IBEX starts excavating the Byzantine church and monastery on the hill in September.   Will we find an inscription in the church that describes the tradition of this being the place of Ai?  Will we find a mosaic with the wall of the city burning??   We've got some dirt to move; stay tuned.

Here is Bryant Wood's report/prayer letter (1998) on the finds at Kh. al-Maqatir (Ai?).  This is a good place to start reading.

If you want a slightly more technical version that he submitted to Near Eastern Archaeological Society, click here.  An even more recent detailed description of finds following the September 98 version can be found here.

Bryant Wood's Report

A Great Season at Kh. el-Maqatir

The Gate of Ai

It is now certain that the U-shaped structure that Gary Byers and I excavated in 1996 and 1997 in Squares Q16-17, R16-17 and S16-17 is in fact the northwest half of the city gate of the Canaanite fortress. This was our initial conclusion because of the plan of the structure, and because of the discovery of two lower gate socket stones and an upper socket stone in the vicinity of the south pier. But, when we found the very wide walls northeast of the structure, we were uncertain. If those wide walls were part of the Canaanite fortress, then the U-shaped structure could not have been a gate since it would have been inside the fortress. Once we had determined that the wide walls were not part of the Canaanite fortress, then it became obvious that the U-shaped structure is what remains of the gate of Ai. The interpretation of the U-shaped structure is an excellent example of how ideas and theories change during the course of an excavation. And, of course, the entire staff is involved in the interpretive process. In this case, Steve Collins never wavered in his belief that the structure was a gate!

This is very exciting, because the gate of Ai is mentioned a number of times in Joshua 7-8. It is first mentioned in Joshua 7 where we have the record of the defeat of the Israelites the first time they attacked the fortress. Verse 5 says the Canaanites "chased the Israelites from the city gate as far as the shevarim and struck them down on the slopes." The root of the Hebrew word shevarim means "to break in pieces," so the shevarim mentioned in Joshua 7:5 may be a stone quarry located 2.5 km southeast of Kh. el-Maqatir. The elevation decreases from 875 m at the gate to 700 m at the quarry. This descent of 175 m in 2.5 km (or, on average, 70 m per km) would have been where the Canaanites "struck them down on the slopes."

When the Israelite forces returned for the second battle of Ai, Scripture says that Joshua and his army arrived in front of the fortress and they set up their camp north of Ai (Joshua 8:11). The front of a city or fortress is naturally the side the gate, or entrance, is on. Thus, the Bible indicates that the gate of Ai was on the north side. The gate at Kh. el-Maqatir is on the north side of the fortress.

After the Israelites defeated Ai, Joshua hung the king on a tree. At sunset he ordered the body removed and thrown down at the entrance of the gate. A large pile of stones was then raised over the body (Joshua 8:29). We did not find the bones of the king of Ai, but we did find a large number of stones in the west chamber of the gate, many more than were found in the areas outside the gate. Conversely, we found about two dozen sling stones in the areas around the gate chamber, but none inside. This suggests that the gate had been besieged in antiquity.

The Layout of the Fortress of Ai

The area in the vicinity of the gate has been reused and reoccupied in later periods. As a result, it is greatly disturbed. The stones of the southeast chamber have all been removed and used for other structures. It appears that the same fate may have befallen the entire northeast wall on either side of the gate since, to date, no trace of it has been found. The foundations of the southeast, southwest, west and northwest walls, however, appear to be largely intact. Again, we have had various theories as to the extent of the Canaanite fortress. With the discovery of the southwest wall, the possibilities are narrowing. The area inside the walls we have found thus far is about 1.7 acres. This is the exactly the area Gary Byers envisioned was the extent of the Canaanite fortress in our first season at the site. There is, however, another wall extending southeastward from the southern end of the southeast wall. This may be an eastward extension of the fortress. We hope to check this out in September.

We do not expect the fortress of Ai to be very large. What impressed the Israelite spies when they saw it was its smallness. They reported back to Joshua, "Not all the people will have to go up against Ai ... for only a few men are there" (Joshua 7:3). Joshua 10:2 states that Ai was smaller than Gibeon, which was about 10 acres in size. The translation of the Hebrew word 'ir as "city" in Joshua 8 is misleading. "City" is a modern term that was unknown in the Biblical world. The distinction made in the Old Testament is between a fortified place ('ir, qereth, qiryah) and unfortified, dependent, towns and villages (benoth, hazerim). Thus, 'ir denotes a fortified site of any size. The small fortress we have found at Kh. el-Maqatir from the time of Joshua fits the Biblical description extremely well in all aspects.

The Byzantine Church cum Monastery

We have known about the existence of a Byzantine church on top of the hill of Kh. el-Maqatir from reports of 19th century explorers. They reported columns and visible wall lines. Today, only one column fragment remains. In June, our architect Leen Ritmeyer investigated the site and was able to ascertain the plan and identify many features. He determined that there are additional structures attached to the church, indicating that it was not just a church, but a monastery. Nearby is a large grain storage silo indicating that a community of people lived here year round. Just a few meters north of the gate, Randy Cook of consortium member Israel Bible Extension (IBEX)/Master's College excavated another Byzantine storage silo in Square S18, undoubtedly associated with the monastery.

The Arabic word for monastery is Deir. The Deir in Deir Dibwan, the name of the town 2 km southeast of our site, undoubtedly derives from the monastery at Kh. el-Maqatir. There are no other known monasteries in the vicinity. We have yet to determine what Dibwan means. Leen has had a lot of experience excavating and planning Byzantine churches and monasteries, so we hope to begin excavating the complex in September under his overall supervision. Students from IBEX will provide the work force, with faculty members Todd Bolen, Randy Cook and Bill Schlegel serving as square supervisors.

