The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts (13 page)

stayed in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. There has been no day like it before or since, when the L
ORD
hearkened to the voice of a man; for the L
ORD
fought for Israel.” (J
OSHUA
10
:
13
–
14
)

The fleeing kings were finally captured and put to the sword. Joshua then continued the campaign and destroyed the Canaanite cities of the southern parts of the country, completely conquering that region for the people of Israel.

The final act took place in the north. A coalition of Canaanite kings headed by Jabin of Hazor, “a great host, in number like the sand that is upon the seashore, with very many horses and chariots” (Joshua
11
:
4
), met the Israelites in an open field battle in Galilee that ended with the complete destruction of the Canaanite forces. Hazor, the most important city in Canaan, “the head of all those kingdoms” (Joshua
11
:
10
), was conquered and set ablaze. Thus with this victory the entire promised land, from the southern desert to the snowy peak of Mount Hermon in the north, came into Israelite possession. The divine promise had indeed been fulfilled. The Canaanite forces were annihilated and the children of Israel settled down to divide the land among the tribes as their God-given inheritance.

As with the Exodus story, archaeology has uncovered a dramatic discrepancy between the Bible and the situation within Canaan at the suggested date of the conquest, between
1230
and
1220
BCE
.
1
Although we know that a group named Israel was already present somewhere in Canaan by
1207
BCE
, the evidence on the general political and military landscape of Canaan suggests that a lightning invasion by this group would have been impractical and unlikely in the extreme.

There is abundant evidence from Egyptian texts of the Late Bronze Age (
1550
–
1150
BCE
) on affairs in Canaan, in the form of diplomatic letters, lists of conquered cities, scenes of sieges engraved on the walls of temples in Egypt, annals of Egyptian kings, literary works, and hymns. Perhaps the most detailed source of information on Canaan in this period is provided by the Tell el-Amarna letters. These texts represent part of the diplomatic and military correspondence of the powerful pharaohs Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt in the fourteenth century
BCE
.

The almost four hundred Amarna tablets, now scattered in museums around the world, include letters sent to Egypt by rulers of powerful states, such as the Hittites of Anatolia and the rulers of Babylonia. But most were sent from rulers of city-states in Canaan, who were vassals of Egypt during this period. The senders included the rulers of Canaanite cities that would later become famous in the Bible, such as Jerusalem, Shechem, Megiddo, Hazor, and Lachish. Most important, the Amarna letters reveal that Canaan was an Egyptian province, closely controlled by Egyptian administration. The provincial capital was located in Gaza, but Egyptian garrisons were stationed at key sites throughout the country, like Beth-shean south of the Sea of Galilee and at the port of Jaffa (today part of the city of Tel Aviv).

In the Bible, no Egyptians are reported outside the borders of Egypt and none are mentioned in any of the battles within Canaan. Yet contemporary texts and archaeological finds indicate that they managed and carefully watched over the affairs of the country. The princes of the Canaanite cities (described in the book of Joshua as powerful enemies) were, in actuality, pathetically weak. Excavations have shown that the cities of Canaan in this period were not regular cities of the kind we know in later history. They were mainly administrative strongholds for the elite, housing the king, his family, and his small entourage of bureaucrats, with the peasants living scattered throughout the surrounding countryside in small villages. The typical city had only a palace, a temple compound, and a few other public edifices—probably residences for high officials, inns, and other administrative buildings. But there were no city walls. The formidable Canaanite cities described in the conquest narrative were not protected by fortifications!

The reason apparently was that with Egypt firmly in charge of security for the entire province, there was no need of massive defensive walls. There
was also an economic reason for the lack of fortifications at most Canaanite cities. With the imposition of heavy tribute to be paid to the pharaoh by the princes of Canaan, local petty rulers may not have had the means (or the authority) to engage in monumental public works. In fact, Late Bronze Age Canaan was a mere shadow of the prosperous society that it had been several centuries before, in the Middle Bronze Age. Many cities were abandoned and others shrank in size, and the total settled population could not have greatly exceeded one hundred thousand. One demonstration of the small scale of this society is the request in one of the Amarna letters sent by the king of Jerusalem to the pharaoh that he supply fifty men “to protect the land.” The miniscule scale of the forces of the period is confirmed by another letter, sent by the king of Megiddo, who asks the pharaoh to send a hundred soldiers to guard the city from an attack by his aggressive neighbor, the king of Shechem.

The Amarna letters describe the situation during the fourteenth century
BCE
, a hundred or so years before the supposed date of the Israelite conquest. We have no such detailed source of information about affairs in Canaan during the thirteenth century
BCE
. Yet Pharaoh Ramesses II, who ruled during most of the thirteenth century, was not likely to have slackened his military oversight of Canaan. He was a strong king, possibly the strongest of all pharaohs, who was deeply interested in foreign affairs.

