Khirbet Qeiyafa

Western gate
Shown within Israel
Alternative name	Elah fortress
History
Founded	10th-century BCE

Khirbet Qeiyafa (Elah Fortress) is the site of an ancient city overlooking the Elah Valley.^[1] The ruins of the fortress were discovered in 2003 near the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, southwest of Jerusalem. The site covers nearly six acres and is encircled by a 700-meter long city wall constructed of stones weighing up to eight tons each. ^[2] 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.^[3]

Etymology

Some local Bedouin refer to the site as Khirbet Daoud, or David's ruin.^[4]

History

The Elah Fortress lies just inside a north-south ridge of hills separating Philistia and Gath that includes the site currently identified as Tel Azeka.^{[citation needed]} 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. 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, Azeka and Yarmut cited in the Book of Joshua (15:35).^{[citation needed]} These valleys were the border of Philistia and Judea.

Elah Fortress predates Lachish, Beersheva, Arad, and Tel Batash/Timna. 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 Bet Shemesh. The city gate of 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. ^[5]The top layer of the fortress shows that the fortifications were renewed in the Hellenistic period.^{[citation needed]}

Excavation and dating

Excavations were carried out by archaeologists Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor of the Hebrew University beginning in 2007, who dated the site to 1050-970 BC by pottery styles and two burned olive pits tested for carbon-14 at Oxford University.^[6] The theory that Khirbet Qeiyafa was a Judean city inhabited by 500-600 people during the reign of David and Solomon has been challenged by Israel Finkelstein.^[7]Based on pottery finds at Qeiyafa and Gath, archaeologists believe the sites belonged to two distinct ethnic groups.^[8][9] "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."

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. In their a 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.^[10] In 2008, after the discovery of another gate, they identified the site as the biblical Sha'arayim ["two gates" in Hebrew].^[6]

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.^[11]

The fortifications are believed to support the Biblical account of the United Monarchy at the beginning of Iron Age II.^[12]

Archaeological findings

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).^[13] 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.^[13]

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.^[14] 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.^[15]

Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription

A 15-by-16.5-centimetre (5.9 in × 6.5 in) ostracon— a trapezoid-shaped pottery sherd with five lines of text.^[16] It was discovered at the site in 2008 during excavations carried out by Garfinkel and Ganor.^[17][18] The writing on the ostracon is poorly preserved and difficult to read, but in January 2010 Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa proposed the following translation of the text:

1 you shall not do [it], but worship (the god) [El]

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.^[17]

In 2010, Haifa University 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."^[19]

Other readings are possible, and the official publication presented many possible reconstructions of the letters without attempting a translation.^[20] The inscription is written left to right in a script which is probably Early Alphabetic/Proto Phoenician.^[20][21] This differs from old Hebrew script and its immediate ancestor.^[21] The language was argued by the official publishers, and by Galil, to be a form of Hebrew, on the basis of linguistic analysis of its contents.^[20] This is disputed by Rollston, who argues that there is insufficient evidence to identify the language.^[21] He also says there is no agreement on whether it is written left to right or vertically. One expert believes it is mostly a list of names.^[21] Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said the inscription was very important, as it is the longest Proto-Canaanite text ever found.^{[citation needed]}