IT^M V I L I Z A T I O:V7

-

; *#. K:

Shiloh

Samaria

SOLOMON'S JERUSALEM

Jerusalem Bethlehem

Masada

30 miles

LION-HEADEDRHYTON Hebron

Lachish

SILVER CALF

\

Cover: Found in Akhziv, along modernIsrael's Mediterranean coast, a terra-cottaPhoenician mask bears the inscrutablegaze of a common man from the periodof the Israelites, which ended with thedestruction of Solomon's Temple in586 BC. The artistic skill of the Phoeni-cians earned their appointment by theking to decorate the Temple itself. Thesmaller-than-life-size face appears againsta view of the cliffs of Qumran, the site ofperhaps the most important archaeologi-cal find in Israel: the Dead Sea Scrolls.

End paper: Painted on antiqued simulatedparchment bv Paul Breeden, the mapshows the ancient kingdom of the Israel-ites, once known as Canaan, and its holi-est city, Jerusalem, situated between theDead Sea and the Mediterranean coast.Breeden also painted the vignettes illus-trating the timeline on pages 158-159.

TTTKHOLY LAND

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(Lost civilizations)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0-8094-9866-9 (trade)ISBN 0-8094-9867-7 (lib. bdg.)1. PalestineAntiquities.2. BibleAntiquities.3. Excavations (Archaeology)Palestine.4. PalestineHistoryTo AD 70.I. Time-Life Books. II. Series.

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ras, Karherine L. GriffinAssistant Art Director: Bill McKenneySenior Copy Coordinator: Anne FarrPicture Coordinator: Gail FeinbergEditorial Assistant: Patricia D. Whiteford

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Correspondents: Elisabeth Kraemer-Singh(Bonn), Christine Hinze (London), ChristinaLieberman (New York), Maria VincenzaAloisi (Paris), Ann Natanson (Rome). Valu-able assistance was also provided by: NihalTamraz (Cairo); Marlin Levin (Jerusalem);Judv Aspinall (London); Elizabeth Brown,Katheryn White (New York); Leonora Dods-worth (Rome); Traudl Lessing (Vienna)

The Consultants:William G. Dever, PhD, is chairman of theDepartment of Near Eastern Studies at theUniversity of Arizona. An archaeologist in theNear East for nearly 30 years, he is a world-renowned expert in biblical archaeology.

Joe D. Seger, ThD, is Middle Eastern Archae-ologist and professor of religion and anthro-pology at Mississippi State University, wherehe is director of the Cobb Institute of Archae-ology. Over the past 25 years he has partici-pated in extensive excavations in the HolyLand and has published widely in the field.

James F. Strange, PhD, chair of the Depart-ment of Religious Studies at the University ofSouth Florida, reviewed material relating tothe archaeology of the New Testament.

Kenneth Holum, PhD, professor of history atthe University of Maryland, is director of theCombined Caesarea Expeditions. Widely pub-lished in the field, he consulted on text andpictures dealing with the Herodian era.

James C. VanderKam, PhD, is professor oftheology at the University of Notre Dame. Aspecialist in Hebrew Scriptures, he reviewedthe section dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

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THEHOLY LAND

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X XCONTENTS

ONETERRAIN AND TESTAMENT:DIGGING FOR THE BIBLE

13

ESSAY: A Painter's Pilgrimage 38

TWOCITIES OF THE PROMISED LAND

49

ESSAY: The Many Ages of Ashkelon 75

THREEJERUSALEM: THE DREAM AND THE NIGHTMARE

85

ESSAY: The Treasures of Qumran 109

FOURIN THE FOOTSTEPS OF JESUS

119

ESSAY: Herod: The Master Builder 144

Timeline 158Acknowledgments 160Picture Credits 160Bibliography 161

Index 164

*- -W

'-

r -

-

^*fU 4

THE JUDEAN DESERT

e turneth rivers into a

wilderness, and the waterspnngs into

dry ground; a fruitful land into

barrenness, for the wickedness of them

that dwell therein.

PSALM 107:33-34

..*.

GALILEE

ing praise upon the harp unto our

God: Who covereth the heaven withclouds, who prepareth rain for the

earth, who maketh grass to grow upon

the mountains.

PSALM 147:7-8

&UMh>JK-

THE DEAD SEAm

J^fl take the wings of themorning, and dwell in the uttermostparts of the sea; even there shall thy

hand lead me, and thy right handshall hold me.

PSALM 139:9-10

9-~~

V

4

,-

J?

ev

o N

TERRAINAND TESTAMENT:

DIGGINGFOR THEBIBLE

The oldest knownbiblical textfromthe late seventh cen-

tury BCcame tolight on this tiny sil-

ver scroll, found be-side the bones ofan-cientgenerations inthe rock-hewn burialcaves ofJerusalem'sValley ofHinnom.

or the archaeologists at workon the western shoulder of Israel's Vallev ofHinnom in 1979, thelong-ago world of the Bible had an almost palpable presence. Just tothe west was a ravine described in the Book ofJoshua as marking theborder between the territories of Judah and Benjamin, 2 of the 12sons of the patriarch Jacob, whom God called Israel. Right next tothe site ran an ancient roadknown even before the Israelites firstappeared in the area around the 13th century BCthat led to Beth-lehem, the little town named in the Gospels as the birthplace ofJesus.And across the valley to the east lay Jerusalem, cherished center offaith since the days of King David, who had made it the Israelitecapital in the 10th century BC. David's son Solomon had raised agreat temple there of cedar, olive wood, gold, and bronze, saying tothe Lord, "I have surelv built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place

for thee to abide in for ever." The temple was long gone, but in theearly morning light, as the sun rose over the holy city, this place andeverything around it inevitably drew the mind into the deeps oftimedeeps that were about to cast up a spiritual treasure.

The Hinnom valley site was known to be an old burialground, but, as the project leader, the Israeli archaeologist Gabriel

Barkay of Tel Aviv University, said, "After 120 years of great ar-

chaeologists digging in Jerusalem, you don't expect to find much."

13

Nevertheless, after working through the debris left by quarrying thehill for limestone, the excavators came upon nine burial caves that hadbeen carved out ofthe rock more than 2,600 years ago, at a time whenSolomon's Temple still stood. The tombs appeared to have beenlooted, but to the team's astonishment, one of the caves whose roofhad collapsed had not been touched in all the intervening centuries.It contained the remains of nearly 100 people and a vast array ofburial gifts, from pottery and glass vessels to jewelry. The greatestprizes at first seemed relatively modest: two small, rolled-up silverscrolls, evidentiy intended to be worn around the neck as amulets.

Dirty, cracked, and corroded, the miniature scrolls were sofragile that no attempt was made to unroll them for three years.Finally, in 1983, the director of the Israel Museum laboratory cameup with a plan. First, he rinsed the amulets in a solution of alkalinesalt and formic acid to remove the corrosion. Next, he coated themwith an acrylic emulsion that was transparent and elastic when dried.Prevented from cracking by this see-through film, the outer layer wasslowly unfurled. Then more emulsion was added to support succes-sive layers as the unrolling continued. The process took severalmonths, but all the care and effort brought a stunning reward.

On one ofthe sheets ofsilver, a museum specialist could makeout four Hebrew characters, delicately etched in a script that hadbeen used in the seventh century BC. These characters, yod-he-waw-he, were the formulation known as the Tetragrammatonthename ofGod, written in consonants only and at one time deemed toosacred to say aloud. Its original pronunciation having been lost, thewriters of the King James version of the Bible in 17th-century Eng-land used "Jehovah" as a guess; modern linguists consider "Yahweh"to be a closer approximation. In any event, its appearance on the tiny

scroll marked a first: Never before had this holiest ofHebrew namesbeen found on an archaeological object from Jerusalem.

There was more to come. Painstaking study of faint scratcheson the scrolls revealed that they were verses from the sixth chapter ofNumbers. Since the oldest previously known copy ofbiblical text, theDead Sea Scrolls, dates from only as early as 150 BC, this discoverypushed the physical record of Scripture back about 450 years

perhaps to within a generation ofwhen this particular Old Testamentbook was first compiled. The words themselves are as familiar nowas they apparently were in that distant age: "The Lord bless thee, andkeep thee: The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious

-

1

14

A deep deft southwest ofJerusalem, theValley cfHintwm served as the city'smain cemetery in biblical times. Alsocalled the Valley of the Slaughter in theBook ofJeremiah because of child sac-rifices conducted there, it eventuallybecame synonymous with hell.

unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give theepeace." Christians know them as a benediction or as a baptismalprayer. To the Jewish Barkay, the passage was particularly moving:"It is the text my father used to bless me with when I was a boy. Itis found today in every Jewish prayer book. I was not digging for myroots. But you cannot help but be touched by the thought of peopleuttering the same verses in the same city for 2,600 years."

