‫בס"ד‬
Rabbi Hochheimer
Ancient Jewish History
Instructions
Please read the two articles and answer the questions for next Tuesday.
In the first article you will not be required to read the parts in a smaller font. It is rather
complicated .
Homework Questions on the First Article
1) When did David and Solomon live?
2) What argument does this article not discuss?
3) What is the key stratum?
4) What did Yadin find at Megiddo that was the same as Hazor?
5) What other city had the same structure?
6) Who realy built the stables at Megiddo?
7) Who do Finkelstein and Ussiskin claim built the city of strat VA-IVB?
8) How do we know that Shishak destroyed Megiddo?
9) What does the stele found at Megiddo prove according to Finkelstein?
Homework Questions on the Second Article
10) What did Professor Yosef Garfinkel find the first season he dug at Khirbet
Qeiyafa?
11) What is important about this site?
12) What age did David and Solomon live?
13) When did the pottery found at the site date to?
14) When did the olive pits date to?
15) What does the site prove in regard to the argument in the first article?
16) What does the Tel Dan inscription call the kingdom of Judah?
17) What does Garfinkle say the new excavation “clearly indicate” about the society
of Judah at the time of David?
18) How do we know this site was a Jewish city not Philistine or Canaanite?
‫בס"ד‬
Rabbi Hochheimer
Ancient Jewish History
BAR 24:02, Mar/Apr 1998
Where Is the Tenth Century?
By Hershel Shanks
Every archaeologist thinks his or her site holds the key to any issue that arises. Perhaps
that is one reason why the focus was on Megiddo at the sessions titled “Where Is the
Tenth Century?” at the Annual Meeting. Archaeologists David Ussishkin and Israel
Finkelstein, the first two speakers, are codirectors of the renewed excavations at
Megiddo. This is not to deny the importance of Megiddo, however; it is indeed a key site.
As Finkelstein has written, “The archaeology of the United Monarchy was born at
Megiddo.”1 A second site, whose key significance is more debatable, is Jezreel, where
Ussishkin is also codirector (with British archaeologist John Woodhead).
For students of the Bible, the tenth century (B.C., of course) is especially important
because that was the time of King David and King Solomon, the short period when
ancient Israel was united under a single monarch. (David reigned from about 1000 B.C.
to 960; Solomon, his son, from about 960 to 920 B.C.) If we want to know what
archaeology can tell us about this period, we have to know which archaeological
discoveries—architecture, artifacts and other finds—date from the tenth century.
Until recently, we thought we knew. Now it is a matter of fierce debate.a
Before we get into it, however, we should distinguish this debate from another, quite
different discussion—namely the charge by the so-called Biblical minimalists (some call
them, pejoratively, Biblical nihilists) that David and Solomon never existed. That
discussion is characterized by considerable polemics, which is not true—or at least not as
true—of the tenth-century debate. The tenth-century debate is in a sense preliminary to
the issues posed by the minimalists: If we are to assess the nature, or even the existence,
of the United Monarchy, we must first decide what archaeological materials date to that
period. And in the end, the debate with the Biblical minimalists will be affected by the
results of the archaeological debate regarding the tenth century. Even Finkelstein, who
would move what was thought to be the tenth century down to the ninth century,
concedes that if the traditional dating prevails against his own views, there will be “no
difficulty in demonstrating that in the tenth century there was a strong, well-developed
and well-organized state stretching over most of the territory of western Palestine,” and
that this state had “an advanced administration and a sophisticated system of management
of manpower.”2
As already noted, in the previous consensus about what was the tenth century, Megiddo
was at the center of the discussion. The site has seen four major excavations—the first by
a German archaeologist, Gotlieb Schumacher, at the beginning of the century, the next by
the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s, then by Yigael
Yadin in the 1960s and 1970s, and, finally, the current excavation led by Ussishkin and
Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University.
‫בס"ד‬
Rabbi Hochheimer
Ancient Jewish History
The key stratum is called Stratum VA-IVB (pronounced 5a–4b, but always written with
Roman numerals). I wish it had a more easily remembered name, but it doesn’t, so we’re
stuck with it. This is the stratum, or occupation layer, previously thought to date to the
tenth century. In this stratum, the University of Chicago excavators found a huge, wellbuilt six-chambered gate connected to an important casemate city wall, several palaces
and some large tripartite buildings, all of which they attributed to the city of King
Solomon.