This is an exciting development, since Byzantine churches were many times built on the site of a Biblical event. Todd Bolen chased down explorer Edward Robinson's account of his visit to the site on May 5, 1838. What Robinson recorded at that time is very significant.

To this ruin one of the Greek priests at Taiyibeh, who had been delving a little into Biblical history, had chosen to give the name of Ai, and we found the same name among some of the people of that village (Biblical Researches 2: 126).

Here we have the only known local tradition concerning the location of Ai, and it places Ai at the site of Kh. el-Maqatir! Taiyibeh is a small village 6.3 km. northwest of Kh. el-Maqatir. Robinson went on to say, "But there is not the slightest ground for any such hypothesis. There never was anything here but a church." Robinson was right. On top of the hill at Kh. el-Maqatir, there are no ruins other than the church. But, had he walked down the side of the hill 200 yards to the southeast he would have seen the fortress walls that we are now excavating! Since he did not, Robinson has thrown scholars off track from that time to the present.

More Evidence

Since we began work at Khirbet el-Maqatir we have tried to find out the meaning of the name of the site. Many times a modern Arabic place name will preserve an ancient Canaanite or Hebrew place name. Khirbet means "ruin," el means "the," but what does Maqatir mean? We have repeatedly asked local residents that question, but no one knows. This has forced me to do a little research on my own. The root of the word is qtr, with a prefixed m, which merely converts the verbal root into a place name. When I looked up qtr in the Hebrew lexicon, to my surprise I found that it means "make sacrifices smoke," or "send up sacrifices in smoke." There is a similar cognate word in Arabic. With the prefixed m, the name mqtr means "place of sacrificial smoke"!

Smoke played an important role in the capture of Ai. Joshua commanded the ambush force to set fire to the fortress (Josh. 8:8). After Joshua lured the Canaanites out of the fortress, God instructed Joshua to give the signal to the ambush force by raising his spear. The ambush force then rushed in and set fire to the fortress (Josh. 8:19). When the retreating Israelites saw the smoke from the burning fortress, they turned around and attacked the pursuing Canaanites. At the same time, the ambush force came out of the fortress, trapping the Canaanites between the two forces.

Joshua kept his spear in the air, "until he had destroyed (herim, offered up to the Lord) all who lived in Ai" (Josh. 8:26). Thus the smoke rising from the burning fortress was the sign that initiated the offering of the people of Ai as a sacrifice to God. Because of this, it is quite possible that the ruined site of Ai became known as "the place of sacrificial smoke," a name that has survived to modern times, but the meaning of which has been forgotten.

The Significance of Ai

You may wonder if all the effort we are expending to locate Joshua's Ai is worth it. We have pointed out many times that the supposedly negative archaeological evidence concerning Jericho and Ai is the basis for Bible scholars maintaining that the Conquest never took place and that the first six books of the Bible are legendary. Scholars then come up with alternative explanations for the origin of Israel to replace the straightforward account we have in Scripture. This misinformation is fed to other scholars, students, and the public in general. An example of this occurred just recently.

On July 24 the British Museum opened a new display called the Gallery of the Ancient Levant. It features archaeological finds from Palestine. An article appeared in The Daily Telegraph describing the exhibit (July 18). After an interview with Jonathan Tubb, curator of Syria-Palestine at the museum, the writer of the article concluded "Only now it appears there was no Israelite invasion of Canaan." He quoted Tubb as saying "It is possible to explain the rise of early Israel without any need for exodus or any form of conquest." The writer continued, "So out goes Moses ... Out goes Joshua too, the taker of cities. ... It has been found that Ai, the first city after Jericho, had been empty for 1,000 years before Joshua turned up (though the Bible says he smote it and hanged its king)." The Ai the writer is referring to is, of course, Et Tell, the site scholars say is Joshua's Ai.

Tubb is putting forth the current theory among archeologists that the Israelites did not come into Canaan from outside, but always lived there. In other words, they were originally Canaanites! Tubb further commented, "The old Israelites may not have had much sympathy for other groups, but what archaeology shows us is that they were all of the same race." This unfortunate conclusion stems from inadequate research on the part of secular scholars.

What is even more distressing about the article is that the writer goes beyond archaeology to comment on Israel's religious beliefs. "Archaeology has not yet revealed when these [the Israelites] started to worship the one god, though the name they gave him, Jehovah, was at one stage just one of their many gods." This is appalling! What the writer is saying is that Yahweh (there is no such name as Jehovah - it is a misinterpretation of the original Hebrew name Yahweh), the unique name of God recorded in the Old Testament, was given to one of many gods that the Israelites once worshipped. Nothing could be further from the truth. The writer is equating the Israelites with the Canaanites, who did worship a pantheon of pagan deities. The name Yahweh has been found in a number of ancient inscriptions and in every case it is the name of the one and only God worshipped by the Israelites. Of course, there are several names used in the Old Testament for the God of the Israelites, but they are different names for the same God, not names of different gods. The newspaper reporter, following up on what archaeologist Tubb told him, has equated the Israelites with the Canaanites and then taken another step and equated Israelite religion with Canaanite religion. There is not a shred of evidence to back this up.

Once one departs from the record set forth in Scripture, speculation, imagination and distortion are given free reign. Although some secular scholars are out to discredit the Bible, most are simply misled by poor scholarship, inadequate research and the misinterpretation of evidence. This misinformation is then passed on as if it was fact. This is why the ministry of ABR is needed today more than ever - to set the record straight!

Your Part

We are very much encouraged by our findings at Kh. el-Maqatir. But there is much more work to be done before we fully understand the site and have all the evidence we need to demonstrate with certainty that it is the Ai of Joshua. We need your continued prayers, financial support and participation, if possible. Thank you for standing with us.

Yours for the truth,

Bryant and Faith Wood