The spiritual dimension clearly accounts for the unique positionaccorded the Holy Land among the world's archaeological huntinggrounds. Stretching from the rolling hills of Galilee in the r

15

the tortured peaks and gullies ofthe Judean and Negev deserts in thesouth, from the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea to the bleakexpanses of the Syrian Desert, this small patch of rugged landscapenever achieved the sort ofimperial or economic greatness enjoyed bysuch civilizations as those of Egypt and Greece. But in the realm ofthe spirit, it was a giantthe source and stage ofone of the greatestof all human documents. Its enduring fascination lies not in marblestatuary or dazzling palaces but in its contribution to the beliefin oneGodto the faith ofthe Jews as expressed in the 39 books ofthe OldTestament, to the convictions of Christians as shaped by the 27additional books of the New Testament, and to Islam, which seesMuhammad as the final prophet in the line that began with Abraham.

The links between religion and archaeology are admittedlycontroversial. Some archaeologists view the Bible as a distorting lensand would prefer to ignore it in their investigations ofthe Holy Land,focusing instead on daily life, trade, technology, and other suchsecular matters. Others go to the opposite extreme, insisting that thewhole point ofdigging in the Holy Land is to better comprehend theOld and New Testaments, and to confirm their historical validity. Inthe 1930s, the illustrious American archaeologist William Albrightpronounced the search for the factual basis of Scripture an unalloyedsuccess. "Discovery after discovery," he wrote, "has established theaccuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased recogni-tion of the value of the Bible as a source of history."

Many modern investigators would argue the point, or at leastqualify it. But most feel comfortable in a middle ground between thesecular and the sacredmindful of the Bible as they go about theirwork, motivated by its place in human history, but intrigued tooby aspects of the Holy Land that lie beyond the bounds of thescriptural narrative.

The larger story begins far back in time. The region wasactually part ofthe so-called Fertile Crescent, an arc ofcultivable landthat stretched from Mesopotamia through Upper Syria and thensouth along the coastal plain beside the Mediterranean as far asEgypt. Throughout the area, humans first sowed crops and raisedanimals for food as early as 10,000 years ago. In the course ofthe nextfew millennia, civilization itself blossomed at either end of the cres-cent as Egypt and Mesopotamia developed cities, extensive tradenetworks, and such potent new mind tools as writing and mathe-matics. The locale now encompassed by modern Israel, at the cross-

16

roads of these civilizations, also took part in this first flowering.Jericho, situated just north and west of the Dead Sea, was one of theworld's earliest fixed settlements; a massive stone tower discoveredthere ranks as the oldest known example ofmonumental architecture.

Despite such intriguing glimpses from prehistory, students ofthe Holy Land seem time and again drawn to a later period, to thesweep of centuries from about the 13th century BC up to the Chris-tian era. It was a time of almost nonstop turbulence, much of itvividly recorded in the narrative portions of the Old Testament.Almost alone among ancient national histories, the Bible recountsdefeats as well as victoriesand for the Israelites there were manydefeats. Buffeted and bludgeoned by the great empires of the NearEast, they lost large chunks of territory in wars, witnessed the de-struction oftheir holiest shrinethe Temple built by Solomonandsaw their leaders driven into exile. Later they were ruled by thesuccessors to Alexander the Great, then by the Romans. But throughall these trials, they never ceased to believe that God had made acovenant with them, guaranteeing full and perpetual ownership oftheir land if they were faithful to him and obeyed his laws as spelledout in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.

The Bible takes the story only so far, referring only indirectlyto what was the final calamity for the ancient Jews. In the first centuryAD, they rebelled against Rome but were brutally crushed. Jerusalemand its rebuilt Temple were destroyed in AD 70, and many othercommunities were razed. After another abortive revolt in 135, theRoman emperor Hadrian moved to eradicate Jewish claims to thispart ofhis empire once and for all by changing the names of cities andtowns. Jerusalem became Aelia Capitolina and was dedicated to Ju-piter; Jews were forbidden to set foot there except on the anniversary

of the city's destruction whenlegend has itthey were allowed tomourn at the site of the Temple. The province name of Judea wasreplaced by "Palestine"an intentional insult, as it derived from theGreek word for the Philistines, a people who had competed with theIsraelites for these fields and hills 1,000 years earlier.

In the centuries that followed, as Rome slid toward its owndisaster, a new religion rose to prominence. Founded on the life andteachings ofJesus ofNazareth, it steadily gained converts throughout

the Roman worldsome of them in the highest of places. InAD 324, a general named Constantine became emperor and madeChristianity the state religion. With this step Palestine, long viewed

17

as an irritant among imperial territories, became sacred ground in anofficial sense. But it was more than just a location on a map. Its

physical reality offered a link with the time when Jesus preached, aswell as with the earlier epochs of the patriarchs and the prophets.Many of the faithful sought to go there, to stand where Jesus hadstood, to walk in Jerusalem (whose name had been restored), to takein the whole landscape that had formed an arena for the dramas oftheOld Testament. The more intimate and explicit the connection be-tween particular places and the events related in holy texts, the better.

Identifying those connections became a passion for Constan-tine's devout mother, the empress Helena. She gathered up a com-pany of monks and bishops and traveled to the Holy Land, deter-mined to find the precise spots where Jesus was born, where he hadbeen crucified, and where his body had been entombed before theResurrection. When Constantine received word that she had suc-ceeded in this venture (with divine help, she declared), he orderedeach of the sites commemorated with a grand basilica. Churches,chapels, monasteries, and convents soon followed at other locationsassociated with the life of Jesus. Pilgrims came in ever greater num-bers, retracing the footsteps of the Master in Galilee or in the JudeanDesert, praying where they had been told the baby Jesus had lain ina manger at Bethlehem, worshiping along the route he had suppos-edly taken through the streets of Jerusalem to Calvary.

Despite the influx of Christians, control of Palestine was farfrom settled. Islamic armies overran the area in AD 638, and theysoon developed strong religious attachments to their new territory-On the height in Jerusalem where the Jewish Temple once stood, theMuslims built a mosque and a shrine that became one of their holiestsitesthe Dome of the Rock, memorializing the place where, ac-cording to the Koran, Muhammad had ascended to heaven one nightto see the face ofAllah. Beginning in the 1 1th century and continuingthrough the 13th, the Christian West tried to reclaim the Holy Landin a series of crusades by knights, peasants, and, on one catastrophicoccasion, even children, but these bids proved futile. As Islamiccontrol solidified, passing to the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century,Christian pilgrimage grew more difficult and dangerous, althoughsome access to shrines was always permitted, and monasteries andconvents remained, as one writer put it, "tiny islands in a hostile sea."

The Jews also had maintained a presence in Palestine allthrough this time. Significant portions of the Talmud, the great

18

A PASSIONFOR HOLY

RELICSFor 800 years of the earlyChurch's history, the devoutlooked to relics of Jesus, Mary, thedisciples, and other religious fig-ures, including saints, as a meansnot just of embellishing their faithbut of eliciting cures and protect-ing themselves from evil spirits.Pilgrims and Crusaders both, ontheir extended journeys to the Ho-ly Land, invariably returned toEurope with religious items theybelieved had supernatural powers.Nothing seemed too inconsequen-tial to them so long as it had a reli-gious connection; thus even dustfrom the Church of the Holy Sep-ulcher, built over Jesus' alleged

tomb, was worthy of veneration.Likewise, consecrated oil from theHoly Land, kept in little silverbottles like the seventh-century

AD example at right, became asubstance to cherish, suitable forone imporant personage to pre-sent to another.

As the worship of holy objectsgrew, so did the passion for ob-taining them. In Jerusalem inAD 385, guards had to be postedaround the reputed cross on whichJesus died to prevent the pilgrimswho kissed it from biting off splin-ters to take back home with them.Because relics had a value fargreater than gold, they were covet-ed and sometimes seized unscru-pulously. When Constantinoplefell to the Crusaders in AD 1204,this eastern center of Christianorthodoxywhich had built uplarge collections of early relics

was ransacked. And in Jerusalem,Orthodox priests were tortured to

make them reveal where pieces ofthe true cross lay hidden.

Some churches amassed hun-dreds of relics. It seemed to botherfew that there were frauds amongthem. In addition to the heads ofPeter and Paul, Rome's Lateranbasilica dared boast that it pos-sessed the Tablets ofMoses, theArk of the Covenant, Aaron's rod,an urn filled with manna, a tunicbelonging to Mary, the hair shirtworn by John the Baptist, and fishand loaves from the Feeding of theFive Thousand, as well as the tableon which the Last Supper wasserved. And the chapel of SaintLawrence, close by the LateranPalace, claimed the umbilical cordand the foreskin of the baby Jesus.The craze for relics had plainlygotten out of hand. Duplicationsabounded; no fewer than threeheads ofJohn the Baptist wereknown to exist. Only in the 13thcentury, when the Eucharist andits powerful symbolism becamecentral to Christian faith, did theobsession with relics subside.

compilation ofJewish law and customs, were composed there duringthe period from the third to the seventh century. But for the mostpart, the Jewish people were scattered far and wide throughout theworld, and in any event they lacked the political wherewithal tomount organized efforts to take back their native land. But wher-ever they were, they continued to represent a direct, living linkwith biblical times, preserving the customs and beliefs of theirancestors, reciting the same prayers, celebrating the same festivals,

maintaining the same unwavering respect for the lawthis lastperhaps their greatest legacy. And their hearts never ceased toyearn for the time when they could reclaim their heritage in a morephysical sense. Every year, during Passover, which commemorated

their deliverance from Egypt in the time of Moses, they would endthe ceremonies with the words, "Next year in Jerusalem."

