Sharing and saving for students these images from this article in Ha’aretz of diminutive temple remains, including two tough little striking gods. They were dug up in central Israel at Lachish, an important Canaanite town-city circa 1800 B.C.E.. From the article, we learn how, in the wake of clashes between Canaan and Egyptian empire (the expansionist 18th Dynasty: 1549 to 1292 B.C.E), Lachish was destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed.  Dating from the period between 1200 to 1150 B.C.E., the artifacts mix Canaanite and Egyptian gods and other design elements. Static and unstatic, the objects give a sense of busy temple life. Of note is this appearance of the past and out of the past, a world spatially emergent and simultaneously stuck in time, at once concrete but only vaguely suggested in gold, bronze and clay.

Bronze cauldron; photo credit: Tal Rogovski

Gold earrings, photo credit: Tal Rogovski

Scarab found at Lachish; photo credit: Tal Rogovski

Gold leaf found at Tel Lachish Tal Rogovski

Pottery uncovered in the Canaanite temple, Lachish; photo credit: Clara Amit / IAA

Weapons and jewelry found near the temple inner sanctum: beads, earrings, an arrowhead, a dagger and an axe head; photo credit: Tal Rogovski

Illustration of the pendant depicting goddess with Hathor coiffure, holding lotus flowers or papyrus;  illustration by O. Dobovsky

Smiting gods found in Canaanite temple, Lachish; photo credit: Tal Rogovski

The earliest-found version of the letter samekh is in the yellow circle, bottom right; phot credit: Tal Rogovski

Four pieces of the gilded bronze situla bearing an engraved hieroglyphic inscription, Lachish; photo credit: Tal Rogovski