David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (30 page)

THE CLUE OF THE CITY GATES

The difficulty of excavating in Jerusalem for archaeological evidence of the united monarchy eventually turned scholarly attention to the sites of three important ancient cities—Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer—that are specifically mentioned in the Bible in connection with King Solomon’s ambitious building activities (I Kings 9:15).

Megiddo was the first of these cities to become the scene of intensive archaeological excavations. Located at the edge of the Jezreel Valley, on the international highway from Egypt to Anatolia and Mesopotamia, Megiddo was an important strategic spot throughout all of its history. Uncovering the city levels from Solomon’s time has always been high on the agenda of its excavators. In the 1920s, in the course of excavations by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, remains were indeed identified as representing the time of Solomon.

Close to the surface of the mound, the University of Chicago team uncovered two sets of large public buildings sharing a characteristic plan. Each was composed of a series of long, rectangular structures attached to one another in a row. Each of the individual structures featured three long aisles separated by rows of alternating stone pillars and stone basins. (See figure on p. 165.) The expedition director Philip Langstaffe Orde Guy identified these buildings as stables and dated them to the time of Solomon. His interpretation was based on the connection that he made between the pillared buildings, the reference to the building activity of Solomon at Megiddo in 1 Kings 9:15, and the mention of Solomon’s cities for chariots and horsemen in 1 Kings 9:19.

In the mid-1950s, Yigael Yadin of the Hebrew University began excavations at Hazor, another of the cities mentioned in the account of Solomon’s reign. Hazor is the largest ancient mound in Israel, located north of the Sea of Galilee, with layers of occupation stretching back to the Early Bronze Age. In one of the excavation areas Yadin and his team uncovered a large city gate dating to the Iron Age. On each side of the gateway were three chambers arranged in a row, fronted by a tower. Yadin immediately recognized the similarity of this gate—in both layout and size—to a gate that had been uncovered at Megiddo (see figure on p. 160) and saw this similarity as a possible confirmation of the biblical verse mentioning Solomon’s activities at “Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer.”

What was the situation at Gezer, the third city mentioned, which is a large site strategically located in the Valley of Aijalon, guarding the road from the coast to Jerusalem? Yadin went to dig Gezer—not in the field, but in the library—in the excavation reports of the early-twentieth-century British archaeologist R. A. S. Macalister, who published three thick volumes describing his finds. Yadin paged through the excavation plans in the Macalister report and was stunned to see a plan of what Macalister (incorrectly) described as a “Maccabean Castle.” Within it was a pattern of walls that seemed identical to one side of the Megiddo and Hazor gates. Yadin was now fully convinced that 1 Kings 9:15 was a reliable description of Solomonic building activities. He theorized that a royal architect from Jerusalem drew a master plan for the Solomonic city gates, and this master plan was followed by the builders of the provincial centers of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer—as demonstrated by the archaeological finds.

FORTIFICATION WALLS AND PALACES

Yadin’s ingenious theory was haunted by a major problem: the gates were attached to different kinds of fortifications. Two types of city walls were constructed at various times in the Iron Age. One type is a solid stone or brick wall with insets and offsets; the other is composed of a linked series of chambers and is known as a casemate wall. The problem was that at Hazor and Gezer the six-chambered gates were connected to a casemate wall, while the Megiddo gate was connected to a solid wall—thus calling into question the theory of a single Solomonic master plan. Convinced that the earlier Megiddo excavators had missed an underlying casemate wall (presumably the original fortification built with the gate), Yadin decided to go to Megiddo with a new excavation team in order to recheck the archaeological stratigraphy.

Yadin chose an area to the east of the gate where the University of Chicago team had uncovered one of the sets of “stables” linked to the solid city wall, which was in turn connected to the gate. Under the stables and solid wall, he discovered a beautiful palace built of large ashlar blocks, with a row of rooms on both sides. It was built on the edge of the mound and although the outer row of rooms was much different in shape from the typical casemate walls of the Iron Age, he interpreted it as the “missing” casemate wall that was originally (at least according to his theory) built with the six-chambered gate.

With the discovery of this edifice, Yadin turned his attention to a roughly similar palace, also built of beautiful dressed blocks, uncovered by the earlier Oriental Institute team on the southern side of the mound. This palace too lay under the city of the “stables” and thus Yadin believed that he had identified yet another of Solomon’s magnificent palaces at Megiddo—an apparent manifestation of the grandeur of the Solomonic state.

This city of palaces was destroyed in a conflagration, which Yadin attempted to link with a specific historical event: the military campaign of Pharaoh Shishak in Palestine in the fifth year of King Rehoboam—the son of King Solomon (supposedly 926
BCE
). This campaign (which we analyzed in chapter 2) is mentioned in the Bible (1 Kings 14:25–26) and recorded on one of the walls of the temple of Amun at Karnak in Upper Egypt. Megiddo is specifically mentioned in the Karnak list, and indeed, a fragment of a stele that was erected by Shishak at Megiddo was discovered at the site (unfortunately not in a stratified or dated context).