As for the Christian world, the invention ofthe printing pressin the 15th century and the subsequent translation of the Bible fromHebrew, Greek, and Latin versions into the vernacular set the stagefor renewed interest in the Holy Land. As the old stories gained avastly wider audience, the release of new religious energies through-out Europespurred on by the Protestant Reformationurged theimagination of the faithful back toward the biblical terrain.

But even for the most devoted readers, Scripture could befrustrating. The passage of time had obscured many aspects of thephysical and social world described in the Old and New Testaments.To the people who had lived in those distant millennia and hadwalked across that land every day of their lives, the Bible would havebeen full of familiar details. However, those now pondering it some-times found themselves entangled in a thicket of strange names,peculiar laws, and alien customs. Interest in the factual foundationsof Scripture was strong, but anyone who visited the Holy Land andtried to learn where David had slain Goliath or where Jesus hadperformed a certain miracle was unlikely to get a reliable answer.Knowledgeuncertain even in the time ofthe empress Helenahadgiven way to vague surmise.

In the 19th century, that began to change. Legend and guess-work became increasingly unacceptable. The power of the mind topenetrate the unknown was being demonstrated in many areas, notthe least ofthem the study ofthe past, and it seemed possible that thevistas of biblical history might be opened as well. Seeking answers inthe soil ofPalestine was certain to be a fiercely difficult job, especially

19

since the exact location ofmany sites mentioned in the Biblehad long been forgotten. Moreover, conditions in thecountryside were primitive, the populace occasionally hos-

tile, and the Islamic authorities wary of foreigners. But thedesire to know outweighed all obstacles, and soon Palestinestarted to yield up its secrets. The pace was set by a brilliantAmerican scholar named Edward Robinsonfirst in a longline of talented persons who, building on one another'swork, would by the mid-2Oth century gain a remarkableunderstanding of the biblical world.

From earliest childhood, Robinson was intimatelyfamiliar with the Bible. Born in Connecticut in 1793, hewas the son of a Congregationalist minister who had aban-doned the pulpit for the plow, becoming a prosperousfarmer. The son showed no such practical inclinations, de-voting himselfto academics and, as a college student, doingparticularly well in Greek and mathematics. A few yearslater he attended the Andover Theological Seminary inMassachusetts, mastering ancient Hebrew in only twoyears. He continued his biblical studies in Europe, thenbegan writing and teaching. In 1837, recognized as a schol-ar of rare gifts, he was offered the position of professor ofbiblical literature at the newly founded Union TheologicalSeminary in New York City. He accepted, on one condi-tionthat before he took up his duties, he be allowed tovisit Palestine, "the object ofmy ardent wishes," as he putit. The request was granted, and early in 1838 he arrivedin Egypt, hoping, for a start, to trace the footsteps ofMo-ses and the Israelites through Sinai to the Promised Land.

During the course of his travels over the next four months,Robinson was accompanied by a Protestant missionary named EliSmith, a former student of his now based in Beirut. The two madea superb team. Smith spoke Arabic fluentiy and understood localcustoms. Robinson not only knew Hebrew and other ancient lan-guages but also had read practically everything ever written about theHoly Land, including the journals ofearly pilgrims and explorers. Heput little faith in the observations ofthese early investigators, despitetheir unshakable confidence in the accuracy of their reports. Onefourth-century pilgrim, for example, declared that he had seen thetree where Abraham spoke with Yahweh and two angels, and had

"The light of truth has gradually becomedim," wrote Edward Robinson of his1838 and 1852 excursions through Pales-tine in search of long-ago biblical sites

charted on this 19th-century map ofJerusalem's environs. Despite the shroud

of millennia, the American scholar andhis partner, Eli Smith, puzzled out some100 ancient locations from their Arabicnamessuch as Anathoth (now Anata),birthplace of the prophet Jeremiah.

20

visited Job's farm. A later visitor told of recapturing a poignantmoment not mentioned in the Bible: His guide had explained that adepression they had seen in a stone in Jerusalem was made by thehand of Jesus as he supported himself for a moment during thestruggle toward Calvary under the burden of the cross. Such discov-eries had been commonplace over the centuriesand were rarelyquestioned. Robinson saw in them "mistaken piety, credulous su-perstition, not unmingled with pious fraud." Earlv in his own trip,he confronted tradition head-on, dismissing the accepted site ofMount Sinai on the basis of his analysis ofthe description in Exodus.

B ut Robinson was convinced1 that at least some lost details ofbiblical geography could be recovered. Only a few decades earlier,surveyors in the employ of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had tried toextend French power into the Near East, had conducted a topo-graphic studv of portions of Palestine. They had made no attemptto link existing placenames with those in the Bible, but there was away it could be doneand Robinson and Smith were exceptionallywell qualified to do it.

The method involved a simple chain of linguistic logic. He-brew was the language of the Old Testament, but it had eventuallyfallen into disuse and been supplanted by Aramaic, which Jesusspoke, and still later by Arabic. The Romans had attempted a sort oflinguistic conquest when they replaced local geographical nameswith Latin versions. Among ordinarv folk, however, this effort hadbeen a failure: Because thev found the new names difficult to pro-nounce, they usually stuck with the old ones. Nor had those old oneschanged much with time, since Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic wereall Semitic languages, related in many ways, including their sounds.Pondering this history, Robinson felt sure that the placenames oftheBible "have thus lived on upon the lips of the Arabs even unto ourown day, almost in the same form in which they have also beentransmitted to us in the Hebrew Scriptures."

He was right. As he and Smith trekked across the Palestinianlandscapetaking compass bearings constandy and writing up de-tailed descriptions of the terrain each evening in their tentthey

were able to establish numerous match-ups between modern andancient names, a process much assisted by Robinson's encyclopedicknowledge of the Bible and related texts. A village called Beitin was

21

Bethel, where Jacob dreamed that God stood at the topof a ladder reaching to heaven and called down, "Theland whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thyseed." Seilun had to be Shiloh, where Joshua foundeda religious center to house the Ark of the Covenant,which held the Ten Commandments. In the same way,the two explorers identified Beth-shemesh (Ain-shems), where the Ark was returned to the Israelitesafter the Philistines captured it; the Vale ofElah, whereDavid slew Goliath; and many additional sitesmorethan 100 in all. A phenomenal feat ofhistorical retrieval, the findingsamazed the world when they were published three years later. Anadmiring fellow scholar wrote, "It is not too much to say that Rob-inson's Biblical Researches are worth all the records of travel in theHoly Land from the time of the Savior down to the time when hepublished his work."

Robinson and Smith's investigations often called for an ad-venturesome spirit and no small measure of daring. In one notableinstance, their scholarly curiosity led them quite literally into thetightest of spots. In the process, they did not just identify a locationbut actually discovered physical evidencea remarkable piece ofancient engineering that had played a prominent part in an OldTestament story. The scene was Jerusalem.

Late in the eighth century BC, during the reign of Hezekiah,the city faced a possible siege by the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib.Hezekiah, drawing courage from the words of the prophet Isaiah,was determined to resist, which required ensuring the city's watersupply. He ordered that an underground aqueduct be built from aspring known as Gihon, just east ofJerusalem, to the Pool ofSiloam,within the city walls. His preparations proved wise: Sennacherib wasrepulsed when he attacked in 701 BC.

The tunnel is mentioned twice in the Bible, and Robinsonalso knew of it from several other references. One afternoon he andSmith went to the Pool of Siloam. By luck the water level was low,allowing access to the tunnel entrance. Taking offtheir shoes, the twomen followed the passage. "At the end of 800 feet,'^Robinson laterrecalled, "it became so low that we could advance no further withoutcrawling on all fours. As we were not prepared for this, we thoughtit better to retreat and try again another day from the other end." Theentrance from the spring was blocked with loose stones. These were

First surveyed by Edward Robinson in1838, Hezekiah}s tunnel (above), whichconnects Gihon spring (inset, top) withthe Pool ofSiloam (opposite) inside thewalls ofJerusalem, brought vital stores ofwater to the city during the Assyriansiege of701 BC. Even though the attack-ing leader Sennacherib boasted ofshut-ting King Hezekiah in "like a bird in acage," he neitherflushed him out norgained entrance to the city.

22

removed, and Robinson and Smith crept along the ser-pentine course. "Most of the way we could indeed ad-vance upon our hands and knees; yet in several places wecould only get forward by lying at full length and drag-ging ourselves along on our elbows." Unperturbed, theyfinally reached the place where their earlier attempt hadhalted. The full length ofthe subterranean channel, theycalculated, was 1,750 feet.

By studying chisel marks on the tunnel walls,Robinson deduced that the diggers had proceeded fromboth ends and met in the middle. Four decades later, aJerusalem schoolboy's chance discovery not only confirmed his judg-ment but also added dramatic new details to the story. Venturing intothe tunnel on a hot June day, the boy slipped in the water and, as hestruggled to his feet, touched a smooth area on the rough rock wall.It seemed to bear some markings. When experts heard the boy'sstory, they soon came to investigate. Lowering the water level, theyuncovered an inscription apparendy carved to commemorate thecompletion of this remarkable project: "... And while there werestill three cubits to be cut through, there was heard the voice of a mancalling to his fellow, for there was an overlap in the rock on the right

and on the left. And when the tunnel was driven through, the quar-rymen hewed the rock, each man toward his fellow, ax against ax; andthe water flowed from the spring toward the reservoir for 1,200cubits, and the height of the rock above the heads of the quarrymenwas 100 cubits." (A cubit was defined as the length of the forearm,or about 17 to 21 inches.)

