Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

February 26, 2026

A Rare and Exquisite Artifact from Jerusalem’s Second Persian Period

A message of solidarity with the Iranian people.

As today’s observation by Ethan Dor-Shav reminds us, the upcoming holiday of Purim directs our attention to the era from 539 to 332 BCE, when the Persian empire ruled the Land of Israel. But there was a second, briefer Persian period during the 7th century CE, when the Sassanian dynasty seized Jerusalem and its environs from the Byzantine empire. The Temple Mount Sifting Project explains:

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