Samaria Archives - Page 36 of 37

Biblical and Modern Jezreel

Aviva Bar-Am has written an informative article about ancient Jezreel and its modern counterparts in the Jerusalem Post. The first half discusses the battles around the village in 1948 and the kibbutz that was established there. The second half describes the biblical and archaeological significance, including this part:

Although archeologists have uncovered portions of a tower, found the city gate and dug to the bottom of the moat, the biblical Jezreel is overgrown with weeds and there isn’t much to see (I am also not sure how safe it is – there are open pits). It is much more fun to spend time at the tel’s excellent recreation site, centered by a striking monument to Palmah troops who fell here in 1948. From the heights of the tel you have a fantastic view of the Harod and Beit She’an valleys. Enjoy the shade produced by the fruit trees in the lovely reconstruction of Naboth’s plot.
You can also follow a lovely biblical trail on the northern edge of the mountain down the slope for about 35 minutes (allow about 50 minutes for walking back up). A delightful surprise awaits you at the bottom: the Jezreel Spring. It is one of 48 freshwater, full springs that lie under the mountain, the result of geological changes that occurred when the Syrian African Rift raised Mount Gilboa and lowered the valley.
Before you jump into the inviting pool, set within a grove of eucalyptus trees, look for a shaft a few meters from the end of the trail. It leads underground to a tunnel which you and your kids can enter (with a flashlight!), walk through water and end up on the other side of the road in a canal that leads directly to the pool.
The spring, of course, is mentioned in the Bible (isn’t everything in this region?) “The Philistines gathered all their forces at Aphek, and Israel camped by the spring in Jezreel…” [I Samuel 29:1].

The full article is here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tell Jezreel and Mount Gilboa from west

Tagged Galilee, Samaria

Khirbet el-Maqatir (Ai?) Highlights

Bryant Wood has posted some highlights of this season’s results at Khirbet el-Maqatir. The review includes a map, photos, and summaries of geographical and archaeological correspondences between Maqatir and biblical Ai. You can read the whole; I’ll just quote here a portion of the introduction and a portion of the conclusion.

From the introduction:

After a hiatus of nine years, ABR has resumed work at Kh. el-Maqatir, a promising candidate for Joshua’s Ai (Joshua 7–8). The site is located approximately 9 mi north of Jerusalem and 0.6 mi west of et-Tell, the site most scholars identify as Joshua’s Ai. There is a major problem identifying et-Tell as Joshua’s Ai, however, as the site was unoccupied at the time of the Israelite Conquest of Canaan. ABR was founded 40 years ago to examine this problem and field work has been conducted both at Kh. Nisya (1979–2000; Livingston 2003) and Kh. el-Maqatir (1995–2000 [Wood 1999b, 1999c, 2000, 2008] and 2009) as part of the investigation. At Kh. el-Maqatir evidence has been found for five major periods of occupation:
Middle Bronze Age, ca. 1800–1500 B.C.—pottery only on the southeast slope of the site
Late Bronze Age I, ca. 1500–1400 B.C.—fortress on the southeast slope, the focus of the ABR expedition
Iron Age I, ca. 1100 B.C.—squatter occupation on the southeast slope
Hasmonean, ca. 167–37 B.C.—fortress on the southeast slope
Byzantine, ca. A.D. 500–600—church and monastery on the summit of the site.

From the conclusion:

Excavations in the gate passageway revealed apparent evidence of severe burning in the form of reddened and fragmented bedrock, and burned and calcined building stones. On the west side, a 5 m length of the fortress wall was exposed and a 4 ft wide trench cut through it to provide a cross-section of its construction. At this point the wall is 12 ft wide at its base and preserved to a height of 4 ft. Several exploratory squares excavated on the south and east sides of the fortress in an effort to locate the fortification wall in these areas proved unsuccessful.

Tagged Excavations, Samaria

Update from Khirbet el-Maqatir, Week 2

The excavations of the site proposed to be biblical Ai continued for a second week, with a brief description and photos posted on the website of the Associates for Biblical Research.

Significant discoveries continued to be made during the second and final week of the ABR excavation at Kh. el-Maqatir, June 1-5, 2009. During the first week ABR Board President Gary Byers cleared the gate entry way and found considerable evidence for an intense fire, evidenced by the limestone bedrock turning red. Oral Collins of the Berkshire Institute for Christian Studies continued the excavation of a section of the western wall of the fortress discovered in 2000. The wall at this point proved to be 3.3 meters wide and is preserved to a height of 1.2 meters. Just inside the gateway of the fortress ABR Director of Research Bryant Wood uncovered a portion of a building, perhaps an administrative center. In the northeast corner of the 6 x 6 meter excavation square a deposit of four vessels from the time of Joshua were found: a storage jar, a small cooking pot, a trumpet-base bowl and a dipper juglet. The four restorable vessels will provide important evidence for dating the fortress.