As well as giving the moment immediacy nearly 3,000 yearslater, the inscription offered scholars a superb and long-sought ex-ample of early Hebrew writing. The words themselves had a won-derfully familiar ring. Said one exultant scholar, "The language oftheinscription is the purest biblical Hebrew."

After investigating a number of sites in Jerusalem, Robinson andSmith concluded their whirlwind tour in the north, exploring thecountryside of Galilee and the ancient realm of Samaria. Fueled inlarge part by their success, study of the Holy Land gathered mo-mentum in the following decades. The leading vehicle for continuedresearch was a British organization called the Palestine ExplorationFund (PEF), formed in 1865 for the express purpose of investigating

24

Accepting a book ofSamaritan prayer,Lt. Charles Warren (near left) visits withthe leader of the Samaritan community,Jakoob esh-Shellaby, in 1867, the yearWarren discovered an underground sys-tem that probably suppliedJerusalemwith waterfrom ancient times throughits Roman destruction in AD 70.

This cross-section diagram illustrates theremarkable system of tunnels and shaftsthat allowed the ancient inhabitants ofJerusalem to maintain their water supplyfrom a source outside the city walls. Thevertical shaft at left was possibly an

aborted attempt by the original engineersto reach the underground channel below.

the "Archaeology, Geography, Geology, and Natural History ofPalestine." Among its founders were a former prime minister andseveral other prominent statesmena sign that Britain had politicalas well as academic interests in the region. In fact, several Europeannations were keeping a close watch on the area: The Ottoman Empirewas tottering, and new power arrangements seemed probable. None-theless, the fund was primarily a scholarly institution, seeking knowl-edge rather than influence. It was supported by public contributions,which came pouring in; Queen Victoria herself gave 150 pounds.

In 1867, the PEF assigned Lieutenant Charles Warren andother officers of the Royal Engineers to look for the biblical past inJerusalem's very foundations. Warren was only 27 years old butalready well seasoned in fieldwork, having built extensive fortifica-tions on the Rock of Gibraltar during the previous seven years.Expert in all phases ofmilitary mining, he set about probing the areaaround the Temple Mountthe platform where the Jewish Templehad presumablv once stoodbv digging a series of shafts down to

bedrock and then tunneling laterally. This activity made the Ottomanauthorities profoundly uneasy and spawned rumors that the Britishwere planting bags of gunpowder with the intention of somedaydestroying the sacred Dome of the Rock and nearby mosques nowoccupying the mount. A natural diplomat as well as a daring engi-neer, Warren managed to keep the work going for months, doingmuch of the excavating at night.

As the engineers pushed through the subterranean debris,Warren traced part of the retaining walls of a temple and identifiedothers of its structural features. (He had no way ofdating these findsand believed they harked back to Solomon's Temple; in fact, theywere remnants of construction ordered by King Herod in Romantimes.) Warren also used his molelike skills to reconnoiter the city'sancient water-supply svstem. One channel, hidden for thousands ofyears, extended from the same spring that fed the aqueduct exploredby Robinson and Smith. This one was far older, howeverbuilt inthe 9th or 10th century BC. It led to a subterranean pool about 70feet from the spring; buckets could be lowered to this pool throughan 80-foot vertical shaft, which was itselfreached by tunnels from thesurface. The entire system would be named Warren's Shaft.

Warren turned out to be as dauntiess in his exploring asRobinson. After finding the vertical shaft, he set about climbing it,accompanied by a Sergeant Birtles. Raising scaffolding as they went,they made their way up about 20 feet before stopping. As Warrenrecounted it: "On lighting a piece of magnesium wire at this point,we could see, 20 feet above us, a piece of loose masonry impendingdirectiy over our heads; and as several loose pieces had been found atthe bottom, it occurred to both of us that our position was critical.Without speaking of it, we eyed each other ominously, and wishedwe were a little higher up." On they went, until one wall sloped offat a 45-degree angle, so that the shaft opened up into a huge cavern.The slope was covered with loose rock, but Warren fashioned aladder and scrambled up. "The stones seemed all longing to be off;and one starting would have sent the mass rolling, and me with it, ontop ofthe sergeant, all to form a mash at the bottom ofthe shaft." Butthe reconnaissance ended without incident, and after exploring someinner caverns the two returned safely to the bottomunmashed.

British newspapers thrilled their readers with reports ofWar-ren's excavations and tunnel-tracing exploits, and the publicityhelped bring a freshet ofcontributions to the PEF. Warren himselfleft

26

DREAM COLLIDES WITH REALITYIN THE 19TH-CENTURY HOLY LAND'The whole continent is leaningtoward the East!" In 1829French writer Victor Hugovoiced a growing passion

expressed in scholarship, art,

and literaturethat, before thecentury's close, would impelthousands to venture to the Ho-ly Land. At first the exclusiveretreat ofthe daring and thewealthy, the region attractedthe middle classes too by the1860s, with better access

and affordable tour packages.These pilgrims were drawn

to the Holy Land not only byits rich biblical history (and,often, by a desire to clarify theirfaith) but also by a desire

implanted in them by colorfulportrayals ofcamels in cara-vans, temptresses in harems,and dashing Bedouins on horse-backto experience themystical and the exotic. Toeager travelers from the

West, the East promised to ful-fill every dream from the spirit-ual to the profane.

English journalist HarrietMartineau sought religious qui-etude in her glimpse ofJerusa-lem; French novelist GustaveFlaubert traveled eastward forsexual adventure; and echoingthe malaise ofmany Victorians,British explorer Sir Richard

Burton wrote in 1878 of theopportunity "to

h

Circa 1865, British tourists rest beside Absalom'sTomb in Jerusalem. Built in thefirst century BC,the doubtfully named monument postdates KingDavid's third son by nearly a thousand years.

An 1873 stereograph taken by Ameri-can Benjamin Kilburn, one ofmanysuch images hisfirm sold door-to-door,shows the Western Wall, remnant ofthe enclosure around Herod's Temple.

Among the sightseers in this 1861 cal-otype ofJerusalem's Arch cfEcce

Homo stands the Comte de Chambord,claimant to the French throne. The

photographer, O. von Ostheim, proba-bly hired himselfout to tourgroups.

escape the prison life of civilizedEurope, and to refresh body andmind." From America, HermanMelville came to escape himself,

despondent overMoby Dick'spoor reception, and Mark Twainwould sail into Beirutan "inno-cent abroad"spurred by curios-ity and a love of travel.

Yet few were prepared for thereality that greeted them. "Pales-tine," wrote Twain, "sits in sack-cloth and ashes," and Jerusalemitselfexuded poverty, filth, anddecay. "All around it stinks todie," Flaubert mourned. Fliesand vermin crawled everywhere,though perhaps most bother-some was the ubiquitous flea:"How can a man think aboutJoshua or the valley ofJehosha-phat, when 50 indefatigable littlebores are sharply reminding himof the actual and suffering

Produced by Maison Bonfils, world-wide purveyors ofHoly Land images,

this view of the RiverJordan witha camel and driver superimposedfor

effect typifies the studio's oftenstagedbut popularcreations.

present?" complained Americanwriter John William De Forest.He also summarized the senti-ments aroused by innumerableshrines and keepsakes, comment-ing, "There is such an air of ab-surdity about most of the sacredlocalities and traditions that theyexcite unbelief and irreverencerather than faith and devotion."

Nonetheless, most took

home what they had come insearch of, for the treasures of theEast lived in the realm of theimagination. As Twain mused,"We think in bed, afterwards,when the glare and the noise andthe confusion are gone, and infancy we revisit alone the solemnmonuments ofthe past and sum-mon the phantom pageants of anage that has passed away."

kkJerusalem in 1870 to resume hismilitary career, but investiga-tions continued apace. At thesame time, tourist travel was be-

coming increasingly popular. Regularsteamship connections between European ports and Jaffa hadexisted for decades, a carriage road from Jaffa to Jerusalem hadbeen built, and a massive surveying project, completed in 1880,provided excellent maps. In addition, the renowned travel authoritiesKarl Baedeker and Thomas Cook had published excellent guide-books. Thev were careful not to mislead their readers: Easter inJerusalem, said Baedeker, brings "many disorderly scenes which pro-duce a painful impression," and he noted that the covered bazaars inthe Old City "are very inferior to those of Cairo and Damascus andpresent no features of special interest." But the land of the Bible wasan irresistible draw, and tourists arrived in ever greater numbers.

Archaeologists also continued to flock to the area, not justfrom Britain and America but also from Germany and France. Manybrought with them a wider perspective. Whereas men like Robinsonand Warren were primarily concerned with confirming the biblicalrecord, the new generation of investigators tended to tackle morebasic historical problems. Chiefamong these was how to date variousfinds so that they could be fitted into a coherent whole. The leaderofthis effort was a remarkable man named William Matthew FlindersPetrie. In 1890, in the space of just six weeks of digging, he revo-lutionized archaeology in the Holy Land, turning it into a science.

