Ancient seal suggests Jezebel conducted business separate of her husband
By Heather Whipps
Jezebel, the queen whose name became synonymous with all things lewd and wicked, probably wielded a fair bit of power in ancient Israel, suggests a stone document seal newly traced to the Biblical "bad girl."
Originally discovered in Israel in 1964, the intricate seal was suspected all along to belong to Queen Jezebel, but confusion over the letters engraved on the stone left some uncertainty. Recently, closer scrutiny of the seal's engraving revealed markings characteristic of royal objects.
"The lion-sphinx with female head and female Isis-Hathor crown, which is unique, this clearly points to a queen," said Marjo Korpel, an Old Testament scholar at the University of Utrecht who conducted the research.
The seal confirms that Jezebel, who eventually met a gory demise, was a powerful figure in the ancient world who conducted business independent of her husband.
Complete results of the University of Utrecht study are published in a recent volume of the Journal for Semitics.
Royal symbols borrowed from Egypt
Jezebel, whose life in the 9th century B.C. is chronicled in the Bible, was married to King Ahab of Israel. As a Phoenician, the Queen ...   more »

In a growing number of churches, salvation means saving the Earth.
A movement called Interfaith Power and Light offers ministers sermon tips on how to convert churchgoers into environmental activists. One program encourages people to switch to energy
efficient light bulbs on each night they light a holiday candle for Advent or Hanukkah.
Virginia's chapter has focused on developing a three-hour training program for congregations that asks members to calculate their carbon footprints and pledge a 10 percent reduction.
A movement called "Cool Congregations" is afoot in Tennessee, where members of different congregations meet to discuss the connection between faith and environment and then spread the green gospel to their houses of worship.
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By Sara A. Carter - Fort Huachuca, the nation's largest intelligence-training center, changed security measures in May after being warned that Islamist terrorists, with the aid of Mexican drug cartels, were planning an attack on the facility.
Fort officials changed security measures after sources warned that possibly 60 Afghan and Iraqi terrorists were to be smuggled into the U.S. through underground tunnels with high-powered weapons to attack the Arizona Army base, according to multiple confidential law enforcement documents obtained by The Washington Times.
"A portion of the operatives were in the United States, with the remainder not yet in the United States," according to one of the documents, an FBI advisory that was distributed to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, Customs and Border Protection and the Justice Department, among several other law enforcement agencies throughout the nation. "The Afghanis and Iraqis shaved their beards so as not to appear to be Middle Easterners."
According to the FBI advisory, each Middle Easterner paid Mexican drug lords $20,000 "or the equivalent in weapons" for the cartel's assistance in smuggling them and their weapons through tunnels along the border into the U.S. The weapons would be sent through tunnels that supposedly ended ...   more »