So archaeology seemed to fit the biblical testimony perfectly. The Bible recounts the building activities of Solomon at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer; surely, the similar gates discovered at the three cities revealed that they were built together, on a unified plan. The Bible says that Solomon was an ally of King Hiram of Tyre and that he was a great builder; indeed, the layout and masonry of the magnificent Megiddo palaces seemed to show northern influence, and were among the most beautiful edifices discovered in the Iron Age strata in Israel. The Bible says that Pharaoh Shishak campaigned in Israel and Judah right after the death of King Solomon; and lo and behold, Solomon’s city at Megiddo was destroyed in an intense conflagration and a stele of Shishak was found at the site. From that moment on, the entire reconstruction of the history and material culture of the Solomonic state rested on these finds.

Yet this harmonized archaeological image of a golden age of the united monarchy did not last long. Two decades after Yadin demonstrated an apparently perfect match between Bible and archaeology, the various elements of the theory started to crumble, one by one.

A QUESTION OF DATING

The first to go down were the gates. A detailed study of the Megiddo gate by David Ussishkin showed that it was built later than the gates of Hazor and Gezer. In addition, similar gates were found in much later periods and at clearly non-Israelite sites, among them Philistine Ashdod. Even the basis for the dating of the Solomonic levels was shown to be the result of circular logic: the pottery and other artifacts found in the gate levels were dated to the tenth century
BCE
because
of the association of the gates with the biblical verse about the building project of King Solomon. Later ardent defenders of the “Solomonic grandeur” theory simply forgot about this circular reasoning when they argued that the biblical verse (and the great Solomonic kingdom)
must
be historical, since the gates and other impressive structures were found in levels dating from the tenth century
BCE
!

New data from ongoing excavations in Israel and a reanalysis of old finds undermined the rest of Yadin’s basis for “Solomonic” archaeology. Less than ten miles to the east of Megiddo is the site of Jezreel, the location of a palace of the Omride dynasty, described in the Bible as the scene of the bloody coup that brought this dynasty down (2 Kings 9). The historical existence of the Omrides is supported by Assyrian records and the evidence of the Mesha and Tel Dan stelae. Jezreel was excavated in the 1990s by David Ussishkin and John Woodhead, who uncovered a large fortified enclosure that they readily identified as an Omride royal compound, strikingly similar in conception to the royal acropolis of Samaria, the capital of the Omride dynasty. The Jezreel compound was destroyed and abandoned soon after its construction—either due to internal political changes in the kingdom or as a result of a military attack by the Arameans on northern Israel, both of which took place, according to historical records, around the middle of the ninth century
BCE
.

Surprisingly, the pottery types found in the Jezreel compound are identical to the pottery of the city of the ashlar palaces at Megiddo, which was supposed to have been destroyed by Pharaoh Shishak almost a century
before
the fall of the Omrides. Could it be that Yadin’s “Solomonic” city at Megiddo was in fact an Omride city, built and destroyed in the ninth century
BCE
, like Jezreel, long after the time of Solomon?

Other, clear evidence points to that conclusion. The first clue comes from Samaria, the capital of the Omride kingdom, located in the highlands about twenty miles to the south of Megiddo. We have already mentioned the similarity of the Jezreel and Samaria royal compounds, but there is another architectural link. The excavations at Samaria, initially carried out in the early twentieth century by an expedition from Harvard University, uncovered the foundations of a large palace built of ashlar blocks in the center of the elevated royal acropolis. The excavators identified it as the royal palace of the Omride dynasty, constructed in the first half of the ninth century
BCE
.
*

There are unmistakable similarities in the building methods between the Samaria palace and at least one of the two Megiddo palaces. These similarities were first noted by the early excavators Clarence Fisher (at Samaria and Megiddo) and John Crowfoot (at Samaria) but were subsequently forgotten after the wide acceptance of Yadin’s Solomonic theory. However, Norma Franklin of Tel Aviv University has recently revived the comparison with important new evidence: the ashlar blocks in the palace at Samaria and the southern palace at Megiddo bear similar masons’ marks unknown at any other Iron Age sites in Israel. It is likely that they were built at the same time, probably by the same team of masons—working under the auspices of the Omride dynasty,
not
Solomon.

Finally, in the last few years, radiocarbon dating has hammered the final nail into the coffin of the Solomonic mirage. Carbon 14 samples from major sites involved in the united monarchy debate (including Dor on the coast, Tel Rehov in the Jordan Valley south of Beth-shean, Tel Hadar on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and Rosh Zayit near Akko, Hazor, and Megiddo) have been submitted for testing and analysis. The samples came from numerous grain seeds and olive stones found in levels that were traditionally linked with the Davidic conquests and the Solomonic kingdom of the tenth century
BCE
.

