:2); His manner of death (Psalm 22, especially vv. 1,7-8, 14-18; Psalm 69:21, etc.), His resurrection (Psalm 16:10), and many more details of His ministry (Isaiah 52:13.; 9:2, etc.).

Without the Old Testament, we would not understand the Jewish customs that are mentioned in passing in the New Testament. We would not understand the perversions the Pharisees had made to God’s law as they added their traditions to it. We would not understand why Jesus was so upset as He cleansed the temple courtyard. We would not understand that we can make use of the same wisdom that Christ used in His many replies to His adversaries (both human and demonic).

Without the Old Testament we would miss out on numerous detailed prophecies that could only have come true if the Bible is God’s word, not man’s (see the major and minor prophets) (e.g., Daniel 7 and following chapters). These prophecies give specific details about the rise and fall of nations, how they will fall, if they will rise again, which powers would be next to emerge, who the major players would be (Cyrus, Alexander the Great, etc.), and what would happen to their kingdoms when those players died. These detailed prophecies are so accurate that skeptics charge they had to have been written after the fact.

The Old Testament also contains numerous lessons for us through the lives of its many fallible characters. By observing their lives we can be encouraged to trust God no matter what (Daniel 3), and to not compromise in the little things (Daniel 1) so that we will be faithful later in the big things (Daniel 6). We can learn that it is best to confess sin early and sincerely instead of blame-shifting (1 Samuel 15). We can learn not to play with sin, because it will find us out and its bite is deadly (See Judges 13-16). We can learn that we need to trust (and obey) God if we expect to experience His promised-land living in this life and His paradise in the next (Numbers 13). We learn that if we contemplate sin, we are only setting ourselves up for committing it (Genesis 3; Joshua 6-7). We learn that our sin has consequences not only for ourselves but for our loved ones around us and conversely that our good behavior has rewards not only for us but for those who are around us as well (Genesis 3; Exodus 20:5-6).

The Old Testament also contains vast quantities of wisdom that the New Testament does not share. Many of these are contained in the Psalms and Proverbs. These bits of wisdom reveal how I can be wiser than my teachers, what various sins will lead to (it helps us to see the hook that the bait is hiding), and what accomplishments in this world hold for us (nothing!). How can I recognize whether I am a fool (moral fool, that is)? How can I inadvertently turn people off without trying? How can I open doors to lasting success? How can I find meaning in life? Again, there is so much there that is just waiting to be found by one who truly wants to learn.

Without the Old Testament, we would not have a basis for standing against the error of the politically correct perversions of our society in which evolution is seen to be the creator of all of the species over millions of years (instead of them being the result of special creation by God in a literal six days). We would buy the lie that marriages and the family unit are an evolving structure that should continue to change as society changes, instead of being seen as a design by God for the purpose of raising up godly children and for the protection of those who would otherwise be used and abused (most often women and children).

Without the Old Testament, we would not understand the promises God will yet fulfill to the Jewish nation. As a result, we would not properly see that the Tribulation period is a seven-year period in which He will specifically be working with the Jewish nation who rejected His first coming but who will receive Him at His second coming. We would not understand how Christ’s future 1,000-year reign fits in with His promises to the Jews, nor how the Gentiles will fit in. Nor would we see how the end of the Bible ties up the loose ends that were unraveled in the beginning of the Bible, how God will restore the paradise He originally created this world to be, and how we will enjoy close companionship with Him on a personal basis as in the Garden of Eden.

In summary, the Old Testament is a mirror that allows us to see ourselves in the lives of Old Testament characters and helps us learn vicariously from their lives. It sheds so much light on who God is and the wonders He has made and the salvation He has wrought. It shares so much comfort to those in persecution or trouble (see Psalms especially). It reveals through repeatedly fulfilled prophecy why the Bible is unique among holy books—it alone is able to demonstrate that it is what it claims to be: the inspired Word of God. It reveals volumes about Christ in page after page of its writings. It contains so much wisdom that goes beyond what is alluded to or quoted in the New Testament. In short, if you have not yet ventured in depth into its pages, you are missing much that God has available for you. As you read it, there will be much you do not understand right away, but there will be much you will understand and learn from. And as you continue to study it, asking God to teach you further, your mining will pay off in brighter treasures still.

