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Khirbet Qeiyafa at the Time of David

A preliminary report for the fourth and fifth seasons (2010-2011) at Khirbet Qeiyafa has been published by Hadashot Arkheologiyot. Written by Yossi Garfinkel, Sa‘ar Ganor, and Michael Hasel, the report summarizes the finds in Areas A through E, gives a stratigraphical chart of the six strata (from Late Chalcolithic to Ottoman), and concludes with an assessment of the site in its three major periods. Of most interest to us are the finds from Stratum IV, dated to the late 11th and early 10th centuries. This portion is excerpted below, with emphasis added for those who like to skim.

The lower stratum, from Iron Age IIA, dates to the late eleventh–early tenth centuries BCE. The remains of this settlement, uncovered to date, included two gates, two gate plazas, twenty-eight casemates (twenty complete), ten residential buildings and remains of administrative buildings at the top of the site. Large quantities of artifacts were discovered on the floors of the houses in each area, including hundreds of pottery vessels that can be restored, hundreds of stone objects, dozens of metallic objects and small finds. It is obvious that this stratum was suddenly destroyed. Much evidence was found of ritual activity, including mazzevot, a cultic chamber, models of temples (two of ceramic and one of stone) and a figurine.
The Iron Age city had impressive architectural and material finds:
1. A town plan characteristic of the Kingdom of Judah that is also known from other sites, e.g., Bet Shemesh, Tell en-Nasbeh, Tell Beit Mirsim and Be’er Sheva‘. A casemate wall was built at all of these sites and the city’s houses next to it incorporated the casemates as one of the dwelling’s rooms. This model is not known from any Canaanite, Philistine or Kingdom of Israel site.
2. Massive fortification of the site, including the use of stones that weigh up to eight tons apiece.
3. Two gates. To date, no Iron Age cities with two gates were found in either Israel or Judah.
4. An open space for a gate plaza was left near each gate. In Area C an area was left open parallel to three casemates and in Area D, the area was parallel to four casemates.
5. The city’s houses were contiguous and built very close together.
6. Some 500 jar handles bearing a single finger print, or sometimes two or three, were found. Marking jar handles is characteristic of the Kingdom of Judah and it seems this practice has already begun in the early Iron Age IIA.
7. A profusion of bronze and iron objects were found. The iron objects included three swords, about twenty daggers, arrowheads and two spearheads. The bronze items included an axe, arrowheads, rings and a small bowl.
8. Trade and imported objects. Ashdod ware, which was imported from the coastal plain, was found at the site. Basalt vessels were brought from a distance of more than 100 km and clay juglets from Cyprus and two alabaster vessels from Egypt were discovered.
The excavations at Khirbat Qeiyafa clearly reveal an urban society that existed in Judah already in the late eleventh century BCE. It can no longer be argued that the Kingdom of Judah developed only in the late eighth century BCE or at some other later date.

The full preliminary report, with illustrations, is here. All of this data provides archaeologists with much to evaluate with regard to the 10th-century debate.

HT: Joseph Lauer

West gate of Khirbet Qeiyafa, facing Azekah

Tagged 10th Century, Excavations, Shephelah

Egyptian Scarab Discovered in City of David

A unique discovery in Jerusalem a couple of weeks ago was surprisingly carried by only one news source—Israel Hayom. Joseph Lauer saw the report and passed it on.

An Egyptian scarab, dating back to the 13th century B.C.E. (the era when some scholars speculate the Exodus may have occurred) was uncovered on Thursday at an excavation sponsored by the Israel Antiquities Authority at the City of David National Park.
The seal is about a centimeter and a half in length and was used to stamp documents.
It bears the name, in Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, of the sun god Amon-Ra, one of Egypt’s most important deities. It is made of soft gray stone and also bears the imprint of a duck, which was apparently one of the sun god’s symbols.
[…]
“This is the first time we’ve found a scarab of this kind in the City of David,” said archaeologist Eli Shukrun, who is directing the dig along with Dr. Joe Uziel.

The full story, with a photo, is here. I wonder why the Israel Antiquities Authority didn’t report this.

Perhaps they had already prepared their Passover story (the recovery of Egyptian coffins) and didn’t want to save it for next year. I’m curious too where they discovered the scarab. I’ll be in the City of David next week and post what I learn.

UPDATE: Aren Maeir has corrected me in the comments below. This is not the first Egyptian scarab found in the City of David. I misread Shukrun’s quote: it’s the first scarab of this kind that he has found in the City of David. The post above has been changed accordingly. My apologies for the error.

Sign at entrance to City of David National Park

Tagged Discoveries, Egypt, Jerusalem

Wednesday Roundup

In an article published in the new issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Emile Puech’s view of the Qeiyafa Ostracon is summarized. He believes that it “announces the installation of a centralized royal administration and it makes this announcement to a distant frontier province. He concedes that it is difficult to establish with certainty whether the new royal administration is that of Saul or David. On balance, however, he concludes that, most likely, the ostracon refers to Saul’s accession.”

Gordon Franz discusses three possible locations for the temple to Augustus near Panias/Caesarea Philippi. He concludes that the site of Omrit is likely the backdrop for Peter’s confession.

Using satellite images taken over a span of 40 years, Shmuel Browns shows how the Dead Sea is shrinking.

The first quarter of 2012 saw a record number of tourists to Israel.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority says that if visitors pay they are less likely to trash a site.
Aren Maeir has announced a major scholarship for those wishing to join the excavations at Gath and/or Tel Burna this summer. The application deadline is May 6.

