The Fire Signals of Lachish: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Israel in the Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Persian Period in Honor of David Ussishkin

424 Pages·2011·21.21 MB·English

by  Israel Finkelstein

The Fire Signals of Lachish
David Ussishkin
The Fire Signals of Lachish
Studies in the Archaeology and History of Israel
in the Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Persian Period
in Honor of
David Ussishkin
Edited by
Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Naʾaman
Winona Lake, Indiana
Eisenbrauns
2011
© 2011 by Eisenbrauns Inc.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.

www.eisenbrauns.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The fire signals of Lachish : studies in the archaeology and history of Israel in the late Bronze
age, Iron age, and Persian period in honor of David Ussishkin / edited by Israel Finkelstein
and Nadav Naʾaman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-57506-205-1 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Israel—Antiquities. 2. Excavations (Archaeology)—Israel. 3. Bronze age—
Israel. 4. Iron age—Israel. 5. Material culture—Palestine. 6. Palestine—Antiquities.
7. Ussishkin, David. I. Finkelstein, Israel. II. Naʾaman, Nadav.
DS111.F57 2011
933—dc22
2010050366
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard
for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. †Ê
Contents
Introduction: David Ussishkin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Publications of David Ussishkin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Indelible Impression: Petrographic Analysis of Judahite Bullae . . . . . . 1
Eran Arie, Yuval Goren, and Inbal Samet
Excavations at Tel Malḥata: An Interim Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Itzhaq Beit-Arieh
Close Yet Apart: Diverse Cultural Dynamics
at Iron Age Beth-Shemesh and Lachish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman
Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On: The Possible Destruction
by Earthquake of Stratum VIA at Megiddo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Eric H. Cline
Tel Azekah: A New Look at the Site and Its “Judean” Fortress . . . . . . 71
Yehuda Dagan
Why Did Nebuchadnezzar II Destroy Ashkelon in Kislev 604 b.c.e.? . . . 87
Alexander Fantalkin
Tall al-Umayri in the Iron Age I: Facts and Fiction,
with an Appendix on the History of the Collared Rim Pithoi . . . . 113
Israel Finkelstein
From Megiddo to Tamassos and Back:
Putting the “Proto-Ionic Capital” in Its Place . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Norma Franklin
Voyage to Yarimuta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Baruch Halpern
Iron Age IIA Occupational Phases in the Coastal Plain of Israel . . . . . . 159
Zeʾev Herzog and Lily Singer-Avitz
Distribution and Use of Storage Vessels in the Kingdom of Judah . . . . 175
Hayah Katz and Avraham Faust
Inside the Walls of Nehemiah’s Jerusalem: Naboth’s Vineyard . . . . . . 185
Ernst Axel Knauf
The Evolution of the 8th-Century b.c.e. Jerusalem Temple . . . . . . . . . 195
André Lemaire
v
vi Contents
The Origin and Date of the Volute Capitals from the Levant . . . . . . . 203
Oded Lipschits
Comparative Aspects of the Aramean Siege System at Tell Eṣ-Ṣāfi/Gath . . 227
Aren M. Maeir and Shira Gur-Arieh
Egyptian-Type Pottery at Late Bronze Age Megiddo . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Mario A. S. Martin
Tel Reḥov in the Assyrian Period: Squatters, Burials, and a Hebrew Seal . . 265
Amihai Mazar and Shmuel Aḥituv
The Shephelah according to the Amarna Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Nadav Naʾaman
Reconsidering the Buildings in Area A at Edomite Buseirah . . . . . . . . 301
Ronny Reich
The Persian Period City Wall of Jerusalem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Margreet Steiner
Phoenician Clay Masks from Tel Dor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Ephraim Stern
The Waters of Shiloah (Isaiah 8:5–8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
H. G. M. Williamson
On the Toponymy of the Jezreel Valley and Adjacent Plains . . . . . . . 345
Ran Zadok
Reexamining Area DD at Megiddo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
Anabel Zarzecki-Peleg
Ruin Cults at Iron Age I Hazor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
Sharon Zuckerman
Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
Index of Geographical Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
Index of Personal Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
Introduction:
David Ussishkin
David Ussishkin was born in Jerusalem in 1935 and was brought up in a devoted
Zionist family. His grandfather was Menachem Ussishkin, one of the prominent
Zionist leaders of the time, and his uncle, Simon Bodenheimer—a pioneer in the
study of the fauna of the Land of Israel—was professor of zoology at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. He grew up in Rehavia, a well-to-do Jerusalem neighbor-
hood, and attended the local gymnasium, where he received an excellent education.
After his military service (1953–55), David studied archaeology at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem (1955–61). He wrote his dissertation, entitled The Neo-
Hittite Monuments, Their Dating and Style, under the supervision of Prof. Yigael Ya-
din and received his Ph.D. in 1966. During his studies, he participated in a number
of excavations, including Chalcolithic Beer Sheba (1956), Tel Hazor (1958), Chalco-
lithic Azor (1958), Kültepe, Turkey (1959), Tel Megiddo (1960, 1965), “Cave of the
Letters,” the Judean Desert (1960–61), En Gedi (1961–62), and Masada (1964–65).
These excavations furnished him with remarkable experience and helped him for-
mulate his own field methodology.
From 1966 until his retirement in 2004, David taught in the Department of Ar-
chaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University. Between 1975
and 1978, he served as Chair of the Department, and between 1980 and 1984 as the
Director of the Institute of Archaeology. In 1985, he was nominated full professor,
and in 1996 he was nominated incumbent of the Austria Chair in Archaeology of
the Land of Israel in the Biblical Period.
David has excavated some of the most important sites in Israel, most prominent
among them Lachish, Jezreel, and Megiddo. These projects have shed light on the
material culture and history of Israel and Judah, touching on the central dilemmas
in the field of biblical archaeology. In his excavations, David developed a branch of