Yadin’s excavation at Megiddo was quite short. Most of the time he spent digging in
northern Israel was at the mound of Hazor, where he found a six-chambered gate (three
chambers on each side) that was almost identical to the city gate at Megiddo. Yadin knew
his Bible well. No one had to call his attention to 1 Kings 9:15, which tells us that
Solomon used forced labor to build three sites—Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer. In perhaps
the most famous pieces of detective work in the annals of Biblical archaeology, Yadin
then went to the report published by R.A.S. Macalister of his excavation of Gezer before
World War I. There, in a plan that Macalister had labeled a “Maccabean Castle,” Yadin
found what looked like one side of a six-chambered gate identical to the gates at Megiddo
and Hazor. At the time of his discovery, Gezer was being re-excavated by a team from
Hebrew Union College led by William Dever. On the basis of Yadin’s location of one
side of the gate, Dever was able to locate the precise position of the other side of the gate.
There was soon no doubt in anyone’s mind that the six-chambered gates at all three
sites—Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer—were the work of King Solomon. As Yadin wrote,
they “were in fact built by Solomon’s architects from identical blueprints, with minor
changes in each case, made necessary by the terrain.”3
The Bible had provided the key to the identification, as Yadin eagerly recognized: “Our
great guide was the Bible; and as an archaeologist I cannot imagine a greater thrill than
working with the Bible in one hand and the spade in the other.”4
The Bible also helped the University of Chicago excavators identify some of the tripartite
buildings at Megiddo. In the same Biblical passage already referred to (1 Kings 9:15), we
are told that Solomon built “cities for chariots and cities for horsemen.” The tripartite
buildings were the stables for Solomon’s horses. The Solomonic city of Megiddo was
indeed grand, with its impressive six-chambered gateway, casemate city wall, stables and
palaces.
Over the years, the complex stratigraphy of Megiddo has been refined—in part by
Yadin’s own excavation at Megiddo—and several pieces of “Solomonic” Megiddo have
fallen away. Yadin himself proved that the stables belonged to a later (ninth century
B.C.) stratum. They are King Omri’s stables, not King Solomon’s stables (if they are
indeed stables, another matter of debate).b And Ussishkin now contends that the so-called
Solomonic gate also dates to the ninth century. Ussishkin and Finkelstein are also taking
a new, much bolder step: They are questioning the very date of stratum VA-IVB. They
are not simply arguing that the wall or the palaces or the stables should be assigned to a
‫בס"ד‬
Rabbi Hochheimer
Ancient Jewish History
later stratum. They are arguing that Stratum VA-IVB is actually not tenth century, not
Solomonic, but a century or so later.
The name of the game is to find a secure date and to work from there to date other things
in relationship to the secure date. We have lots of relative dates—they fit into a
stratigraphic sequence. Absolute dates are rare. If we can date one level with certainty, or
at least relative certainty, we can date strata with the same pottery at other sites to the
same date. The chain can be extended this way. A stratum in the second site with a
distinctive characteristic can then be used to date a stratum at still another site with this
same distinctive characteristic.
Conversely, if the Megiddo gateway is not Solomonic, this calls into question the date of
the gates at Hazor and Gezer. In this case, however, even though Ussishkin and
Finkelstein date the Megiddo gate to the ninth century B.C., both Amnon Ben-Tor, who
is currently re-excavating Hazor, and Dever, who led the Gezer excavation and later
returned to the site for a brief excavation of the gate area in the 1980s, stoutly maintain
that their gates date to the tenth century, thus reflecting the grandeur of the United
Monarchy of Israel.
If the name of the game is to find a secure date from which to reason forward or
backward, what are the possibilities? One secure date is the destruction by the Assyrian
monarch Sennacherib in the late eighth century B.C. The key site here is Lachish, which
was also excavated, or rather re-excavated, by Ussishkin. It was he who clearly—and to
virtually everyone’s satisfaction—established that Level III had been destroyed by
Sennacherib. This doesn’t help much in straightening out the confused stratigraphy of
Megiddo, but it does establish Ussishkin’s reputation as a master stratigraphist.