The philosophy of Scientific Materialism precludes there being any possiblity of a non-physical spiritual reality, non-physical spiritual beings or phenomena.

from Technofascism:

Since the technocracy needs to reduce everyone to a controllable, predictable material entity, it obviously favors a worldview that considers human beings to be nothing but trousered apes.  To be properly denigrated, humans must be reduced to nothing more intrinsically important than a temporary, biological cog in the giant mega-machine’s creeking march toward greater progress and control over nature.

Unfortunately, to the dismay of the apostles of technocratic nihilism, this summer two findings, largely ignored by the mainstram media, were published that dealt devastating blows to the materialist philosophies that justify the technocracy’s agenda:  1) the conclusive evidence that Carbon-14 and other radiometric dating methods are invalid; and 2) strong evidence that the once universal and finely-tuned physical constants now actually vary throughout the universe.

The implications of one of these findings alone is enough to rewrite history and our place in the universe.  But taken together, they seem to be almost a beacon from a lighthouse outside of time and space cautioning us not to venture further into the rocky crags of materialist philosophy.

Some readers who think that evidence for varying isotope decay and physical non-constants might not be a big deal would do well to remember that ALL scientific knowledge we have about the origin of the universe and life on earth is based on the assumption that radioactive decay is constant and that the physical laws are not different in different places in the universe.  When these assumptions are shattered, we should be very skeptical about the versions of history that are currently being taught in schools as though they were the final truths of reality. . . .

read the full article here.

Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

While the Bible was completed approximately 1900 years ago, its accuracy and relevance for today remain unchanged. The Bible is the sole objective source of all the revelation God has given us about Himself and His plan for humanity.

The Bible contains a great deal of information about the natural world that has been confirmed by scientific observations and research. Some of these passages include Leviticus 17:11; Ecclesiastes 1:6-7; Job 36:27-29; Psalm 102:25-27 and Colossians 1:16-17.

As the Bible’s story of God’s redemptive plan for humanity unfolds, many different characters are vividly described. In those descriptions, the Bible provides a great deal of information about human behavior and tendencies. Our own day-to-day experience shows us that this information is more accurate and descriptive of the human condition than any psychology textbook.

Many historical facts recorded in the Bible have been confirmed by extra-biblical sources. Historical research often shows a great deal of agreement between biblical accounts and extra-biblical accounts of the same events.

However, the Bible is not a history book, a psychology text, or a scientific journal. The Bible is the description God gave us about who He is, and His desires and plans for humanity. The most significant component of this revelation is the story of our separation from God by sin and God’s provision for restoration of fellowship through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. Our need for redemption does not change. Neither does God’s desire to reconcile us to Himself.

The Bible contains a great deal of accurate and relevant information. The Bible’s most important message—redemption—is universally and perpetually applicable to humanity. God’s Word will never be outdated, superseded, or improved upon. Cultures change, laws change, generations come and go, but the Word of God is as relevant today as it was when it was first written. Not all of Scripture necessarily applies explicitly to us today, but all Scriptures contain truth that we can, and should, apply to our lives today.

I am here to tell you that God’s word clearly teaches that Christ was here on earth before his crucifixion and after his resurrection in a Fully Physical Body!

John 20:

The Empty Tomb

 Now the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.  Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.”

Peter therefore went out, and the other disciple, and were going to the tomb.  So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first.  And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in.  Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself.  Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.  Then the disciples went away again to their own homes.

Mary Magdalene Sees the Risen Lord

But Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. Then they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.”

Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”

She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” 

Jesus said to her, “Mary!”

She turned and said to Him, “Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher). 
Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’”

Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken these things to her.

The Apostles Commissioned

Then, the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, “Peace be with you.”  When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.

So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Seeing and Believing

Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.  The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!” Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”

And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” 
Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

That You May Believe

And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book;  but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

In the region where symbolism may matter most, the signs for U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit were inauspicious.

First Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak cancelled talks in Cairo and flew to hospital for gallbladder surgery. Then came an Israeli gift of broken glass and an eerie power outage in the “Hall of Remembrance”.

By the time the lights flickered back on, Biden’s Middle East fortunes were sealed with an Israeli announcement that it would build 1,600 new homes for Jewish settlers, ignoring U.S. and Palestinian objections.

It was an embarrassing setback that put a spotlight on the challenge the U.S. administration faces getting Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

Biden’s visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank was a largely scripted affair — a reflection of the sensitive issues involved as well as what many see as the Obama administration’s fixation with staying on message.

