Gezer Excavations Uncover Previously Unknown Canaanite City
Archaeologists discover a Late Bronze Age occupation layer destroyed by fire
Beneath these Iron Age walls at Gezer lies a recently discovered Late Bronze Age city that had been destroyed by fire. Photo courtesy Samuel Wolff.
Archaeologists excavating the famous ancient city of Gezer in Israel discovered a new occupation layer constituting a previously unknown Late Bronze Age city at the site. During the summer 2013 excavation season, the Tel Gezer team, led by codirectors Dr. Steven Ortiz of the Tandy Institute for Archaeology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Dr. Samuel Wolff of the Israel Antiquities Authority, found pottery vessels, a cache of cylinder seals and an Egyptian scarab with a cartouche of Amenhotep III. The finds demonstrate that the residents of this 14th-century B.C.E. city were Canaanites with strong ties with Egypt.
During the Late Bronze Age, Gezer and other cities in the southern Levant were under the reign of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty. Hebrew University professor Tallay Ornan told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Gezer’s destruction by conflagration in the Late Bronze Age “either represents an Egyptian campaign to subdue Gezer, or local Canaanites attacking an Egyptian stronghold at Gezer.”
Sift through the archaeology and history of ancient Israel and get a view of its Biblically-significant sites through an archaeologist’s lens in the free eBook Israel: An Archaeological Journey.
According to the Bible, Gezer, which had been captured by an Egyptian pharaoh, was given to the Israelite king Solomon as a wedding gift when he married the pharaoh’s daughter (1 Kings 9:15–16). In the Biblical account, Solomon was said to have built walls around Gezer as well as Jerusalem, Hazor and Megiddo. A century of excavations conducted at Gezer constitute one of the largest excavation projects in Israel, one that is critical to developing an understanding of the nature and chronology of the United Monarchy.
Read more about the recently discovered Late Bronze Age city at Gezer in Haaretz
Visit the excavation’s website.
Learn more about Gezer in Bible History Daily:
The Solomonic Gate at Gezer
Tel Gezer Water System Built by Canaanites?
The “High Place” at Tel Gezer
Cave Found at Bottom of Gezer Water Tunnel
Bilingual Boundary Stone Discovered at Tel Gezer
What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription? A Reply to Christopher Rollston
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At 1908 R.A.S. Macalister of the Palestine Exploration Fund was excavating the ancient Canaanite city of Gezer and discovered Gezer calendar .
according to my knowledge, at that time, the Othman empire made a rule in which every archeological excavating should be covered and place should looked as it was before – do you know other places in Israel or others under the Othman empire where such took place ?
[…] Gezer: Gezer Excavations Uncover Previously Unknown Canaanite City […]
GEZER
Perhaps the most famous find to come out of Tell Jezer, however, is the Gezer “calendar,” a plaque containing what appear to be a schoolboy’s memory exercises. It has proved to be of value by informing modern researchers of ancient Israel’s agricultural seasons and providing a glimpse into the Hebrew script and language of Solomon’s day.
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200001673#h=6:558-6:897
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/s/r1/lp-e?q=Gezer&p=par
I disagree. Look at that http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/22/142805/egypts-famous-canal-city-symbolizes.html
William, I think yours is a good question, but there are many who based on their presuppositions dismiss such a possibility out of hand, believing either that the Late Bronze Age is too early for Joshua and the Conquest, or that there wasn’t a Joshua or Conquest at all! …But wisdom is justified of her children.
Could this be a city destroyed by Joshua?