Ancient city discovered beneath Biblical-era ruins in Israel
By Tia Ghose
Digging History
LiveScience
Burned ruins and fired mudbrick collapse, as well as smashed pottery, reveal the late Bronze Age destruction at the city. On the left is the room where several pottery vessels, a scarab of Amenhotep III, a cache of cylinder seals ... (SAMUEL WOLFF, TEL GEZER EXCAVATIONS)
Archaeologists have unearthed traces of a previously unknown, 14th-century Canaanite city buried underneath the ruins of another city in Israel.
The traces include an Egyptian amulet of Amenhotep III and several pottery vessels from the Late Bronze Age unearthed at the site of Gezer, an ancient Canaanite city.
Gezer was once a major center that sat at the crossroads of trade routes between Asia and Africa, said Steven Ortiz, a co-director of the site's excavations and a biblical scholar at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
The remains of the ancient city suggest the site was used for even longer than previously known. [The Holy Land: 7 Amazing Archaeological Finds![]()
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]Biblical cityThe ancient city of Gezer has been an important site since the Bronze Age![]()
, because it sat along the Way of the Sea, or the Via Maris, an ancient trade route that connected Egypt, Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia.
, because it sat along the Way of the Sea, or the Via Maris, an ancient trade route that connected Egypt, Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia.The city was ruled over many centuries by Canaanites, Egyptians and Assyrians, and Biblical accounts from roughly the 10th century describe an Egyptian pharaoh giving the city to King Solomon![]()
as a wedding gift after marrying his daughter.
as a wedding gift after marrying his daughter."It's always changed hands throughout history," Ortiz told LiveScience.
The site has been excavated for a century, and most of the excavations so far date to the the 10th through eighth centuries B.C. Gezer also holds some of the largest underground water tunnels of antiquity, which were likely used to keep the water supply safe during sieges.
But earlier this summer, Ortiz and his colleague Samuel Wolff of the Israel Antiquities Authority noticed traces of an even more ancient city from centuries before King Solomon's time. Among the layers was a section that dated to about the 14th century B.C., containing a scarab, or beetle, amulet from King Amenhotep III, the grandfather of King Tut. They also found shards of Philistine pottery.
During that period, the ancient site was probably a Canaanite city that was under Egyptian influence.
The findings are consistent with what scholars suspected of the site, said Andrew Vaughn, a biblical scholar and executive director of the American Schools of Oriental Research, who was not involved in the study.
"It's not surprising that a city that was of importance in the biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah would have an older history and would have played an important political and military role prior to that time," Vaughn told LiveScience. "If you didn't control Gezer, you didn't control the east-west trade route."
But once the location of that major road moved during the Roman period, the city waned in importance. It was later conquered and destroyed, but never fully rebuilt.
"Just like today when you have a ghost town where you move the train and that city goes out of use," Ortiz said.
"We have great faculty who are not just great at teaching archaeology and teaching the Bible, but they are great archaeologists." Cameron Coyle, 2013 Field Archaeologist
Gezer Excavations Uncover Previously Unknown Canaanite City
Archaeologists discover a Late Bronze Age occupation layer destroyed by fire
• 10/28/2013
Beneath these Iron Age walls at Gezer lies a recently discovered Late Bronze Age city that had been destroyed by fire. Photo courtesy Samuel Wolff.
Sift through the archaeology and history of ancient Israel and get a view of its Biblically-significant sites through an archaeologist’s lens in the free eBook Israel: An Archaeological Journey.
According to the Bible, Gezer, which had been captured by an Egyptian pharaoh, was given to the Israelite king Solomon as a wedding gift when he married the pharaoh’s daughter (1 Kings 9:15–16). In the Biblical account, Solomon was said to have built walls around Gezer as well as Jerusalem, Hazor and Megiddo. A century of excavations conducted at Gezer constitute one of the largest excavation projects in Israel, one that is critical to developing an understanding of the nature and chronology of the United Monarchy.
Learn More about Gezer in Bible History Daily
Hidden secret of Gezer: A pre-Solomonic city beneath the ruins
A summer dig unexpectedly reveals remains of an unknown city beneath the known Canaanite one.
By Ran Shapira| Oct. 24, 2013 | 2:54 PM |
Several pottery vessels, a cache of cylinder seals, and a large scarab with the cartouche of King Amenhotep III attest to the existence of a previously unknown Canaanite city in the land of Israel, archaeologists say. Where was it hiding? Underneath another Canaanite city – the famous ruins of Gezer.