Biden is famous for blunt talk and sometimes embarrassing gaffes, and his office appeared to take precautions by allowing no questions at his public press appearances.

“He does have a history of mis-speaking,” said Stephen Hess, an expert on presidency at the Brookings Institution. “He’s aware of it, his people are aware of it. The president is aware of it. (And) given the sensitivities on this particular trip, it may be the better part of wisdom to keep quiet.”

The first sign of trouble in Israel came when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented Biden with a glass-framed gift honouring his mother.

“I have one thing to offer you right now and it’s broken glass,” Netanyahu said at discovering the shards he was holding. Biden cautioned: “Don’t cut yourself.”

The prime minister inadvertently shattered the glass when he put his elbows down on the podium, spokesman Mark Regev said.

In Judaism, broken glass is often thought to be a reminder of an imperfect world, and many say the Jewish wedding tradition of stomping on a glass is an expression of sadness at the destruction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.

At a later tour of Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, Yad Vashem, the lights in the “Hall of Remembrance” unexpectedly went out as a prayer for those killed was chanted, catching Biden’s security detail by surprise.

One Biden aide described the moment as “off-putting” but others said it worked well given the mournful context. In the darkness, the only light in the cavernous room came eerily from the eternal flame reflecting off the ceiling.

“It’s the Middle East,” said an unfazed senior White House adviser, a veteran of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. “It could mean anything.”

An Israeli expert of Jewish mysticism, known as Kabballah, said Biden’s visit came at a time “when there is tremendous energy” before the Passover holiday that starts later this month, marking the biblical escape of the Jews from Egypt.

“It could be something negative, like what is referred to as the ‘evil eye’,” said the expert, who declined to be named. “But in Kabballah, we also believe that sometimes before a great light is revealed, there have to be a series of disturbances.”

David Wilder, a spokesman for Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron, said he did not necessarily believe “all of this happened because of divine intervention” but he saw the mishaps as “very symbolic”.

“When the United States doesn’t play its cards right, it gets a gift of broken glass,” he said, noting that “one of the plagues in Egypt was darkness.

After underlining U.S. opposition to the latest settlement plan, Biden flew to Amman for more talks, and a trip to the famed ruins at Petra — that is provided a forecast sandstorm does not prevent him reaching there.

Scientists think they’ve finally found the real location of a city called Neta’im mentioned in the Bible.

Based on its proximity to another biblical town, and archaeological ruins dating from the time of the biblical King David’s rule, researchers think Neta’im might have been located at the modern site called Khirbet Qeiyafa, in Israel.

Khirbet Qeiyafa contains the ruins of an ancient fortress city on top of a hill overlooking the Elah Valley. Pottery shards and burned olive pits at the site date to about 1,000 B.C. Most scholars think King David ruled during this time.

Archaeologists have previously associated Khirbet Qeiyafa with the biblical city Sha’arayim, which means “two gates,” because of the discovery of two gates in the fortress ruins, and because Sha’arayim was also associated with King David in the Bible. But now researchers claim this site is really Neta’im, a town mentioned in the book 1 Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament.

“The inhabitants of Neta’im were potters who worked in the king’s service and inhabited an important administrative center near the border with the Philistines”‘ said Gershon Galil, a professor of biblical studies at the University of Haifa in Israel.

Galil thinks Neta’im was located at Khirbet Qeiyafa in part because it is near the modern site Khirbet Ğudraya, also near the Elah Valley, which has been identified as the biblical town of Gederah. Both Gederah and Neta’im were mentioned in the same verse of the Bible, 1 Chronicles 4:23: “These were the potters, the inhabitants of Neta’im and Gederah, they dwelt there in the King’s service.”

Neta’im is only mentioned once in the Bible, and has so far remained unidentified.

In related research, Galil recently deciphered text written on a pottery shard found at Khirbet Qeiyafa, and found it was the earliest known example of Hebrew writing.