There is another key destruction layer at Megiddo—the invasion of Shishak. All agree
that in 925 B.C. (or within a year or two) Pharaoh Sheshonq, called Shishak in the Bible,
cut a swath through Judah and Israel. According to the Bible, Shishak’s campaign
occurred in the fifth year of the reign of Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. To save Jerusalem
from destruction, Rehoboam gave as tribute to Shishak all of the treasures of the Temple
and of his palace (1 Kings 14:25–27). At the Egyptian temple of Amon at Karnak,
Shishak carved a list of more than 50 sites he claims to have conquered, and presumably
destroyed, among them Megiddo.
Archaeologists love destructions. They clearly demarcate one level from another.
Sometimes they can be tied to a known historical event. At Megiddo, Stratum VA-IVB
was destroyed. Was it destroyed by Shishak in 925 B.C.? If it was, obviously Stratum
VA-IVB was a tenth-century city. Until recently it was nearly universally accepted that
this stratum was indeed destroyed by Shishak. Ussishkin and Finkelstein now dispute
this. According to them, an earlier stratum, Stratum VIA, a less impressive settlement,
was the one destroyed by Shishak. Their proposed new dating “strips the United
Monarchy of monumental buildings,” in Finkelstein’s words, not only at Megiddo but
throughout the kingdom. It throws the period of the United Monarchy into what was
previously regarded, archaeologically speaking, as the period of the Judges.
‫בס"ד‬
Rabbi Hochheimer
Ancient Jewish History
This proposed new dating is hotly contested by one of America’s most prominent and
respected field archaeologists, Lawrence Stager of Harvard University, who also
appeared on the tenth-century panel organized by BAS at the Annual Meeting. For
Stager, Shishak’s invasion can be identified not only at Megiddo but at several other
sites. At Megiddo the tenth-century destruction level is Stratum VA-IVB, according to
Stager.
As part of his argument, Stager turns to Taanach, another city on Shishak’s conquest list. At Taanach there is no
stratum comparable to Megiddo Stratum VIA. If Finkelstein and Ussishkin are right that Shishak destroyed Stratum
VIA at Megiddo, then Shishak must have lied about conquering Taanach, as there was no city at Taanach
contemporaneous with Megiddo VIA. There is a destruction level at Taanach, however, contemporaneous with
Megiddo VA-IVB (as proved by both the pottery and nearly identical cultic assemblages, including altars, cult stands,
and even a bowl full of sheep and goat knuckle-bones). Since there is only one stratum at Taanach that can qualify as
Shishak’s destruction, the contemporaneous stratum at Megiddo (Stratum VA-IVB) must have also been destroyed by
Shishak.
Ussishkin and Finkelstein, on the other hand, rely on Ussishkin’s excavation of nearby Jezreel. Here Ussishkin found a
pottery assemblage associated with a monumental fortified enclosure. According to Finkelstein, the pottery is
“somewhat similar”5 to the pottery from Stratum VA-IVB at Megiddo. Ussishkin dates the pottery from Jezreel to the
ninth century B.C. If it is from the ninth century, so must be the pottery from Megiddo in Stratum VA-IVB. Therefore,
Stratum VA-IVB at Megiddo must date to the ninth century.
It is interesting how Ussishkin dates the pottery from Jezreel, as Stager is quick to point out—on the basis of the Bible,
of all things! In 2 Kings 9, we are told of the revolt of Jehu against the last king of the Omride dynasty, King Joram,
who ruled the northern kingdom of Israel from about 852 to 841 B.C. Jehu killed Joram in battle and proceeded to
Jezreel, where Joram’s mother, Jezebel, was waiting. Jezebel painted her eyes with kohl, dressed her hair and went to
greet Jehu from a window. At a signal from Jehu, eunuchs threw Jezebel from the window to the pavement below,
where her body was devoured by dogs. Ussishkin accepts the historicity of Jehu’s revolt (if not all the details of
Jezebel’s death). The fortified enclosure at Jezreel was short-lived, according to Ussishkin, and was probably destroyed
by fire. It was built, he says, by King Omri at the beginning of the ninth century; thus, based on the similarity of the
pottery, Stratum VA-IVB at Megiddo must also be dated to the ninth century.