Petrie had become an archaeologist almost by instinct. Hegrew up in an intellectual household in Victorian England, but hisformal schooling ceased after he suffered a collapse at the age ofeightthe consequence of attempts by his mother, a talented lin-guist, to force-feed him Latin and Greek grammar. Thereafter, heread widely on his own, wandered the countryside studying oldchurches and Druid ruins, and became deeply interested in minerals,fossils, and ancient coins. At the age of 19, having remodeled an oldtheodolite and designed other surveying equipment with his father'shelp, he conducted an accurate survey of Stonehenge. Eight yearslater, he journeyed to Egypt, where his measurements of the GreatPyramid at Giza disproved a longstanding theory about the mysticalsignificance of the structure's dimensions. The young man receivedpraise and prize money from a British antiquarian society for his

30

Sir Flinders Petrie (below), who first rec-ognized the value ofpotsherds in archaeo-logical dating, also discovered the finestjewelry ever to comefrom Canaan: Tellel-Ajjul, near Gaza, yielded a trove ofornaments roughly 3,500 years old, in-cluding a sheet-gold earring (top, farleft), fly and larva amulets, and an em-bossed star pendant. A gold plaque of thegoddess Asherah (left) shows a face whose"curiously impassive expression," in Pe-trie's estimation, might represent "theimpartial rule of reproductive Nature.

"

work, and he stayed in Egypt for the next 10 years, excavating anumber of important sites and amassing a mountain of valuableinformation about Egyptian pottery. It was perhaps inevitable thathis genius would be called upon to solve a problem in Palestine.

At that time, students ofthe Holy Land had begun to wonderabout the nature of many small, rounded hills that dotted the land-scape. These elevations were locally known as tells, from an Arabicword meaning "occupied mound." In the early 1870s, a Germanarchaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann had caused a sensation byshowing that a mound on the western coast of Asia Minor was nota natural feature but a layer cake of seven cities, each one built on theruins of an earlier communitywith the alleged Troy of Homermaking up the seventh stratum. (Recent investigations have revealeda total of 10 layers, and scholars now believe Troy may have been thesixth.) It seemed quite possible that the mounds of Palestine, too,were the ruins of successive cities. Some of the tells even had namessuggestive of biblical sites. The directors of the PEF were particularlyinterested in one hill several miles east of the town of Gaza. It waslocally known as Khirbet Ajlan

perhaps an echo of Eglon, aCanaanite city that according to tradition had fallen to Joshua. Theycalled Petrie in on the case.

Because he was interested in the historical relationship be-

tween Egypt and Palestine, Petrie agreed to help. A cursory exami-nation, however, suggested to him that Khirbet Ajlan was no olderthan Roman times. Over the next few days, he cast about for a morepromising site for Eglon, finally selecting a large mound called Tellel-Hesi, which rose 100 feet to a summit measuring 200 feet square.Its chief appeal was that it had already undergone a kind of naturalexcavation: A stream had eaten away one side ofthe tell, exposing itsinnards. The cut, said Petrie in his first report, "gives us at one strokea series of all the varieties of pottery over a thousand years."

While working in Egypt, Petrie had realized that pottery wasarchaeological treasure. Previous excavators had simply thrown pot-sherds away, but he sensed that the humble stuff offered importantclues to the ancient world. Earthen vessels were among the mostcommonplace domestic objectsserving as bowls, plates, jars, and soon. They broke easily and hence were replaced frequendy, but unlikefabric or wood, they were almost impervious to decay or decompo-sition. Potsherds were thus abundant wherever people had lived.

Most important of all, pottery fashions changed over time,

31

with each era favoring particular types of clay, specific methods ofmanufacture, and distinct stylistic features. Furthermore, these pref-erences tended to be shared throughout the Near East. Thus, ifa layerrepresenting an occupation level at an Egyptian site could be dated,corresponding layers elsewhere could be identified. Dating was nei-ther easy nor foolproof; but inscriptions, seals, coins, and other sortsof historical indicators could serve to fix a layer and its pottery intime. In Egypt, Petrie had studied no fewer than three million piecesof pottery in the course of constructing a chronological frameworkthat he considered reliable.

Building on this knowledge, he rapidly worked out a similarsequence for Tell el-Hesi, directing the labors of a large team ofArabdiggers and personally examining about 50,000 potsherds. The ex-cavation took him through 1 1 layers ofoccupationa series oftownswhose lineage stretched back hundreds of years before the time ofJoshua. Petrie was confident that the links he had established be-tween pottery types and particular periods were secure and wouldserve archaeologists throughout Palestine.

It was, in fact, an extraordinary achievementnot quite aschronologically correct as he believed, but a vast improvement on theguesswork that had prevailed until then. Initially, many scholars werereluctant to rely on pottery for dating, but later generations of in-vestigators came to see the dig at Tell el-Hesi as a watershed event.

As for the identity of the mound, Petrie speculated that it was La-chish, another Canaanite city conquered by Joshua, but he was ap-parentiy wrong: Modern research suggests that it was indeed Eglon.He had unwittingly achieved his original goal.

P;lalestine was by no means to Pe-trie's taste. He thought the la-

borers unreliable, the water almost undrinkable, and the sites lessinteresting than those in Egypt. To top it all off, on one occasion hewas robbed and nearly choked to death by four assailants. It was thuswithout regret that, only four months after arriving, he returned toLondon and then went back to Egypt, where he continued to workfor almost four decades more. But his contributions to the under-standing of the Holy Land were not finished. While excavating themortuary temple of the pharaoh Merenptah in the ancient city ofThebes in 1896, he discovered a black granite slab bearing 28 linesof inscription. The monumental stone, or stele, listed victories over

JUST WHO WASTHE PHARAOHOF EXODUS?By the time Ramses II succumbedto old age, after a reign of nearly70 years, he had outlived a fulldozen of his sons. Thus the 13thin line, Merenptah, was already 60when he ascended to a decade ofpower, around 1212 BC. Meren-ptah was believed by many to bethe pharaoh ofthe Exodus, whopursued Moses and the Hebrewsto the banks of the Red Sea. Al-though the Bible does not explicit-ly say so, it had been assumedthat he perished with his army,engulfed by waters that had mirac-ulously parted for the children ofIsrael. But when the mummy ofRamses' successor (inset opposite)

actually turned up in 1898, itcaused consternation among some

32

members oftheclergy. Churchmenvisiting Cairo were L_relieved when thearchaeologist whohad examined thebody told themthat it bore traces ofsalt, which they be-lieved offered proofofthe pharaoh's deathin the Red Sea. Heneglected to tell themthat such deposits appear onmost mummiesfor the simplereason that embalmers used natronsalts to dehydrate the flesh.

But it is Sir Flinders Petrie'sso-called Israel stele (left), discov-

ered in Thebes in 1896, that seemsto rule out Merenptah as the phar-aoh ofExodus. The 10-foot-highstone, which lists his military con-quests, predates the next-earliest

reference to Israel by 400 years.Here, Merenptah boasts ofsubdu-ing the Israelites as a people whowere clearly settled in a home ter-ritory. Since he reigned for only10 years, he could not have bothvanquished them and been inpower during their flight fromEgypt, for, by the Bible's reckon-ing, the Jews wandered at least 40years in the wilderness beforereaching the Promised Land. It isfar more likely, then, that Mosesdeparted under the rule ofMe-renptah's father, Ramses II, whosename actually appears in the BookofExodus appended to that of acity that was built, according tothe Bible, by Hebrew slaves.

various enemies during Merenptah's reign, which, ac-cording to the thinking of some scholars, began in1212 BC. One line read, "Israel is destroyed, its seedis not." This wasand still isthe oldest mention ofthe Israelites ever discovered. At dinner on the day heworked out the inscription, Petrie said to a compan-ion, "This stele will be better known in the world than

anything else I have found."

The tells of the Holy Land continued to be inten-sively scrutinized. In 1892 Frederick Bliss, an American

archaeologist who had been chosen to carry on Petrie's workat Tell el-Hesi, came upon a tablet that helped refine his pred-

ecessor's dating scheme. Discovered under a layer of ash that

marked a destruction of the city, the tablet was inscribed in aversion of cuneiform identical to that found at the site of Tell el-

Amarna in Egypt and securely dated to the 14th century BC. Not

only did this anchor the stratum in time, but it also gave proof of

Egyptian control of Canaanite city-states during the period.

As the 19th century drew to a close, the PEF appointed avoung Irish archaeologist named Robert Alexander Stewart Macal-ister to assist Bliss in the investigation ofother tells and establish their

links to the Bible. Although they worked together for a few years,their personalities clashed, and Bliss soon retired. Macalister went on

alone to direct the excavation of a mound identified as the city ofGezer, mentioned in Egyptian and Mesopotamian records as well asin the Bible. There he turned up the earliest known Hebrew inscrip-tiona list of agricultural activities written in verse form, probably

for easv memorization bv children, and composed in the 10th cen-tury BC, the time of Solomon.

