| Khirbet Qeiyafa | |
| Western gate | |
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Khirbet Qeiyafa
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| Alternate name | Elah fortress |
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| Coordinates | |
| History | |
| Founded | 10th-century BCE |
| Periods | Iron Age, Hellenistic |
| Site notes | |
| Excavation dates | 2007 – |
| Archaeologists | Yosef Garfinkel, Saar Ganor |
| Condition | ruin |
| Website | Khirbet Qeiyafa Archaeological Project |
Khirbet Qeiyafa (Elah Fortress) is the site of an ancient city overlooking the Elah Valley.[1] The ruins of the fortress were uncovered in 2007,[2] near the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, 20 miles from Jerusalem.[3] It covers nearly six acres and is encircled by a 700-meter long city wall constructed of stones weighing up to eight tons each.[4] The fortress was situated at a key location in the Kingdom of Judah along the main road from Philistia and the coastal plain to the eastern hill country. Archaeologists suggest that it may have been the biblical city of Sha'arayim or Neta'im.[5]
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The meaning of the Arabic name of the site, Khirbet Qeiyafa, is uncertain. Scholars suggest it may mean "the place with a wide view."[6] Local Bedouin refer to the site as Khirbet Daoud, or David's ruin.[7] The modern Hebrew name, Elah Fortress, derives from the location of the site on the northern bank of Nahal Elah, one of six brooks that flow from the Judean mountains to the coastal plain.[6]
The Elah Fortress lies just inside a north-south ridge of hills separating Philistia and Gath to the west from Judea to the east. The ridge also includes the site currently identified as Tel Azekah.[8] Past this ridge is a series of connecting valleys between two parallel groups of hills. Tel Sokho lies on the southern ridge with Tel Adullam behind it. The Elah Fortress is situated on the northern ridge, overlooking several valleys with a clear view of the Judean Mountains. Behind it to the northeast is Tel Yarmut. From the topography, archaeologists believe this was the location of the cities of Adullam, Sokho, Azekah and Yarmut cited in Joshua 15:35.[8] These valleys formed the border between Philistia and Judea.
The site of Khirbet Qeiyafa was surveyed in the 1860s by Victor Guérin who reported the presence of a village on the hilltop. In 1875, British surveyors noted only stone heaps. In 1932, Dimitri Baramki, reported the site to hold a 35 square meter watchtower associated with Khirbet Quleidiya (Horvat Qolad), a few hundred meters east.[6] The site was mostly neglected in the 20th century and not mentioned by leading scholars.[2] Yehuda Dagan conducted more intense surveys in the 1990s and documented the visible remains.[6] The site raised curiosity in 2005 when Saar Ganor discovered impressive Iron Age structures under the remnants.[2]
Excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa began in 2007, directed by Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University and Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority, and continued in 2008.[9] Nearly 600 square meters of an Iron Age IIA city were unearthed. Based on pottery styles and two burned olive pits tested for carbon-14 at Oxford University, Garfinkel and Ganor have dated the site to 1050–970 BC,[2] although Israel Finkelstein contends evidence points to habitation between 1050 and 915 BC.[10]
The initial excavation by Ganor and Garfinklel took place from August 12 to 26, 2007 on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archaeology. In their preliminary report at the annual ASOR conference on November 15, they presented a theory that the site was the Biblical Azekah, which until then had been exclusively associated with Tell Zakariya.[11] In 2008, after the discovery of a second gate, they identified the site as the biblical Sha'arayim ("two gates" in Hebrew).[2]
Discoveries at Khirbet Qeiyafa are significant to the debate about the veracity of the Biblical account of the United Monarchy at the beginning of Iron Age II. As no archaeological finds were found that could corroborate claims of the existence of a magnificent biblical kingdom, various scholars have advanced the opinion that the kingdom was no more than a small tribal entity. Garfinkel, while admitting that the debate cannot "be answered by the Qeiyafa excavations", is of the opinion that "what is clear, however, is that the kingdom of Judah existed already as a centrally organized state in the tenth century B.C.E" [12][13][14] In 2010, Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa identified Khirbet Qeiyafa as the “Neta’im” of 1 Chronicles 4:23, due to its proximity to Khirbet Ğudrayathe (biblical Gederah). The inhabitants of both cities were said to be "potters" and "in the King’s service", a description that is consistent with the archeological discoveries at that site.[15]
Yehuda Dagan of the Israel Antiquities Authority also disagrees with the identification as Sha'arayim. Dagan believes the ancient Philistine retreat route after their defeat in the battle at the Valley of Elah (1 Samuel 17:52), more likely identifies Sha'arayim with the remains of Khirbet esh-Shari'a. Dagan proposes that Khirbet Qeiyafa be identified with biblical Adithaim (Joshua 15:36).[6]