Finkelstein says that “Jezreel provides an extremely important chronological clue.”6 Stager, on the other hand, calls it
“chronological driftwood.” Ussishkin’s effort to make Jezreel a type site, says Stager, is “a lot of legerdemain … From
the very few living surfaces found, in contrast to numerous fills, there is little to instruct us from Jezreel … Jezreel is a
leaky boat … I hope [they] will jump overboard before their skiff drifts away. [They] are too valuable as friends and
colleagues to be lost at sea.” As Amihai Mazar, of Hebrew University points out, even if the assemblages from Jezreel
and Megiddo VA-IVB are “somewhat similar,” this proves little: “We should not expect great changes between the
pottery of the second half of the tenth century and that of the mid-ninth century in a limited geopolitical area like the
Valley of Jezreel. Thus a general statement about the supposed similarity between the pottery of Megiddo VA-IVB and
that of Jezreel does not bear much significance.”7 Finkelstein charges that those who refuse to recognize Stratum VIA
at Megiddo as the city Shishak destroyed are motivated by “theological-puritan considerations.” The finds from
Stratum VIA, he notes, contain “Canaanite motifs” that explain their “desperate attempt to disconnect [Stratum VIA]
from the tenth century [and from Solomonic Megiddo].”
Finkelstein points out that Megiddo’s Stratum VIA contained no Philistine pottery or so-called collar-rim jars, both of
which should have been there if it indeed dated to the 11th century B.C. (an 11th-century date being required for this
stratum if Stratum VA-IVB is dated to the tenth century).
This is enough to give the flavor of the debate, which is in fact considerably more complicated and extensive than I
have presented it here. The principal arguments are presented in technical detail in the articles cited in endnote 5. In
addition to the arguments based on pottery chronology, there are other considerations. For example, carbon 14 dates
can be obtained for organic samples from stratified contexts. Four samples of carbonized grain from Stratum S-2 at
Beth-Shean were recently subjected to carbon 14 testing. Amihai Mazar, the most recent excavator of Beth-Shean,
claims Stratum S-2 was an 11th-century settlement contemporaneous with Stratum VIA at Megiddo, the same stratum
Ussishkin and Finkelstein claim was destroyed by Shishak in 925 B.C. The results of the carbon 14 tests from Stratum
‫בס"ד‬
Rabbi Hochheimer
Ancient Jewish History
S-2 at Beth Shean clearly support Mazar’s dating. Not a single date tested as tenth century.8 If Stratum S-2 at Beth
Shean is 11th century, so must be Stratum VIA at Megiddo. If Stratum VIA at Megiddo is 11th century, then Stratum
VA-IVB must be tenth century, as was thought all along. Finkelstein dismisses the carbon 14 evidence out of hand. The
reading of the calibration “sometimes allows more than one interpretation … I have no doubt that the accumulating
carbon 14 dates will eventually provide us with solid data regarding the chronology of the Iron Age strata. But for the
time being carbon 14 is far from being a reliable technique for historical periods and is therefore almost meaningless
for this discussion.”
Another issue involves the “dense stratigraphy” resulting from lowering what was thought to be tenth century to the
ninth century. At Hazor, this results in seven strata in little more than 150 years. This, Mazar tells us, “creates an
impossibly brief duration for each of these strata.”9 Finkelstein responds, “Hazor was a border site and hence one
would expect many destructions and reoccupations.”
A small part of a stele, originally over 10 feet high, that actually mentions Shishak
(Sheshonq) was uncovered in the University of Chicago excavations at Megiddo.
Unfortunately, it was not found in a stratified context. But Ussishkin nevertheless uses
this as part of his argument that Stratum VA-IVB was not destroyed by Shishak: The
stele was erected, he says, to commemorate Shishak’s conquest of Megiddo. But it also
tells us that Shishak did not destroy the city; Shishak would not erect a major monument
like this in a destroyed city, only in a captured one. Stager responds that if Ussishkin and
Finkelstein find another piece of this stele in Megiddo VIA (which Ussishkin and
Finkelstein say represents the city destroyed by Shishak), he will concede the argument to
them.