With the passing years, the examination of tells in the HolyLand became more and more systematic, but the Bible remained thedriving force behind most of the searches. In 1908, backed by funds

from the New York banker and philanthropist Jacob SchifF, theAmerican archaeologist George Reisner and his assistant Clarence

Fisher began probing a mound thought to be the site ofan importantcity mentioned in the First Book of Kings. Here, supposedly, wasSamaria, capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. It had beenfounded in the ninth century BC by King Omri, who, according toScripture, had purchased the land from a man named Shemer "fortwo talents of silver." Like Petrie, Reisner had worked extensively in

33

Egypt and would do so again, achieving fame particularly for hisefforts at Giza. He brought with him to Palestine a skilled force ofsurveyors, draftsmen, photographers, and Egyptian foremen. LocalArabs did the heavy lifting, and they were driven hard. A stickler fordiscipline, Reisner issued a list of regulations requiring the laborersto come to work every day, obey orders without fail, always fill theirbaskets to the brim, and never fight or quarrel. "But ordinary worksongs were encouraged," said Reisner, "as they helped to pass awaythe tedium of the day."

Proceeding methodically down through the mound, the teamkept track of the location and nature of every scrap of material theycame upon. Their finds included many inscribed fragments ofpotterythat bore personal names and described an ancient trade in wine andoil. This documentation ofdaily life was certainly fascinating, but themost dramatic discovery had biblical connections: a layer of ashrecording Samaria's doom. The city was destroyed when the Assyr-ians overran the area in 722 BCa disaster that befell the Israelites,according to the Second Book of Kings, because "they obeyed notthe voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed his covenant, andall that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded, and would nothear them, nor do them."

M;odern Palestine was about to.undergo convulsions of itsown. The Ottoman Empire was on its last legs, and World War Iwould bring it to ruin. Allying themselves with Germany, the Ot-tomans soon found the conflict on their doorstep; in 1916, Britishforces invaded the Holy Land, gradually grinding down the oppo-sition and capturing Jerusalem in late 1917. Britain's foreign secre-tary, Lord Balfour, then set in motion a more protracted struggle forthe land by issuing a declaration supporting the establishment of "anational home for the Jewish people"the dream of the Zionistmovement, launched two decades earlier. All along, the British in-tended to maintain firm control in the region, but the passions un-leashed by the Balfour Declaration were too old and too fierce to bechecked. As early as 1918, Jews and Arabs were at each other'sthroats. Thirty years later, Britain would withdraw from the scene.

Despite the unrest, archaeological studies went on, more en-ergetically than ever. Some ofthe postwar projects were ofmarathonduration. From 1925 to 1939, for example, excavators labored in

34

A pair ofgold-foil figurinesfrom the ear-ly 15th century BC, found at Gezer, showthe influence ofSyria in their tall head-gear and collar necklaces (above). North-ward in Samaria, where Ahab is said inKings to have built an ivory palace, thesecarved lionsless than two inches high

werefound among 500 fragments of thesubstance considered as precious as gold.

&*Sk

The head ofan anthropoid claysarcophagus unearthed at thesite ofBeth-shan displays a

feather headdress typical ofPhilistine apparel. After the Israel-ite king Saul fell upon hissword, the Philistines hung hisbody front Beth-shan's walls. A

northern Palestine at a place called Megiddo, site of thestrategic biblical city of Armageddon. (It had beenfought over so often that the New Testament Revela-tion ofJohn appropriated its name in prophesying a warthat would end the world.) The diggers at Megiddopenetrated through 20 occupation layers stretching backto the fifth millennium BC. Over a 12-year span beginningin 192 1, archaeologists probed just as deeply into the past at the siteofthe biblical city ofBeth-shan. Here, as recounted in the First BookofSamuel, the first Israelite monarch, Saul, fell on his sword after hissons were killed in a battle against the Philistines. David avenged himby conquering the city.

Some of the most productive work was accomplished underthe auspices of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR),an institute formed in 1900 by more than 20 universities, colleges,and theological schools. In 1920, ASOR gained a new director inJerusalem, 29-year-old William Foxwell Albright, already a leadingscholar in studies of the ancient Near East. Born in Chile to Meth-odist missionary parents, Albright had grown up in dreadful circum-stances and was extremely nearsighted; but he was cast in the moldof such great forerunners as Edward Robinson and Flinders Petrie,possessing a towering intellect and an equally formidable gift fordetail. He could read many ancient languages, had acquired prodi-gious historical knowledge, knew the Bible through and through,and delighted in the intricacies and minutiae of scientific excavation.

Spending much of his time as a hands-on archaeologist atvarious digs throughout the region, Albright gready advanced Pe-trie's pottery-based dating method, working out a much more de-tailed classification scheme and solidifying the chronology. He gaveup his post as director of the Jerusalem School ofASOR in 1936, butfor three decades more he continued to exert enormous influence asa teacher and writer. Like almost all of those who had preceded him,he never lost sight ofthe biblical dimension in his researches. And hefelt confident that archaeology had served the Scriptures well. TheBible, he wrote, "no longer appears as an absolutely isolated mon-ument of the past, as a phenomenon without relation to its environ-ment. It now takes its place in a context which is becoming betterknown every year." Even more to the good, as far as Albright wasconcerned, "nothing tending to disturb the religious faith ofJew orChristian has been discovered."

r>4

36

From Lachish, during the Babyloniandestruction of the kingdom ofJudah in587 BC, a military officer writes to hiscommander: "May Tahweh cause my lordto hear news ofpeace, even now, evennow" (inset). After the first letters writ-ten on potsherds were discovered in 1934,children were sent to sift through the dirtat Lachishfor otherfragments.

The historicity ofthe biblical narrative received another boostin the 1930s when the British archaeologist John Starkey correctedPetrie's error made four decades earlier and found the true site ofLachish, the scene ofmany biblical struggles beginning in the days ofJoshua. Even more dramatically than at Samaria, a layer ofash yieldedeloquent testimony to the city's fate. Among the ashes Starkey found21 pottery fragments bearing Hebrew inscriptions that turned out tobe letters written to a Judean officer by a subordinate as Babylonianwarriors led by the emperor Nebuchadnezzar stormed across the landin 588 BC. The letters mostly dealt with military matters, but thewords resonated with a sense of dread that the southern kingdom ofJudah was about to fall. "And let (my lord) know," the soldier wrote,"that we are watching over the beacon of Lachish, according to thesignals which my lord hath given, for Azekah is not to be seen." Thecity ofAzekah had just been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, who nextrazed Lachish, then besieged Jerusalem. That city fell in the summerof586 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar brutally punished its resistance. Theking of Judah was blinded, his sons were executed, the Templeconstructed by Solomon was demolished, and much of the popula-tion was sent into exile in Babylonia.

More discoveries lay ahead, although not for Starkey, whowas murdered by Arab bandits in 1938. In the years after the estab-lishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, a Jewish perspectivefinally rose to prominence, after having been given short shrift at bestduring the years of Arab and then British rule. For Israeli archaeol-ogists, as well as for those from other nations, the Bible remained apotent resource. In fact, archaeologists have estimated that the HolyLand contains about 6,000 sites that relate in some way to the peopleand places and events ofScripture. Even so, many modern scholars

applying what is known as the New Archaeologyhave becomemore interested in finding out what they can about ancient HolyLand cultures with little or no reference to the Bible, relying as muchas possible solely on the tales told by artifacts. But the age-old storiesoffaith still hold their place for many in the field. In the words oftheeminent American archaeologist William Dever, a century and a halfof exploration "has for all time demolished the notion that the Bible

is pure mythology. The Bible is about real, flesh-and-blood people,in a particular time and place, whose actual historical experience ledthem irrevocably to a vision ofthe human condition and promise thattranscended anything yet conceived in antiquity."

37

A PAINTER'S PILGRIMAGE

Seeking spiritual fulfillment, historical enlighten-ment, and even holy vengeance, for centuries un-told millions have ventured to the heavenly cres-

cent bordering the Mediterranean to walk the lands ofthe Bible. But when, in August 1838, the ScotsmanDavid Roberts embarked on his sojourn into the dra-matic regional backdrop of so much of the Old andNew Testaments, he was fueled solely by a passion forartistic opportunity. Having already toured the cities ofEurope to draw their breathtaking edifices, the rising42

-year-old painter would find this journey to be themost rewarding of his career.

Roberts headed northward in February 1839 fromEgypt, where he had committed the mighty monu-ments of the pharaohs to his sketchbook. Despite apanoply ofdiscomforts, his enthusiasm ofpurpose nev-er waned as he generated drawing after drawingsome300 in allincluding biblical landmarks from Sinai toCanaan to Upper Galilee. In conveying the beauty and

glory of the landscapes, he often romanticized or ide-alized them; however, Roberts did render architecturalstructures with an honesty that is praised by scholarstoday. His illustration of Mount Sinai (right)whereExodus tells of Moses receiving the Ten Command-mentsembellishes the soaring height of the peakwhile faithfully detailing the Convent of Saint Cather-ine, a sixth-century AD monastery housing 3,000 bib-lical manuscripts.

After his return to London in July of the same year,Roberts converted the delicate sketches into watercol-ors and negotiated their publication. Between 1842and 1849, the works, reproduced as lithographs, werepublished in five volumes tided The Holy Land, whichfeatured the above drawing of the artist, alongside adedication to Queen Victoria. A sampling of the im-ageswhich earned Roberts world reknownappearson the following pages, a small visual pilgrimage trac-ing the artist's route through antiquity.