The fortifications at Khirbet Qeiyafa predate those of contemporary Lachish, Beersheba, Arad, and Timnah. All these sites have yielded pottery dated to early Iron Age II. The parallel valley to the north, mentioned in Samuel I, runs from the Philistine city of Ekron to Tel Beit Shemesh. The city gate of the Elah Fortress faces west with a path down to the road leading to the sea, and was thus named "Gath Gate" or "Sea Gate." The 23-dunam (5.7-acre) site is surrounded by a casement wall and fortifications.[13] The top layer of the fortress shows that the fortifications were renewed in the Hellenistic period.[8]
Garfinkel suggests that Khirbet Qeiyafa was a Judean city inhabited by 500–600 people during the reign of David and Solomon.[16][17][13] Based on pottery finds at Qeiyafa and Gath, archaeologists believe the sites belonged to two distinct ethnic groups. "The finds have not yet established who the residents were," says Aren Maeir, a Bar Ilan University archaeologist digging at Gath. "It will become more clear if, for example, evidence of the local diet is found. Excavations have shown that Philistines ate dogs and pigs, while Israelites did not. The nature of the ceramic shards found at the site suggest residents might have been neither Israelites nor Philistines but members of a third, forgotten people."[18] Evidence that the city was not Philistine comes from the private houses that abut the city wall, an arrangement that was not used in Philistine cities.[19] There is also evidence of equipment for baking flat bread and hundreds of bones from goats, cattle, sheep, and fish. Significantly, no pig bones have been uncovered, suggesting that the city was not Philistine.[19][20] Nadav Na'aman of Tel Aviv University nevertheless associates it with Philistine Gath, citing the necessity for further excavations as well as evidence from Bet Shemesh whose inhabitants also avoided eating pork, yet were associated with Ekron.[21]
The site consists of a lower city of about 10 hectares and an upper city of about 3 hectares (7.4 acres) surrounded by a massive defensive wall ranging from 2–4 metres (6 ft 7 in–13 ft 1 in) tall. The walls are built in the same manner as the walls of Hazor and Gezer, formed by a casemate (a pair of walls with a chamber in between).[19] At the center of the upper city is a large rectangular enclosure with spacious rooms on the south, equivalent to similar enclosures found at royal cities such as Samaria, Lachish, and Ramat Rachel. On the southern slope, outside the city, there are Iron Age rock-cut tombs.
Area "A" extended 5x5 metres & consists of two major layers: Hellenistic above, and Iron Age II below. Area "B" contains four squares, about 2.5 metres deep from top-soil to bedrock, and also features both Hellenistic and Iron Age layers.[22] Surveys on the surface have also revealed sherds from the early and middle Bronze Ages, as well as from the Persian, Roman, Byzantine, early Islamic, Mameluke and Ottoman periods.[6]
The Hellenistic/upper portion of the wall was built with small rocks atop the Iron-II lower portion, consisting of big boulders in a casemate design. Part of a structure identified as a city gate was uncovered, and some of the rocks where the wall meets this gate are estimated to weigh 3 to 5 tons.[22] The lower phase was built of especially large stones, 1–3 meters long, and the heaviest of them weigh 3–5 tons. Atop these stones is a thin wall, c. 1.5 meters thick; small and medium size fieldstones were used in its construction. These two fortification phases rise to a height of 2–3 meters and standout at a distance, evidence of the great effort that was invested in fortifying the place.[22]
A 15-by-16.5-centimetre (5.9 × 6.5 in) ostracon, a trapezoid-shaped pottery sherd with five lines of text,[23] was discovered during excavations at the site in 2008.[23]
Although the writing on the ostracon is poorly preserved and difficult to read, Gershon Galil of Haifa University proposed the following translation:
On January 10, 2010, the University of Haifa issued a press release stating that the text was a social statement relating to slaves, widows and orphans. According to the document: "It uses verbs that were characteristic of Hebrew, such as `asah ("did") and `avad ("worked"), which were rarely used in other regional languages. Particular words that appear in the text, such as almanah ("widow") are specific to Hebrew and are written differently in other local languages. The content itself was also unfamiliar to all the cultures in the region besides the Hebrew society: The present inscription provides social elements similar to those found in the biblical prophecies and very different from prophecies written by other cultures postulating glorification of the gods and taking care of their physical needs."[23][24]
Other readings are possible, and the official excavation report presented many possible reconstructions of the letters without attempting a translation.[25] The inscription is written left to right in a script which is probably Early Alphabetic/Proto Phoenician,[25][26] though Rollston and Demsky consider that it might be written vertically.[26] Early Alphabetic differs from old Hebrew script and its immediate ancestor.[26] Rollston also disputes the claim that the language is Hebrew, arguing that the words alleged to be indicative of Hebrew either appear in other languages or don't actually appear in the inscription.[26] Millard believes the language of the inscription is Hebrew, Canaanite, Phoenician or Moabite and it most likely consists of a list of names written by someone unused to writing.[17] Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said the inscription was very important, as it is the longest Proto-Canaanite text ever found.[27]
In 2010, the ostracon was placed on display in Iron Age gallery of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.[24]