It is fair to add that beyond a colleague or two at Tel Aviv University, Ussishkin and
Finkelstein have failed to convince their fellow archaeologists. Among those who reject
the new chronology proposed by Ussishkin and Finkelstein are Israeli colleagues Amnon
Ben-Tor and Amihai Mazar, as well as American colleagues Lawrence Stager, William
Dever and Seymour (Sy) Gitin (director of the Albright School of Archaeological
Research). Moreover, even Ussishkin and Finkelstein do not claim victory at this point.
As Finkelstein has written, he cannot “prove his theory,” adding, however, that “neither
would any scholar be able to prove the prevailing view.”10 At the present time, neither
side, he says, can claim “a clear-cut verdict.”11 Each side, however, predicts that in time
their side will prevail.
Shanks, Hershel. “Where Is the Tenth Century?.” Biblical Archaeology Review, Mar/Apr 1998, 56-60.
http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=24&Issue=2&ArticleID=13 (accessed 10/19/2010)
‫בס"ד‬
Rabbi Hochheimer
Ancient Jewish History
BAR 35:01, Jan/Feb 2009
<<Previous | Back to Results | Next>>
Newly Discovered: A Fortified City from King David’s
Time
Answers—and questions—at Khirbet Qeiyafa
By Hershel Shanks
Sidebar: Where Is It in the Bible?
Yossi Garfinkel has gone Biblical. After years of laboring in the pleasant orchards of prehistory,
Yossi decided he needed a new and different site. The voluptuous (not to say zaftig) middle-aged
goddesses of Sha’ar ha-Golan (a site about a mile south of the Sea of Galilee in the Jordan Valley)
had long since lost their appeal to him. Now, in his maturity, Yossi felt he was ready for the bitter
controversies and intense debates that pervade Biblical archaeology. So he chose a site on a
hilltop overlooking the Elah Valley, where David met Goliath in mortal combat, according to 1
Samuel 17.
More formally known as Professor Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University, Yossi first garnered
the necessary support that any archaeological excavation requires. Then he enlisted as codirector
Saar Ganor, a Hebrew University graduate student who works for the Israel Antiquities Authority
and who first led Yossi to the site. Finally, at least figuratively, Yossi bought himself a new shovel.
That was all he needed to go into the field (other than a few volunteers to do the real work).
In their first season—the summer of 2008—the new excavation of Khirbet Qeiyafa (“the Ruins of
Qeiyafa,” pronounced Ke-YAW-fa) was unusually successful. The team found what Garfinkel calls
“a city.” When the archaeologists examined the ubiquitous pottery sherds, they found that they all
dated to the same period—what archaeologists call Iron Age IIa. Qeiyafa was a one-period site.
There was nothing earlier and nothing later, except for some much later Hellenistic remains. This
is confirmed by the stratigraphy of the site. Qeiyafa was not the usual tell, one occupation level
above the other.
In Biblical archaeology, Iron Age IIa is a critical period. It marks the border between Iron Age I
(the pre-monarchic period) and Iron Age II (the period of the Israelite monarchy). If David and
Solomon lived, they lived in Iron Age IIa.
According to the time-honored or traditional Biblical chronology, Iron Age IIa began in about
1000 B.C.E. But the traditional chronology has been questioned lately by a new generation of
archaeologists, centered in Tel Aviv University and led by Israel Finkelstein, who contend that
‫בס"ד‬
Rabbi Hochheimer
Ancient Jewish History
Iron Age IIa in archaeological terms did not begin until later, perhaps as late as 900 B.C.E.
According to this so-called “low chronology,” the sites once thought to be Solomonic were in fact
much later. The archaeological finds from the period when David and Solomon really lived,
according to these theorists, reflected little, if any, indication of a centrally organized society. This
did not develop until the ninth century B.C.E., under kings like Omri and Ahab. Israel at the time
of David and Solomon, they argued, was at most a bunch of tribes led by a local tribal chief;
hence, it was not a nation so much as a chiefdom.
If the city at Qeiyafa existed as early as 1000 B.C.E., it would seem to upset this theory, however.