Tagged Excavations, Samaria

Mosaic Museum Opens at Good Samaritan Inn

The Jerusalem Post reports on a new museum that has opened at the traditional Inn of the Good Samaritan.

The Museum of the Good Samaritan, which is located on the Jerusalem-Jericho Road near Ma’aleh Adumim, was officially opened Thursday evening after a nine-year archeological excavation at the site.
The official dedication of the NIS 10 million museum, which displays mosaics from the West Bank and Gaza, coincided with US President Barack Obama’s long-touted Middle East speech in Cairo in which he reached out to the Muslim world….
The site, known as the Inn of the Good Samaritan, received its name in the Byzantine period when it was identified with the inn mentioned in the Parable of the Good Samaritan in the New Testament.
The site lies on the upper end of the ascent on the main road from Jericho to Jerusalem, which pilgrims followed when traveling from the Galilee and Transjordan to the Holy City.
Over the last decade, archeologists have uncovered remains dating back to the Second Temple period at the site.
During the Byzantine period, the site was revived as a way station for Christian pilgrims, and an inn was constructed that included a large church, a cistern, residential quarters, and a fortress to protect pilgrims from brigands.
In the Crusader period, with the expansion of pilgrimage to Jericho and especially to baptismal sites on the Jordan River, the inn was renovated and a fortress erected above it to guard the road to Jerusalem.
The structure housing the museum was built in the Ottoman period as a guard post, which remained in use until recently.
The mosaics on display at the museum were discovered in the West Bank and Gaza and belong to Jewish and Samaritan synagogues – including a mosaic from a Gaza synagogue – as well as churches.

The full story is here.

Traditional Inn of the Good Samaritan with Jerusalem in the distance

Tagged Judah, Museums, New Exhibits, Samaria

Update from Khirbet el-Maqatir (Ai?) Excavations

After nine years of being unable to excavate Khirbet el-Maqatir because of its location near Palestinian cities in Israel, the Associates of Biblical Research has resumed work on the site under the direction of Bryant Wood. Wood believes that the site may be the city of Ai destroyed by Joshua in the Israelite conquest of the land (Joshua 7-8). A brief report of the first week’s excavations is now online, along with some photos.

Efforts this season are focused on the west, south and east walls, and several structures inside the fortress. On the east, Eugene Merrill (Dallas Theological Seminary) discovered a pavement which may be a section of a ring road which circled the site inside the fortress wall. On the west, Pastor James Luther (Florida) uncovered a 5 meter long section of a one meter wide wall that is part of a substantial structure inside the fortress. Dig director Bryant Wood exposed several walls that were part of a building complex just inside the main gate on the north side of the fortress. One of the guest volunteers working in Dr. Wood’s square found a large section of a pithos rim and neck which can be accurately dated to the 15th century BC, the time of the Conquest.

Wood’s latest article explaining the rationale for identifying Kh. el-Maqatir as Ai is given in an article in Critical Issues in Early Israelite History (Eisenbrauns, 2008), available online in pdf format here.

Tagged Excavations, Samaria

Foot-Shaped Stone Enclosures Discovered in Israel

This discovery announced by the University of Haifa today could be very interesting. There’s not enough information here for me to be bold enough to offer my thoughts, but I look forward to learning more about it.

The article is entitled “Exceptional Archaeological ‘Foot’ Discovery in Jordan Valley”, and a summary is given:

Researchers at the University of Haifa reveal an exceptional archaeological discovery in the Jordan valley: Enormous “foot-shaped” enclosures identified with the biblical “gilgal” stone structures. “The ‘foot’ structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the People of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot.”

You can click on over to read the entire article and view the two photographs (large size: 1, 2).

Among the things I would like to know more about are the locations of the five structures, including how many are in the Jordan Valley. The skeptic in me wonders how much imagination is required to see a “foot” in each one. Regardless of the shape, they could be quite helpful in our understanding of ancient Israel.

HT: Joe Lauer

UPDATE: A.D. Riddle sends along the coordinates for a couple of sites that may be among the five.

You can download them in Google Earth format here. Both are on the south side of the Wadi Farah (aka Faria), about 3 miles (5 km) north of Alexandrium/Sartaba.

UPDATE (4/9): Joe Lauer sends along notice of a couple of articles on the discovery: Haaretz and Science Daily.

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Samaria