Khirbet Qeiyafa

Khirbet Qeiyafa
Western gate
Shown within Israel
Alternate name	Elah fortress
Coordinates	31°41′47″N 34°57′27″E / 31.6963°N 34.9575°E / 31.6963; 34.9575Coordinates: 31°41′47″N 34°57′27″E / 31.6963°N 34.9575°E / 31.6963; 34.9575
History
Built	10th-century BCE

Khirbet Qeiyafa (Elah Fortress), recently proposed as the biblical Sha'arayim (English:Shaaraim), is a 10th century BCE Israelite royal fortress now an archaeological site overlooking the Elah Valley where, according to the Biblical account, David fought Goliath.^[1] It was a key location in the kingdom of Judah along the main road from Philistia and the Coastal Plain to the eastern Hill Country.

Contents 1 History 2 Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription 2.1 Oldest Hebrew inscription 3 Archaeological findings 4 Significance 4.1 Sha'arayim 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] History

The site is understood to have been a Judean city occupied for a period of only about 20 years in the tenth century BCE, before being destroyed.^[2] The tenth century is the period ascribed to the kingdoms of David and Solomon. The site is dated by pottery styles and by two burned olive pits tested for carbon-14 at Oxford University and found to date from between 1050 and 970 B.C., the period most scholars consider to be during the reign of King David.^[3] The excavations were carried out by archaeologists Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor of the Hebrew University beginning in 2007.

[edit] Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription

A 15 cm x 16.5 cm trapezoid pottery sherd (ostracon) with five lines of text written in ink was discovered at the site in 2008 during excavations carried out by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel.^[4]. The inscription cannot be dated directly, but according to the New York Times article noting the discovery, C14 dating tests on two burnt olive pits place the date of the site, and hence by inference the ostracon, to between 1050-970 BCE.^[5]

The inscription is written in the Proto-Canaanite alphabet.^[6] It is written on the ostracon in ink (not inscribed or scratched into the surface) and the ink had faded to varying degrees, making the letters difficult to read.^[7]

On 7 January 2010 Prof. Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa issued a press release in which he claimed to have deciphered the inscription as a legal document:

1 you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].

2 Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]

3 [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]

4 the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.

5 Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.^[4]

Prof Galil's translation is in contrast with that given by Prof. Hagai Misgav, supported, with variations, by professors Yardeni, Ahituv, and Schniedewind, at a conference on the inscription held at Hebrew University in October 2009:

1 Do not do [anything bad?], and serve [personal name?]

2 ruler of [geographical name?] . . . ruler . . .

3 [geographical names?] . . .

4 [unclear] and wreak judgment on YSD king of Gath . . .

5 seren of G[aza? . . .] [unclear] . . .^[8]

The University of Haifa press release included a claim that the inscription proved that "the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research.”^[4]

Dr. Christopher Rollston of Johns Hopkins University accepting that Israel had a monarchy and some sort of a “state” at this point warns that "these recent attempts to sensationalize the ostracon should be rebuffed," and makes the following claims:

• The script is definitively not Old Hebrew, but rather Early Alphabetic/Proto Phoenician; (Note: this is a comment about the script, not the language)
• Those claiming the language to be Old Hebrew are going beyond the evidence;
• It is commonly agreed that although literacy was present during the 10th century throughout the fledgling Southern Levantine states (Israel, Moab, Ammon), it was confined to a particular group of elites (i.e., scribes). Moreover, scholars such as Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman have dated certain portions of the biblical text (namely poems such as Exodus 15 and Judges 5) to periods prior to the 10th century, and it is therefore not surprising to discover a 10th century BCE Old Hebrew epigraph; and:
• The ostracon is poorly preserved and difficult to read and various renderings have been proposed. "It seems to me that it is prudent simply to state that at this time the interpretation of this inscription is at a preliminary stage."^[9]

[edit] Oldest Hebrew inscription

This view that it is written in Hebrew is also shared by the original translator of the inscription Hagai Misgav^[10] who also argues that the language is Hebrew not Phoenician.