biblical archaeology that can best be described as a bridge between the European-
American archaeological methods and the Israeli archaeological method, both of
which were dominant between the 1950s and the 1970s. David’s work is meticu-
lously methodical and free of fixed thought patterns. He has never hesitated to
undermine conventions or to attack “accepted” theories if they were not founded
on hardcore evidence. He has never refrained from presenting trenchant questions,
even when they deviated from the consensus. Moreover, he has never hesitated to
dismiss opinions that he himself had expressed or to accept rejection of his own
opinions by other scholars when new, opposing data appeared. Indeed, intellectual
integrity is one of the trademarks of David’s scientific work. No wonder that he
describes himself as the Hercule Poirot of archaeology—a detective who seeks the
solution by looking at all the evidence without any preconceptions.
vii
viii Introduction: David Ussishkin
David’s scientific activity is diversified. Themes he has dealt with include Chal-
colithic art, Early Bronze Age temples, Middle Bronze Age fortifications, Egyptian
dominance during the Late Bronze Age, the date of the Philistine settlement in
Canaan, and the Iron Age II archaeology in northern and southern Israel. Another
field he has researched is the archaeology and art history of Anatolia and northern
Syria during the Iron Age.
The crowning achievement of David’s scientific work is the excavation at Lach-
ish. This is where he shaped his views on archaeological method, as well as his
observations on the fine line between artifact and text—biblical or other. Tel Lach-
ish is the most significant site in Judah for determining issues of material-culture
sequence and chronology. David’s meticulous methods and his analytical skills
helped him to resolve several problems that had baffled research for many years. He
brought to light decisive evidence for clarifying the nature of Egyptian dominance
in Canaan and the time of its demise, and for the discussion of the date of the Phi-
listine settlement in southern Canaan. Most significant for the archaeology of the
Iron Age is his deciphering of the conundrums of the Lachish III destruction date,
of the date of the lmlk seal impressions, and of the destruction of contemporaneous
layers at other Judahite sites.
In addition, David has made important contributions to our understanding of
the Northern Kingdom. Jezreel is presented in the Bible as a prominent center in
the Kingdom of Israel in the days of the Omride dynasty, second only to the capital,
Samaria. His excavations at Tel Jezreel (with John Woodhead of the British School
of Archaeology in Jerusalem) contributed to our perception of the ways in which
governing centers were established in Israel in the 9th century b.c.e. The results
of the excavations stimulated the discussions on state formation in the Northern
Kingdom and the effect of Hazael’s conquests on the history of the Levant. His in-
vestigations in Jezreel also provoked the ongoing debate of past years regarding the
chronology of Iron Age settlement strata at sites across Israel.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, David published several studies on the results of
excavations at Tel Megiddo. From the beginning of the 1990s, he has been a co-
director of the renewed excavations at the site (with Israel Finkelstein, Baruch Halp-
ern, and Eric Cline). Over eight extensive seasons, the Megiddo team has recovered
finds that shed light on numerous crucial subjects for the archaeology of Israel and
its surrounding lands: the layout and date of the Early Bronze Age temples; the de-
struction of the Late Bronze Age city; the nature of the Iron Age I city; the dating of
Iron Age strata; the conquest of the Northern Kingdom by Assyria; and the nature
of the 7th-century b.c.e. Assyrian provincial center at the site.
One of David’s most influential publications is his exhaustive study of Sennach-
erib’s conquest of Lachish (1982), pertaining to various subjects connected with
this event—namely, Sennacherib’s reliefs from Nineveh, the Assyrian king’s annals,
the biblical evidence, and the results of Lachish’s excavations. David’s book on the
Iron Age cemetery at Silwan opened a window on the study of burial traditions
of the Jerusalem elite during the late Iron Age. With the meager data available on
monumental building in Jerusalem and in the peripheral Judahite towns, the rock-
Introduction: David Ussishkin ix
cut tombs at Silwan present most significant evidence of Judahite architecture and
of foreign influences on the culture of Judah during the late Iron Age.
The most prominent of David’s publications is the final report of the renewed
excavations at Lachish. He compiled and edited the works of dozens of researchers
from many fields of archaeology and other scientific disciplines and himself wrote
many chapters, publishing a five-volume exhaustive report and achieving the ut-
most in quality and standard. This monumental undertaking is David’s magnum
opus.
Tel Aviv, the Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, is one
of two periodicals in Israel that introduce the world to archaeological research in
Israel. During Tel Aviv’s first three years, David served as one of its three editors. For
the next 27 years, from 1977 through 2004, he served as the sole editor of the jour-
nal. It is no exaggeration to say that he alone is responsible for shaping Tel Aviv’s
nature and for maintaining its high level throughout the years.
David has never evaded his public responsibilities. For many years he was a mem-
ber of the Board of Directors of Yad Ben Zvi in Jerusalem. For the past 25 years, he
has also been a member of the Board of Directors of the Israel Exploration Society
and the Israel Archaeology Council.
David married in 1964 and has three children: Iddo, a physicist; Yoav, a lawyer;
and Daniel, a historian. He has six grandchildren. In addition to fulfilling his obli-
gations as grandfather, he is still very active and the archaeology community can
expect that his desk will produce many more important studies in the future.
On a personal note, we were delighted to edit this book for David—a friend, col-
league, and field-partner for many years—on the occasion of his 75th birthday. We
have always enjoyed David’s amity, scientific observations, sense of humor, and
talents as a storyteller. And David, with his cynical smile, has always accepted our
at-times skeptical criticism of some of his observations.
Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Naʾaman
October 2010