“The archeological findings at this site, the discovery of the earliest and most important Hebrew inscription to be found to date, and the understanding, based on the biblical text, that members of the Tribe of Judah inhabited the town and worked in the king’s service, testify to Khirbet Qeiyafa – Neta’im – being an important administrative center in the border region of the Kingdom of Israel during the time of King David’s reign,” Galil said.

by David Rohl

Upon visiting Egypt, the fifth-century-BC Greek historian, Herodotus, described the land of the pharaohs as the ‘Gift of the Nile’. What he meant was that, without the life-nurturing waters of the great river, there would have been no Egyptian civilisation to admire and study. The Nile valley is a thin thread of fertility in an otherwise parched and desolate landscape – an oasis in the vast expanse of the North African desert. As a result, virtually all archaeological work undertaken by Egyptologists in the last two hundred years has been concentrated in the valley itself or along its edges where the pyramids and tombs are located. Little attention has been paid to the far desert regions which constitute ninety percent of modern Egypt’s land surface.

We are all familiar with the jewels of Egyptian civilisation – the Pyramids of Giza, the Temples of Karnak and the Valley of the Kings with its golden treasure of Tutankhamun. You may have visited Egypt yourself and been introduced to many more pharaonic sites and priceless artefacts than those I have just mentioned. But few of these splendours from Egypt’s fluorite tell us much about the beginnings of Egyptian history.

The origins of pharaonic civilisation have always been shrouded in mystery. What caused dynastic culture to burst forth in the Nile valley within such a relatively short period of time? It has long been recognised that ‘the emergence of pharaonic rule coincided with an entirely unprecedented series of phenomena’ which formed the recognisable foundation of what we identify as pharaonic Egypt. There is little evidence of kingship and its rituals very much before the beginning of the 1st Dynasty; no signs of the gradual development of metal working, art, monumental architecture and writing – the defining criteria of early civilisation. Much of what we know about the pharaohs and their complex culture seems to come into existence in a flash of inspiration.

So what was the mysterious and sudden inspiration at the heart of the origins of Egyptian civilisation? The answer, I believe, is to be found in the Eastern Desert which separates the Nile valley from the Red Sea. There, in the rugged sandstone mountains, remarkable clues have been found to suggest that newcomers arrived in Egypt towards the end of the fourth millennium BC – just a couple of centuries before the foundation of the pharaonic state at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty. These clues come in the form of hundreds of prehistoric rock drawings. They depict high-prowed reed ships and their crews. Warriors are shown dragging their vessels through the desert. Some of the boats carry as many as seventy-five crewmen. These are not small river-going craft but huge ocean-going battleships.

It appears that Egypt was invaded by seafarers from a distant land to the east, and that these newcomers were the crucial cultural and technological influence which triggered early civilisation in north-east Africa. Later I will be going into the reasons why this was the historical reality but, for now, I want to concentrate on the discovery of the prehistoric rock art and describe to you a typical expedition to locate and record these amazing images from Egypt’s most ancient past.

The expeditions into the Eastern Desert are logistically difficult operations. They have to be completed in a very short time because essential supplies are soon used up. Each survey, therefore, lasts no longer than a week. In these short bursts of activity we have to be highly mobile, moving from location to location in search of more signs of the predynastic rock art. It is also only safe to camp out in the desert in late November through to early February when the snakes and scorpions are tucked up in their holes hibernating through the short winter.

The survey mission consists of several site recorders, a team of experienced Egyptian drivers and a pair of talented beduin cooks – all crammed into five Toyota Land Cruisers, roofs piled high with tents, food rations and those two most vital commodities – water and fuel.

Let me tell the story of one particular mission to give you the flavour of an Eastern Desert Survey mission.

We set off from Edfu, heading east along the desert road to Mersa Alam on the Red Sea coast. Just beyond the little rock-cut temple of Pharaoh Seti I at Kanais we left the asphalt road and struck north-east into the wide mouth of the Wadi Abu Ashayir el-Atshan. The desert surface was hard and flat. The convoy hurtled along, billowing clouds of dust in its wake. Within an hour we were deep into the complex wadi system which would be our home for the next five days. In prehistoric times these wadis were seasonal streams affording travellers and local pastoralists oases of shady refuge and life-giving water in an otherwise inhospitable environment.

Over the last five thousand years the mountains of the Eastern Desert have become desiccated as the climate has turned much drier. Today, an expedition like the ones I lead need to be self sufficient, because even the wells cut by the pharaohs are bone dry. Hardly surprising then that few Egyptologists have ventured into this harsh terrain. However, two hardy souls need mention here because they were the first to find what we ourselves have come all this way to rediscover and record.