The Story & the Stone
Key Stage 3 / Middle School
- Home Start here. Ten eras, one screen. Watch empires rise and vanish around the gold lights that never go out.
- The Merneptah Stele The oldest external mention of Israel, in stone, in Cairo. Dated 1208 BCE. Still there.
- Ketef Hinnom Amulets Older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Silver scrolls found in a burial cave outside Jerusalem - and the inscription they carry.
- The Kaifeng Portrait Jewish traders in Song-dynasty China. A community at the far end of the Silk Road, conducting themselves exactly as Jews.
- The Calendar Tool The lunisolar calendar as a living institution - still in use, still governing festivals, still calculated the same way it was in antiquity.
Curriculum links
Ancient civilisations - Israel and the ancient Near East alongside Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Rome. Source analysis - what a primary source can and cannot tell us. Cultural continuity - how practices survive across millennia without a state to maintain them.