The pottery found at the site clearly dated to Iron Age IIa, but did this archaeological period begin
in 1000 B.C.E., as the traditional chronology would have it, or did it begin only generations later?
The pottery alone would not answer this—but ancient olive pits might. Garfinkel collected some
from the site and sent them to the Oxford radiocarbon lab to be dated by radiocarbon testing. The
answer came back from Oxford: The short-lived olive pits dated to between 1100 and 920 B.C.E.
to a probability of 94 percent and between 1050 and 970 B.C.E. to a probability of 50 percent.
Since, even by the traditional chronology, Iron Age IIa did not begin until 1000 B.C.E., the city of
Qeiyafa was founded no earlier than 1000 B.C.E. and, according to the carbon-14 test, existed no
later than 920 B.C.E (when it was violently destroyed).
All archaeologists (about 40 of them) who have looked at the pottery agree that it dates to “the
very beginning of the Iron IIa period,” says Garfinkel. Therefore, using the probability of 50
percent in the carbon-14 analysis, Garfinkel dates the settlement of Qeiyafa to 1000–970 B.C.E.
Thus the results of this excavation seem to confirm the traditional chronology. Moreover, from
about 1000 B.C.E. an organized Israelite state, exemplified by Qeiyafa, was in existence.
‫בס"ד‬
Rabbi Hochheimer
Ancient Jewish History
Put this together with the extraordinary 1993 find at Tel Dan of an inscription by an enemy of
Israel that refers to the “dynasty [literally, ‘house’] of David,” it begins to look as if King David
lived and that he ruled a unified nation-state.
If Qeiyafa ceased to exist in 970 B.C.E. (Garfinkel’s latest date for the city), it is too early even for
King Solomon’s reign. It must date to the reign of King David.
So what can Qeiyafa tell us about Israel in the time of King David?
The circular Iron Age city wall is composed of two parallel walls periodically divided into
casemates—a so-called casemate wall. This fortification wall is more than 2,200 feet (700 m) long
and 13 feet (4 m) wide. Some of the megalithic ashlars in this wall weigh almost 5 tons.
Altogether, more than 200,000 tons of stone were needed to construct this wall. It would take a
complex, highly organized society to build a wall like this.
But there is even greater significance to this wall in light of an argument made by some of the
supporters of the low chronology. At contemporaneous sites in Judah (and Judah, rather than the
northern kingdom of Israel, is the focus of the “chiefdom” argument), the settlements are
unwalled. This, supporters of the low chronology argue, implies that these cultures did not have a
society complex enough to fortify their cities with a substantial wall. The city levels
contemporaneous with Qeiyafa at Arad (XII), Beer-Sheba (VII), Lachish (V) Batash (IV) and
Masos (II) are all unfortified. These settlements had no city wall but were protected only by
houses arranged around the site periphery. This is cited by proponents of the low chronology to
support their theory that in Iron Age IIa the area of Judah was a simple, unorganized, tribal
society.
Qeiyafa upsets this theory—in spades. “The new excavations,” says Garfinkel, “clearly indicate
that already in the time of King David, urban cities were constructed in Judah.”
To support Garfinkel, there is in fact much more at Qeiyafa than the city wall just described.
Garfinkel’s team also found the city gate. It is a massive four-chambered gate constructed of
carefully shaped ashlar stones that, as Garfinkel tells us, “characterized royal buildings in the Iron
Age. Khirbet Qeifaya is clearly a well-planned fortified city, and not a rural settlement.”
It is strategically located on the northern side of the Elah Valley, on the main highway going east
from Philistia and the coastal plain to Jerusalem, and from there south to Bethlehem and Hebron.
Garfinkel calls Qeiyafa a fortified checkpoint on the road to Jerusalem. It was probably intended
to defend Judah against the much larger Philistine city of Gath. Qeiyafa is less than 6 acres in
area. The hostile Philistine city of Gath, just 6.5 miles away in the Elah Valley, is about 75 acres.
‫בס"ד‬
Rabbi Hochheimer
Ancient Jewish History
In this sense the Biblical story of David and Goliath, even if legendary, may be understood as a
kind of Biblical metaphor, the little David of Qeiyafa versus the Philistine giant of Goliath/Gath.