38

1:

, sn

Named in the Old Testament as oneofCanaan's earliest cities, and laterto become the greatest of the FiveCities of the Philistines, Gazacrowns a hill near the Mediterra-nean coast, its 1839 skyline punctu-ated by mosques. Here, betrayed byDelilah, Samson, in a last display ofmight, pulled the Temple ofDagondown onto his captors' heads, crying,"Let me die with the Philistines."

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"The heights are wild," wrote Rob-erts of the wilderness ofEn Gedi, onthe western shore of the Dead Sea.David sought refugefrom the perse-cution ofSaul among the steep hillsand ravines, which here harbor amonastery named after Saint Saba,a fifth-century Christian monk.

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Prominent in the holy cityofJerusalem is the seventh-centuryAD Mosque ofOmar, or Dome of the Rock(background, right), builtatop the remnants ofSol-

omon's and Herod's tem-ples. It marks the place onMount Moriah whereAbraham brought his sonIsaac to sacrifice to God,as well as the spot where,

Muslims believe, Muham-mad ascended to heaven.In theforeground, pilgrims

are shown praying in thedirection of the Church ofthe Holy Sepulcher, thoughtto be the burial site ofJesus.

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Behind Arabs on horseback, the ru-ins ofancient Samaria, renamedSebaste by Herod in the first centuryBC, spread across a basin in the fer-tile country 40 miles north ofJerusa-lem. Founded around 900 BC byOmri, thefather ofAhab, Samariawas the capital of the northern king-dom ofIsrael until 722 BC. Most ofthe remains are vestiges of the manymonuments Herod built throughoutthe land that he dedicated to theemperor Augustus Caesar.

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T W O

CITIESOF THE

PROMISEDLAND

Two startlingly wellpreserved, relics of theCanaanite city-stateofHazor, a 3,200-year-old clay maskand above it the twohalves ofa potter'swheel rest exactly as

found by archaeolo-gists in the 1950s.

U nder a remorseless sun, the Is-raeli excavators steadily cut their trench deeper into the earthen

rampart guarding the western flank of the ancient city of Hazor,about 10 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. They had been at workfor a number of days and so far had found nothing in this section ofthe huge site but beaten earth and fieldstones. Then, digging downfarther, they came upon something altogether different: a tiny stat-uescarcely more than 15 inches tallofa seated, headless man. Theleader of the excavation, Yigael Yadin, immediately directed that thetrench be enlarged in the area around the statue. Proceeding withbarelv contained excitement, the team members soon uncovered asmall basalt slab that had apparently served as an altar, and behindit a set of upright pillars, all made to the same reduced scale; and justa little deeper, near the base of the statue, lay the detached head,which had clearly been broken off by a single sharp blow.

It was obvious right away that what they had found was somesort ofminiature temple, believed to be a shrine to the Canaanite godBaal Hamman. Looking at the decapitated statue, Yadin was surethat the sanctuary had been deliberately defiled. And he had fewdoubts as to the perpetrators. Deeply familiar with his own HebrewBible, he recalled the exhortation to faithful Jews in the 12th chapter

ofDeuteronomy: "Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the

49

nations which ve shall possess served their gods, upon the highmountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And veshall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn theirgroves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of theirgods, and destroy the names of them out of that place."

Yadin had begun excavating the ruined city only a few monthsbefore, in August of 1955, a hard time for his recently reborn nation.The site was relatively close to Israel's Lebanese bordernot exactlythe securest area of the beleaguered Jewish state. From the nearbyGolan Heights, Syrian artillery regularly sought targets among thecollective farming communities, or kibbutzes, in the area, and settlersstood armed guard at night against infiltrators from the north.

More than 3,000 years earlier, Hazor had known similaralerts, but in that epoch the threat had apparently come from thesouth, as the Israelites advanced to lay claim to their Promised Land.Even then the city was ancient: Egyptian texts and Mesopotamianarchives dating from before the 18th century BC make mention of itskings. But the literary references that most interested Yadin camefrom the Bible. The Book of Joshua opens just after the death ofMoses, when the Lord commands Joshua to "go over this Jordan,thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even

Furnishings ofa small religious sanctu-ary at Hazor include these nine uprightstone steles as well as a deftly carved lion,a rough basalt offertory slab, and a seat-edfigure ofa deity whose head had beenneatly lopped off, perhaps by conqueringIsraelites about 1250 BC. On the centerstele a pair ofcarved hands rise in sup-plication toward the crescent-and-disksymbol ofwhat may be the Canaanitemoon god or Asherah, the mothergoddess.

to the children of Israel." The text goes on to detail a string oftriumphs over Canaanite strongholds, culminating with the victoryover Hazor: "And Joshua at that time turned back, and took Hazor,and smote the king thereof with the sword: for Hazor beforetimewas the head of all those kingdoms. And they smote all the souls thatwere therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them:there was not any left to breathe: and he burnt Hazor with fire."

Yadin himself was well qualified to reconstruct such an on-slaught, assuming that it had indeed occurred. Like Joshua in the13th centurv BC, he had been a soldier of Israel, and a high-rankingone at that. The son of a distinguished archaeologist and trained inthe same discipline, Yadin had set aside his academic interests in the1930s to join the Jewish underground military force in Palestineknown as Haganah, rising to become its chiefofoperations and laterchief of staff of the fledgling Israeli army during the war of inde-pendence in 1948. Archaeology might seem a useless apprenticeshipfor a general, but his knowledge of forgotten Roman roads turnedout to be a great advantage to an army seeking secure supply routes

in the face of numerically superior enemies. On one occasion, in asurprise night attack against an Egyptian unit, he ordered his troopsalong an ancient roadway that had been lost beneath sand dunes foralmost 2,000 years; the Israeli soldiers appeared from an entirelyunexpected direction, and the startled Egyptian commander wascaptured still wearing his pajamas.

Later in life, Yadin would serve as Israel's deputy prime min-ister under Menachem Begin; but a few years after the war, he wasready to apply his formidable organizational skills to his original

calling. He chose Hazor as the subject of his country's first majorexcavation partlv because little was then known of either Canaaniteor Israelite settlements in Galilee, and partly because of the manyreferences to the city in ancient sources. He recognized that the site

might offer a particularly promising opportunity to comparedocumentary evidence with what the spade could uncover.And he would bring to the research a new and entirely Israeliattitude. Like William Albright and earlier biblical archaeolo-

gists who had sought to verify the great stories of faith bydigging, Yadin and his colleagues took the Bible very seriouslyindeed. But for the Israelis, there was a secular as well as a sacred

dimension to the Scriptures. Even among those who did notcount themselves believers, the Bible was an essential and irre-

51

placeable document, the repository of their national his-tory and the foundation of their national pride.

By the 20th century, all that was left: of biblicalHazor was a tell, a bottle-shaped mound of about 25acres. Below the tell stretched an enclosure eight times aslarge, surrounded bv earthen ramparts and a moat. Abrief, probing dig in the 1920s had identified the moundas Hazor. The enormous and apparently empty enclo-sure, howeyer, was another matter, and it had been puz-zling Yadin ever since he first reconnoitered the site dur-ing military maneuvers in the late 1940s. Most scholarsbeliexed that the yast rectangle was some kind of fortified encamp-ment; early inyestigators had even jokingly suggested that it was aparking lot for chariots. But the colossal labor that must haye beeninyolyed to raise the massiye earthworks seemed to belie both seriousand idle speculation. Although his main effort was deyoted to theHazor tell, when Yadin began his excavation in the summer of 1955he assigned a backup team to begin trenching the 200-acre "camp."

Initial results there were disappointing: The whole area hadbeen under the plow for centuries, and the earth seemed to haye nosecrets left to reveal. But as the spades and trowels of Yadin's vol-unteers probed deeper, they soon encountered the walls and floors ofan extensive cluster of dwellings. In addition to the tell above, thegreat enclosure now also appeared to have been a city. In fact, it hadbeen several cities, each built upon the ruins of its predecessor.

The discovery proved that Hazor had been much larger thanpreviously imagined. Using a then-standard formula for calculatingthe number of inhabitants in a given area, Yadin figured that thepopulation had perhaps been as high as 40,000. (A more recentformula, based on an average of 100 inhabitants per acre, suggests astill-impressive total of about 20,000.) Potsherds indicated that thelatest occupation ofwhat the team was now calling the lower city hadbeen near the middle of the 13th century BC, and other evidenceshowed that the end had not been peaceful. Heat-cracked stones,scorch marks, and a layer of ashes made it plain that the city had diedby fire, while floors scattered with intact pottery testified that theinhabitants had left in a hurry, if they had survived at all.

For Yadin, there could be no doubt as to the agency of de-struction. The 1 1th chapter of Joshua told the story: "But as for thecities that stood still in their strength, Israel burned none of them,

Israeli soldier and archaeologist YigaelYadin prepares to photograph part of hislarge pioneering dig at Hazor. In fiveyears of excavations, Yadin uncovered nofewer than 20 layers of buildings, indi-cating that the city dated back to theChalcolithic period and was built andrebuilt over a period of3,000 years.