Professor Misgav concludes that the inscription, while difficult to decipher, cannot be a mere receipt or business document but must be a document "in the realm of ethics and justice." The text, "begins with several words of command" and "contains words that relate to areas of politics or government." Moreover, it is "phrased as a message from one person to another," though we "cannot know if this is a private or public document."^[11]

Among the clearly written words is king, melech Mem Lamed Kaph, in the fourth line, but the context of the word is unclear. ^[12]

Misgav points especially to the three-letter word at in the fourth line (of five) on the right hand side of the ostraca. It reads Tav Ayin Shin, "to do" a word root unique to Hebrew. The tablet, including the word "to do", is written from left to right, indicating that Hebrew writing was still in the formative stage. ^[13]

A second indication that the text is Hebrew is that another word in the inscription, Ayin Beth Daleth, meaning servant, is common to both Hebrew and Phoenician, but it is never used as a verb in Phoenician, whereas here it takes the form of a verb as it can in Hebrew.^[14]

[edit] Archaeological findings

The Philistine city of Gath, located seven miles west, has been demonstrated to have different pottery types than Qeiyafa, establishing the distinct ethnic identities of the two sites.^[15][16] "The finds have not yet established who the residents were," says Aren Maeir, a Bar Ilan University archaeologist who is digging at nearby 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." Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said the inscription was very important, as it is the longest Proto-Canaanite text ever found. But he suggested in 2007 that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far. The initial excavation by Saar Ganor and Yosef Garfinklel took place from August 12 to 26, 2007 on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Institute of Archaeology. They presented a preliminary report at the annual ASOR conference on November 15. During this public lecture, they hypothesized that the site could be Biblical Azekah, which until then had been exclusively associated with Tell Zakariya^[17]. In 2008 when they discovered another gate, they identified the site with biblical Sha'arayim ["two gates" in Hebrew].^[3] In 2010 Prof. Gershon Galil, of the Department of Bible Studies at the University of Haifa, has identified Khirbet Qeiyafa as the “Neta’im” of 1 Chronicles 4:23, because 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.^[18]

The site consists of a lower city of about 10 hectares and an upper city of about 3 hectares surrounded by a massive defensive wall ranging from 2-4 metres 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). ^[2] Evidence that the city was not Philistine comes from the private houses that abut the city wall, this arrangement was not used in Philistine cities. ^[2]

Further evidence that the city was Judean comes from the carbon-14 dating of olive pits to around 1000 B.C. 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, indicating that the city was not Philistine but Judean.^[2]

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. Aside from these two strata, there were also some small Bronze Age sherds.

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. ^[19] 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.^[20]

[edit] Significance

Khirbet Queiyafa may be the first securely dated Judean city built in the late 10th century period traditionally ascribed to an Israelite kingdom governed from Jerusalem by Kings David and Solomon, and, consequently, as evidence of the existence and substantial centralized power of that kingdom.^[2]

In an article in the Biblical Archaeology Review, Hershel Shanks argues that finding a construction of this size refutes Israel Finkelstein's assertion that the most that existed in Jerusalem at that era was a "tribal chiefdom,".^[21]

The archaeologist Aren Maier, who is excavating nearby at Gath, has said "I believe that the size of Gath in the 10th-9th century reflects not only its size and importance, but also, most likely, the fact that the Gath polity existed in relationship to a competing polity in the east...Now the finds from Qeiyafa seem to provide strong archaeological evidence for this Israelite kingdom."^[22]

[edit] Sha'arayim

In the city list of Judah's tribal inheritance Sha'arayim appears after Socoh and Azekah (Jos 15, 36). After David killed Goliath the Philistines run away and were slain on the “road to Sha'arayim " (1 Sam 17:52). In the city list of the tribe of Simeon, Sha'arayim is mentioned as one of the cities “unto the reign of David" (1 Chr 4:31). Because the excavations have uncovered a wall that makes a nearly complete circuit with two gates, and because this is "the only contender for Sha'arim with two gates, all the other sites of the period have only a single city gate," it has been suggested that this is the Biblical Sha'araim.^[23]

[edit] See also

• Biblical archaeology
• Archaeology of Israel

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Qeiyafa Archaeological Excavations
• AFOB (Archaeological Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin) Online Listing for Khirbet Qeiyafa
• The Elah Fortress website
• "Archaeology: What an Ancient Hebrew Note Might Mean"