The scarab and other artifacts were found this summer at a level dating from the Late Bronze Age (14th century BCE) in ancient Gezer, a major Canaanite city located along the strategic coastal highway between Egypt and Mesopotamia.
The first signs that there was an unknown city lurking there were found by Dr. Steven Ortiz of the Tandy Institute for Archaeology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr. Samuel Wolff of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who have directed the excavations at Gezer for six seasons. They believe the hidden city was destroyed during the Egyptian 18th Dynasty's rule over the southern Levant, and the new Gezer was built on top of it.
Amenhotep III, by the way, was the father of the heretic King Akhenaten and also grandfather to Tutankhamun, whose fabulous tomb was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon.
Enter Reshef, the Canaanite war god
In the late Bronze Age, circa 1,400 BCE, Gezer, then the capital city in the region, was burned to the ground. Possibly it was another victim of the incessant internecine warfare between the Canaanite cities at the time, as described so evocatively in the well-known Tell el-Amarna correspondence.
It was while digging into the remains of this known devastation that the momentous discoveries were made.
The inhabitants of the proto-Gezer of 1,400 BCE were clearly Canaanites, said Ortiz. But artifacts found at the site indicate strong ties with Egypt.
For instance, there is the small cylinder seal found at the site, just 2.5cm in height, bearing a rare image of the Canaanite god Reshef subduing his enemies.
Reshef, a central god in the Canaanite pantheon, was – inter alia – in charge of diseases, plagues and conflagrations. In the seal he is portrayed shooting an arrow from a big bow towards about ten rivals depicted in states of submission and fall.
Worship of Reshef was common in the New Kingdom of Egypt period, says Ornan – and the cylinder seal from Gezer shows clear Egyptian influence. The miniature depiction of the god is done in the style of the awe-inspiring Egyptian embossments that show triumphs of the pharaohs.
“The question is whether the Late Bronze Age Gezerites were supporters, or subjects, of the Egyptian 18th Dynasty," says says Prof. Tallay Ornan of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University. "We know that during the 14th century BCE, the king of Gezer was responsible for various conflicts within the region. The Late Bronze Age destruction either represents an Egyptian campaign to subdue Gezer, or local Canaanites attacking an Egyptian stronghold at Gezer."
That's not a support system, that's a city
Gezer lies between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The archaeological team, some 80 staff and students from the U.S., Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Russia, Korea, and Hong Kong were removing a wall dating from later - the 10th century BCE, known as the Iron IIA period – and discerned a yet earlier city wall.
They had vaguely known the wall was there, but had thought it was a subterranean support system for the later Iron Age wall, Ortiz explains. “It became evident that our original interpretation was wrong," he says. The lower wall had been built as much as 200 years earlier; the 10th century CE wall had been built on top of it after the city's destruction by fire.
This earlier wall was one meter thick, and had several rooms attached to it. These rooms were filled with rubble nearly a meter in height, from catastrophic destruction. These earlier remains included shards from Canaanite storage jars, Philistine pottery and other items. A fragment of a Philistine figurine was also found.
Since Gezer was Canaanite, says Ortiz, the Philistine pottery either represents trade relations or a group of Philistines living among the Canaanites.
A city as dowry
As for the Egyptian influence, according to the biblical account, Gezer was conquered by an Egyptian pharaoh and was later given to Solomon as a wedding gift when the Israelite king married the pharaoh’s daughter.
Solomon is also recorded in the biblical account as having built walls around Gezer, as he did at Jerusalem, Hazor, and Megiddo, all sites currently under excavation. Excavations at Gezer have been regarded as a key to understanding and resolving the debate among biblical scholars and archaeologists regarding the appropriate chronology of events and ruling Israelite and Judahite kings.
Gezer is also famous for its massive ancient water-tunnel system, which is also currently under excavation. Last summer Dr. Tsvika Tsuk, chief archaeologist at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, said the water system at Gezer was the largest Canaanite water system found in the country. It includes a large entrance carved in bedrock. From there, a 50-meter tunnel runs at a 39-degree slope. The tunnel is 7 meters tall and 4 meters wide.
Tsuk and his colleagues, Jim Parker, Daniel Warner, and Dennis Cole of the Old Testament and Archaeology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, believe the water system was built in the Middle Bronze Age IIB (1750-1550 BCE). But it fell out of use around 1,300 BCE, based on pottery found at the end of last season’s work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ien7Si0RYKw Uploaded on Oct 19, 2008
Visit Tel Gezer on the edge of the Shephelah in Ancient Judah. The city Pharaoh gave to king Solomon as a wedding present. For more information and photos