Hazor's ruined walls crown a rocky,steep-sided knob that looks down on a fer-

tile, well-watered valley. Strongly

fortified, rich with foodstuffs, and strate-gically located on the main north-southcaravan route between Danutscus and

the south, Hazor was the most importantcity in the northern hills of Galilee

during the heyday of Canaanite power.

52

53

save Hazor only; that did Joshua burn." Confirmation seemed tofollow when Yadin's main excavation force reached a comparableoccupation layer in the tell itselfthe upper city. Once more, therewere unmistakable signs of fire and total destruction, sometime be-tween 1250 and 1230 BC.

Unlike the lower citv, however, the upper city- had been re-built, and because of the upside-down, time-reversed nature of ar-chaeology, the excavators alreadv knew something about these lateryears. For a centurv or more after the devastation, the citVs ruins

were home to a seminomadic group)

probablv the early Israelitesthemselveswho constructed little or nothing of consequence.About 950 BC, a fortified settlement was erected on part of theancient tell, with walls and gates fashioned bv King Solomon's ma-sons; by the time of King Ahab, in the ninth centurv BC, buildingscovered the old upper city. In subsequent decades these too weredestroved, first bv an earthquake and then bv the invading Assvriansin 732 BC. Thereafter, although archaeologists found scattered re-mains, Hazor was never again revived as a full-fledged citv.

Yadin's work had advanced thecause of those such as Albright,who tended to believe in the biblical version of the Israelites' arrivalin Canaan. For the Exodus from Egypt, there was not likelv ever tobe archaeological verification: Wandering nomads do not usuallyleave traces of themselves that endure for 3,000 vears. But after hisdiscoveries at Hazor, Yadin was convinced that the conquest itselfhad taken place essentiallv as narrated in the Book of Joshua.

However, there was other, opposing, evidence, and it camefrom the Bible itself. No one disagreed that toward the end of the13th century BC, the Israelites had established themselves as a sig-nificant presence in Canaan. It was a time of transition, from the eraknown to archaeologists as the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age(when increasing numbers of peoples were learning to smelt iron oreand turn it into much sturdier weapons and implements). The Me-renptah stele (pages 32-33), which specifically mentions a peoplecalled Israel, was dated to the same period. But the stele explained

neither who the Israelites were nor how thev had come to promi-nence. For that information, the Bible remained the prime source

a

source that was ambiguous, if not downright contradictorv.From the Book of Exodus up to the end of Joshua, the ac-

54

NEW METHODS FOR OLD SITES:A REVOLUTION IN THE FIELDArchaeologists once had to relyon tape measures and other fair-ly simple devices to survey a siteand choose the most promisingspot to excavate. But todayinthe Holy Land, as elsewhere inthe worldthey have access toan astonishing array of tech-nologies, including lasers, ad-vanced computer-imaging sys-tems, and atomic energy. Theprecision of their new tools hascreated a time-and-resource-saving revolution.

This became evident in asurvey at Caesarea Maritima,the Mediterranean port citybuilt by King Herod. Here ar-chaeologists employed a theod-olite, a traditional surveyinginstrument that gauges eleva-tions and angles. But this was atheodolite with a difference: Ithad an infrared laser, as well as acalculator that determined theangle and distance traveled bythe beam. Thus equipped, it

A map generated bycomputer shows sec-

tions ofa fortresswall around a the-

ater (purple) surveyedinaccurately in the

past (yellow, right),

with the position cor-rected (red dots) by

laser theodolite (inset).

was able to take into account

the curvature of the earth, baro-metric pressure, and tempera-ture, and it was accurate towithin Vi,ooo of a foot.

The archaeologists wereintrigued by surviving sectionsof a sixth-century AD fortresswall. Thev calculated that if theycould trace its former coursearound a certain theater, theycould tell how large an area ithad enclosed. Taking only a

couple of hours for what nor-mally would have required days,the laser theodolite revealed

that two portions of the walls,previously thought to be out ofalignment on the basis of aninaccurate earlier survey donewith an old-fashioned theodo-lite, in fact lined up and be-longed together. This helpedthe excavators to understandand project the shape and de-sign of the fortress itself.

MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLECountless hours have been spentby archaeologists pondering thebest spot to dig, and many morehave been wasted in fruitiess ex-cavation. To increase accuracy,two wonders ofmodern technol-ogy are now being employed:One relies on electromagnetismto reveal underground features,and the other offers a view ofwhat a site probably looked likein past eras.

Put to work in the HolyLand, the first of these deviceshelped find Ammonite fortifica-tions that may have beenbreached by none other thanKing David. The site, Tell el-Umeiri, on the northern fringe ofJordan's Madaba Plains, was as-sumed to be Abel-Keramim, anAmmonite city mentioned in theBible. Seeking its most promis-

ing subsurface locale, archaeolo-gists turned to GPR, or ground-penetrating radar. As it is pulledacross the ground, this sledlikedevice sends continuous electro-magnetic impulses into the earth.Bouncing back from obstruc-tions, these impulses reveal thepresence of walls oftombs andtunnels, among other things. TheGPR at Tell el-Umeiri locateddefense walls destroyed about1000 BC, the time of David'smilitary campaigns.

Meanwhile, at another Jorda-nian locale, Wadi Hasa, archaeol-ogists were searching for ancientsettlements. They entered thedetails of their finds and also theresults of an earlier survey into acomputer using Geographic In-formation Systems (GIS), the firstsoftware able to map spatial data

in three dimensions. When fedinformation about water sources,land contours, soils, animals, andvegetation, GIS can provide apicture of life in various geologic,prehistoric, and historical peri-ods. The computer achieves thisby translating the data into a se-ries of environmental images thatprogress through the millenniashowing ecological changes

from forest, say, to grassland andthen desert. Since human beingschoose habitats on the basis ofnatural resources, the archaeolo-

gists were able to use these

glimpses ofWadi Hasa's past topredict where early settlementswere most likely to have sprungup, such as at sites that had morewater than others. Thus theycould begin their digging with ahigh probability of success.

56

A scientist pulls aground~penetrating ra-dar (GPR) unit across the earth at Tell el-Umeiri in Jordan (inset). Meanwhile, acomputer stationed nearby continuously re-ceives, enhances, and displays the instru-ments signals, shown in a printout segment(left), in which gray signifies the presence ofburied stone. After absorbing this data, thecomputergenerates an image like the one atright, showing buried walls in patterns ofred, yellow, and light blue.

_

Geographic Information Systems produced the maps opposite,which show a region ofJordan's Wadi Hasa reconstructedfrom land contour dataslope, elevation, and distance. Theimage on thefar left expresses elevation through color: Blackrepresents the lowest areas, dark green the highest. A dryriverbed snakesfrom upper left to lower right. The same areais seen in the adjacent image (left); this time the computerhasgenerated a three-dimensional contour map.

A photo of the excavation at Tell el-Umeiri (above) shows thesection ofa double casemate wall (area adjacent to inset) foundon the western slope at the location confirmed by GPR. Belowit is a steep earthwork rampart, and, at the bottom, a moat.This defense system was demolished about 1000 BC, when theAmmonites controlled the city. The battle between King Da-vid and the Ammonites recorded in 2 Sam. 10-12 may havebeen the very event in which this fortification was destroyed.

57

FINGERPRINTING CLAY AND POTSLike people, artifacts often startout in one place and end up inanother. Archaeologists, seek-ing insights into trade and mi-gration, have long wanted to beable to identify the sources ofpots originating at sites other

than where thev were found.Nowwith the help of a nucle-ar reactor

precise knowledgeof these origins is available.

A process called neutronactivation analysis (NAA) en-ables scientists to examine the

LANTHANUM

TEL DAN I

TEL DAN II

Q & M REF.

TEL DAN REF.

IRON

TEL DAN I

Q & M REF.

TEL DAN REF.

telltale composition of clay. Ailclays are made up of dozens ofelements, and with NAA, theconcentration of 20 to 30 ofthese elements can be measured.Earth from different locationsvaries slightly in the propor-

tions of the elements it contains,and these minute differencesprovide clay from any givenarea with an identification akinto a fingerprint.

The process begins with thepulverization of a tiny chipfrom a piece of pottery. Thepowder is then irradiated byneutrons in a nuclear reactor,

causing the elements present toemit gamma rays. These emis-

sions enable the scientists tofigure out the composi-

tion of the pottery.&?%' They then compare

its makeup to that ofpottery taken from

other locales.

The methodproved its worth at TelDan, in northern Israel,where late Bronze Age

remains of the biblical tribe ofDan have been studied. Amongthese were storage jars, less thana third ofwhich NAA showed tohave been produced at the site.The oldest jars were in factmade from clay at the tell, bythe Danites themselves. Butthey were the narrow-mouthed,collared-rim type associatedwith southern Israel. This find-ing supports the biblical conten-tion that the Danites movedfrom the south to the north.

The remaining pottery camefrom several different locales.Using NAA

,the archaeologists

could pinpoint locations forsome of these, such as a largerounded vase adorned withchariots that they believed was

the work of a particular Greekpainter whose pieces had turnedup in Israel, Turkey, andGreece. By comparing its com-position with pottery samplesfound near both Mycenae andTiryns, in Greece, they were

indeed able to say that the vaseori