The results were stunning. Almost all of the samples produced dates lower, that is, later, than the widely accepted dates of the conquests of David and the united monarchy of King Solomon. Destruction layers that had previously been dated to around 1000
BCE
and linked to the conquests of King David provided dates in the mid–tenth century
BCE
—the supposed time of King Solomon if not a bit later. And the destruction layers that had traditionally been dated to the late tenth century
BCE
and linked to the campaign of Pharaoh Shishak after the breakdown of the united monarchy provided dates in the mid–ninth century
BCE
—almost a century later.

Thus the conventional view on the archaeology of the united monarchy was wrong by almost a century. In historical terms, this means that the cities assumed to have been conquered by David were still centers of Canaanite culture throughout the time of his presumed reign in Jerusalem. And the monuments that have traditionally been attributed to Solomon and seen as symbols of the greatness of his state were in fact built by the kings of the Omride dynasty of the northern kingdom of Israel, who ruled in the first half of the ninth century
BCE
. Archaeology, therefore, far from proving the historical reliability of the biblical narratives, has forced us to undertake a far-reaching reevaluation of the nature of tenth-century society in Judah and Israel.

Between the 1930s and the 1950s the biblical references to copper smelting and production of copper vessels for the Temple led to a major effort in the search for the historical Solomon. Archaeologists who accepted the biblical description at face value tried to locate the precise sources of Solomon’s copper ores and sites connected with his smelting industry. This quest was localized around Timna, in the south of modern Israel.

The first investigations on this subject were undertaken by the American archaeologist Nelson Glueck, who conducted large-scale surveys and excavations in Transjordan and the Negev desert. Considering that Solomon’s port of Ezion-geber (mentioned in the Bible as a major trade emporium of the united monarchy) was located at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, Glueck focused his search for Solomon’s copper mines at Timna, only fifteen miles to the north.

Fieldwork conducted at Timna by Glueck, and later by the Israeli archaeologist Beno Rothenberg, showed that it was indeed a major source of copper in antiquity. Copper mines and smelting sites dating to different periods, from the Chalcolithic period in the fourth millennium
BCE
to the early Islamic period, were discovered in the Timna Valley and its immediate surroundings. Glueck was convinced that many of these mines and installations dated to the time of Solomon.

Glueck then examined the possible relationship to the nearby site of Tell el-Kheleifeh, a few miles to the west of the modern port of Aqaba, which was identified in the 1930s with the biblical Ezion-geber. Indeed this is the only possibility, as no other Iron Age site is known in this region and decades of intensive explorations around Aqaba in Jordan and south of Eilat in Israel have failed to yield any pre-Roman remains.

Glueck excavated Tell el-Kheleifeh between 1938 and 1940 and uncovered much of the site. He separated the remains into five periods of activity and dated them from the tenth to the fifth century
BCE
, identifying each according to biblical references to Ezion-geber and Elath. Every monarch who was mentioned in relation to activities in the Gulf of Aqaba was granted a stratum. And Glueck interpreted the remains of the first period—including what he described as flue holes, air channels, hand bellows, clay crucibles, and furnace rooms—as evidence for a huge copper smelting industry in the days of King Solomon. Glueck even went so far as to dub Ezion-geber the “Pittsburgh of Palestine” and King Solomon “a copper king, a shipping magnate, a merchant prince, and a great builder.”

This romantic image later proved to be baseless—a wishful illusion based more on the biblical text than on any real archaeological evidence. The intensive research in the Timna Valley conducted by Beno Rothenberg in the 1960s, which included surveys and excavations of smelting sites, failed to reveal any evidence for tenth-century
BCE
activity. There was a strong phase of mining in the time of the Egyptian New Kingdom, until the twelfth century
BCE
, then a gap and renewal of activity during Roman times. Nothing was found from the days of King Solomon.

Tell el-Kheleifeh’s relation to Solomon’s copper industry also proved to be a fantasy. A thorough study of the finds for their final publication by the American scholar Garry Pratico and investigation by other scholars have found no evidence whatsoever for smelting activity at the site. The “crucibles” found at the site proved to be sherds of locally produced handmade pottery vessels; the “flue holes” were no more than holes for wooden beams that had rotted away; and there were only a few metal finds—certainly not evidence of an active smelting industry. No less important, it became clear that the site was established only in the late eighth or early seventh century
BCE
. The elaborate stratigraphy of successive copper kings and their industrial center simply did not exist. At the time of the historical Solomon in the tenth century
BCE
, this place near the shore of the Gulf of Aqaba was no more than a sand dune.