HT: BibleX

Roman temple at Omrit

Tagged Dead Sea, Galilee, Opportunities, Philistines, Tourism

The Implications of an Altar on Mount Ebal

I intended to ignore this article (as I do many others), because I doubt that the identification is accurate and this article in Israel Hayom is but a popular presentation of a discovery now 25 years old. So you’re not reading this here because I agree that the “altar” on Mount Ebal is “the world’s most important Biblical archaeological site” and the “the Holy Grail of Biblical archaeology.” But the article helpfully points out scholarly biases that affect interpretation.

One of the people on the tour asks whether there are researchers – colleagues – who support him. Zertal names the late Professor Benjamin Mazar, who “supported me to an extent, but it was difficult for him because he was part of the mainstream. If you support a revolutionary idea, you pretty much cut off your relationships with certain people in positions of power.” Once again, he quotes Professor Lawrence Steiger of the Harvard Museum of Semitic Studies who said at the end of the 1980s: “If the ruin on Mount Ebal is what Adam Zertal says it is, the effect on archaeology and Biblical studies will be revolutionary; we will all have to go back to kindergarten. But that’s a big if.”
He mentions scientists whose revolutionary ideas met with vigorous rejection by the contemporary establishment, which ostracized them, from Galileo to Daniel Schechtman. “Put yourself in the shoes of professors who wrote books for decades, and suddenly along comes some pipsqueak from the Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza’ir movement who discovers an altar that matches, point for point, what is written in the Bible. What would you do? Ze’ev Herzog writes an article entitled ‘The Bible – No Findings on the Ground.’ An entire career was built on the theory of ‘no data.’ And suddenly there are facts! Incidentally, an American researcher by the name of William Dever says that there were only ‘proto-Israelites’ here. It’s not really clear what that means. But we found 420 Israelite sites from the settlement period (the Iron Age I period).”

While this is a most simplistic presentation (“suddenly there are facts!”), his evaluation that this discovery must be ignored because it undermines a particular scholarly perspective is important. A similar approach has been taken with regard to Bryant Wood’s analysis of the pottery at Jericho.

The reason that I doubt that Zertal has found Joshua’s altar is because his claim that the altar “matches, point for point, what is written in the Bible” is false. His evidence dates the altar to 1200 BC, two hundred years after the time of Joshua. Other objections have been raised by various archaeologists concerning the nature of the structure as well. But there are some intriguing things that may well have been ignored because his interpretation would send liberal biblical scholars “back to kindergarten.”

HT: Joseph Lauer

Mount Ebal from Mount Gerizim

Tagged Analysis, Exodus-Conquest, Samaria

New Book: The Walls of the Temple Mount

Eilat Mazar has released a two-volume work through her own publishing company that is now available from Eisenbrauns. The Walls of the Temple Mount has 320 pages of text in the first volume and 6 fold-out maps in the second. From the publisher’s description:

This volume comprises the most comprehensive and detailed documentation of the walls of the Temple Mount to date, and is meant to serve as an accessible, updated database for anyone taking an interest in the Temple Mount.
The walls of the Temple Mount compound—one of the most magnificent construction enterprises in all of antiquity—reflect the immense scale of King Herod’s vision of some two thousand years ago, a brilliant technological feat of vast dimensions and breathtaking beauty which continues to captivate our imagination even today. This innovative creation occupies a place of honor among the most splendid edifices of the ancient world, and in the cultural legacy of all humankind.

To judge from the $270 price tag, this work is intended primarily for institutional libraries. Given problems with Mazar’s credibility on some recent issues, I will be interested to see a review of this book by Leen Ritmeyer. (Ritmeyer is author of the best book on the Temple Mount, The Quest: Revealing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a more affordable volume.)

Northeastern corner of the Temple Mount, one of the highest preserved sections visible

Tagged Jerusalem, Resources

The Resurrection Tomb Mystery on TV

If you want to capture the hearts and minds of the people, you won’t do it through blogs but through TV specials. Whether or not the movie producers really want to convince people to “believe” or just buy the DVD and book is not clear to me, but the The Resurrection Tomb Mystery (aka The Jesus Discovery) puts forth claims that very few scholars have found convincing.

Some of the latest discussion is reviewed by James McGrath, and Mark Goodacre provides a simple summary of the claim.

The claim at the heart of the new documentary is that this tomb belonged to some of Jesus’ disciples, his earliest followers, probably Joseph of Arimathea himself, the man who buried Jesus. The basis for the claim is twofold: (1) One of the ossuaries is said to feature a picture of a fish, pointing downwards, that is spitting out a stick man. They interpret this as depicting the Hebrew Bible’s story of Jonah and the fish, and they suggest that this is being used as a symbol of early Christian resurrection. (2) Another of the ossuaries features an inscription that they interpret as referring to resurrection.

Goodacre is unconvinced, saying that “the case that this tomb belonged to Jesus’ disciples is very weak.” He then provides his top ten problems with the proposed interpretation.

1. Weak circumstantial evidence alone.

2. Handles on a fish?

3. Layered patterns of geometric shapes.

4. The Composite Computer-Generated Image.

5. The original excavators did not see a fish.

6. Fish in the margins.

7. The handled half-fish.

8. The Inscription Does Not Clearly Refer to Resurrection.

9. The Tomb Does Not Clearly Date to the time of Jesus.

10. Witnessing to Resurrection Does Not Make the Tomb Christian.
Goodacre’s blog explains each point. James Tabor has responded here. The spiritual “mission” of the program is to convince viewers that Jesus rose spiritually but not bodily from the grave. Though the producers obscure this by claiming to have discovered an early “high Christology,” their view constitutes a direct attack on historic Christianity as taught by the apostles until today.

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead (1 Cor 15:14-15).

Tagged Discoveries, Jerusalem