Inside the city, the Qeiyafa archaeologists also excavated two substantial structures near the city
gate. Other structures are likely to be uncovered in subsequent seasons.
The question naturally arises as to whether this city overlooking the border between Philistia and
Judah was an Israelite city. It is easy to exclude the possibility that it was a Philistine site because
the pottery assemblage differs so radically from that found at Philistine sites. And Canaanite
culture was nonexistent in this region after the destruction of Lachish nearly 200 years earlier. So
Qeiyafa’s identification as a Judahite/Israelite site seems assured.
Another indication that it is a Judahite (or more broadly, Israelite) site comes from the most
startling find of the excavation. In one of the two structures that the archaeologists excavated next
to the city gate, they found on the floor an ostracon, a broken piece of pottery commonly used in
ancient times as a kind of notepaper. This ostracon is quite large as hese things go (about 6 x 6 in)
and consists of five lines of text divided by black horizontal lines. Each line of the ostracon has
about ten letters.
The letters are what scholars call proto-Canaanite, the form of letters in which such ancient
Semitic languages as Canaanite, Phoenician and Hebrew were written. Garfinkel believes the
language of the inscription is Hebrew. If so, it would be the oldest inscription ever discovered. The
famous Gezer calendar (c. 900 B.C.E.) and the Mesha stela (c. 850 B.C.E.) are later by a century
or more, Garfinkel tells us. (And they are not as securely dated as the Qeiyafa inscription.) The
Qeiyafa inscription is the first Hebrew inscription clearly dated to the tenth century. It proves that
the Hebrews in the earliest years of the United Monarchy were writing. The Qeiyafa inscription
“will now serve as the anchor for the entire development of the early alphabetic scripts,”
according to Garfinkel.
‫בס"ד‬
Rabbi Hochheimer
Ancient Jewish History
So what does the inscription say? The decipherment has been assigned to Haggai Misgav, a
Hebrew University epigrapher. “So can we see a high-resolution image of the inscription?” I asked
Garfinkel. “Maybe our readers would have some helpful suggestions for Misgav,” I urged. All to no
effect. Yossi stuck to the time-honored tradition that a readable picture of the inscription remain
a secret until the scientific report is published in a scientific journal by the scholar assigned to
publish it: Remember the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“Be a hero! Break the mold,” I urged Yossi. No way, he responded. He did tell us that the first line
contains the Hebrew words “don’t do,” and that “king,” “judge” and “slave” also seem to be
legible, but “it is still premature to talk about the content,” he maintains.
So when will we see a picture of the inscription with all of its indistinct letters? If the past is any
guide, it will be a year or more. Is this any way to run a railroad?
Haggai Misgav has a reputation for being a very competent epigrapher. But he can only be helped,
not hurt, by what other scholars (and even amateurs) have to say prior to his official publication.
You can be sure, he will show the ostracon and high-resolution pictures (and infrared images as
well) to friends and colleagues. He will take some of their suggestions and thank them in his
publication of the ostracon. So why not enlarge the circle? It cannot hurt, and it may help. In any
event, an early look at the inscription will not detract from his fame as the publisher of the famous
ostracon from Qeiyafa.
Where Is It in the Bible?
Sidebar to: Newly Discovered: A Fortified City from King David’s Time
Professor Nadav Na’aman has suggested that Khirbet Qeiyafa should be identified with the
Biblical site of Gov, which was the location of two battles between the Philistines and the
Israelites (2 Samuel 21:18–19), but following Anson Rainey’s suggestion, Garfinkel believes that it
is Sha’arayim (1 Samuel 17:52), which means “gates” in Hebrew. As we go to press, Garfinkel has
announced the discovery of a second gate to the city, which has survived to a height of nearly 12
feet. This is the only Israelite site of the period with multiple gates; even much larger cities had
only one gate.
Reference for this article:
Shanks, Hershel. “Newly Discovered: A Fortified City from King David’s Time.” Biblical Archaeology
Review, Jan/Feb 2009, 38-43. http://members.bibarch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=35&Issue=1&ArticleID=8 (accessed
10/19/2010)