Israel Antiquities Authority
Independent Israeli governmental authority
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The National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel is the new home of the IAA, located on Museum Row in Jerusalem. In 2025, the almost completed Campus started offering guided tours, with the Visitor Experience center expected to be opened to the public in early 2027.
History
The Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums (IDAM) of the Ministry of Education was founded on July 26, 1948, after the establishment of the State of Israel. It took over the functions of the Department of Antiquities of the British Mandate in Israel and Palestine. Originally, its activities were based on the British Mandate Department of Antiquities ordinances.
IDAM was the statutory authority responsible for Israel's antiquities and for the administration of small museums. Its functions included curation of the state collection of antiquities, storing of the state collection, maintaining a list of registered antiquities sites, inspecting antiquities sites and registering newly discovered sites, conducting salvage and rescue operations of endangered antiquities sites, maintaining an archaeological library (the state library), maintaining an archive.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) was created from the IDAM by the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in a 1990 statute. Amir Drori became its first director. The IAA fulfilled the statutory obligations of the IDAM and in its early days was greatly expanded from the core number of workers in IDAM to a much larger complement, and to include the functions of the Archaeological Survey of Israel project, ending the activity of the Association for the Archaeological Survey of Israel (1964–1988). The period of expansion lasted for a number of years, but was followed by a period in which diminished fiscal resources and a reduction in funding led to large cutbacks in the size of its work force and its activities.
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The National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel
The Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel is the future building of the IAA, aiming to concentrate all centralized administrative offices into one structure. The campus, designed by architect Moshe Safdie, is planned on 20,000 square meters between the Israel Museum and the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem. It also aims to exhibit approximately two million ancient artifacts and make them accessible to the public, as well as serve as a center for research, education, demonstration, display, and explanation of Israel's cultural heritage across its various cultural and religious spectrums, throughout human history.
The Visitor Experience center at the Campus was planned and designed for three years and is, as of March 2026, expected to be fully built by the end of 2026 and open to visitors in early 2027.
Directors
- Shmuel Yeivin, 1948–1961
- Avraham Biran, 1961–1974
- Avraham Eitan, 1974–1988
- Amir Drori, 1988–2000
- Yehoshua (Shuka) Dorfman, 2000–July 31, 2014
- Yisrael Hasson, 2014–2020
- Eli Escusido he, sometimes misspelled Eskosido, 2021-
Other staff
- Levi Rahmani, archeologist and Chief Curator during the 1980s
Restoration work
The IAA's restoration team, consisting as of 2010 of six members, restores potsherds, textiles, metal objects and other objects related to the material culture of the country discovered in archaeological excavations. Unlike their peers around the world, the team in Israel is barred by Israeli law from working with human remains.