Other indications—both literary and archaeological—seem to show that in the thirteenth century
BCE
, the grip of Egypt on Canaan was stronger than ever. At times of reported unrest, the Egyptian army would cross the Sinai desert along the Mediterranean coast and march against rebel cities or troublesome people. As mentioned, the military route in northern Sinai was protected by a series of forts and supplied with freshwater sources. After crossing the desert, the Egyptian army could easily rout any rebel forces and impose its will on the local population.

Archaeology has uncovered dramatic evidence of the extent of Egyptian presence in Canaan itself. An Egyptian stronghold was excavated at the site of Beth-shean to the south of the Sea of Galilee in the
1920
s. Its various structures and courtyards contained statues and inscribed hieroglyphic monuments from the days of the pharaohs Seti I (
1294
–
1279
BCE
), Ramesses II (
1279
–
1213
BCE
), and Ramesses III (
1184
–
1153
BCE
). The ancient Canaanite city of Megiddo disclosed evidence for strong Egyptian influence
as late as the days of Ramesses VI, who ruled toward the end of the twelfth century
BCE
. This was long after the supposed conquest of Canaan by the Israelites.

It is highly unlikely that the Egyptian garrisons throughout the country would have remained on the sidelines as a group of refugees (from Egypt) wreaked havoc throughout the province of Canaan. And it is inconceivable that the destruction of so many loyal vassal cities by the invaders would have left absolutely no trace in the extensive records of the Egyptian empire. The only independent mention of the name Israel in this period—the victory stele of Merneptah—announces only that this otherwise obscure people, living in Canaan, had suffered a crushing defeat. Something clearly doesn’t add up when the biblical account, the archaeological evidence, and the Egyptian records are placed side by side.

There are, however—or at least there have been—counterarguments to the Egyptian evidence. First of all, it was clear that the book of Joshua was not a completely imaginary fable. It accurately reflected the geography of the land of Israel. The course of Joshua’s campaign followed a logical geographical order. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a number of scholars selected sites that could be confidently identified with the progress of the Israelite conquest and began digging—to see if any evidence of fallen walls, burnt beams, and wholesale destruction could be found.

The most prominent figure in this quest was again the American scholar William Foxwell Albright, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a brilliant linguist, historian, biblical scholar, and field archaeologist, who had argued that the patriarchs were authentic historical personalities. On the basis of his reading of the archaeological evidence he believed that Joshua’s exploits were also historical. Albright’s most famous excavation took place between
1926
and
1932
at a mound named Tell Beit Mirsim, located in the foothills southwest of Hebron (
Figure 9
, p.74). On the basis of its geographical position, Albright identified the site with the Canaanite city of Debir, whose conquest by the Israelites is mentioned in three different stories in the Bible: twice in the book of Joshua (
10
:
38
–
39
;
15
:
15
–
19
) and once in the book of Judges (
1
:
11
–
15
). Though the identification was later
challenged, the archaeological finds from Tell Beit Mirsim remain central to the historical debate.

The excavations revealed a small and relatively poor unwalled town that was destroyed by a sudden catastrophic fire toward the end of the Late Bronze Age—according to Albright, around
1230
BCE
. Over the ashes of this burnt city, Albright perceived what he thought was evidence for the arrival of new settlers: a scattering of coarse pottery that he knew from other sites in the highlands and that he intuitively identified as Israelite. The evidence seemed proof of the historicity of the biblical narratives: a Canaanite city (mentioned in the Bible) was set ablaze by the Israelites, who then inherited it and settled on its ruins.

Indeed, Albright’s results seemed to be reproduced everywhere. At the ancient mound at the Arab village of Beitin, identified with the biblical city of Bethel, about nine miles north of Jerusalem, excavations revealed a Canaanite city inhabited in the Late Bronze. It was destroyed by fire in the late thirteenth century
BCE
and apparently resettled by a different group in the Iron Age I. It matched the biblical story of the Canaanite city of Luz, which was taken by members of the house of Joseph, who resettled it and changed its name to Bethel (Judges
1
:
22
–
26
). Farther south, at the imposing mound of Tell ed-Duweir in the Shephelah, a site identified with the famous biblical city of Lachish (Joshua
10
:
31
–
32
), a British expedition in the
1930
s uncovered remains of yet another great Late Bronze Age city destroyed in a conflagration.

The discoveries continued in the
1950
s, after the establishment of the state of Israel, when Israeli archaeologists began to concentrate on the question of the conquest of the promised land. In
1956
, the leading Israeli archaeologist, Yigael Yadin, initiated excavations at the ancient city of Hazor, described in the book of Joshua as “the head of all those kingdoms” (Joshua
11
:
10
). It was an ideal testing ground for the archaeological search for the Israelite conquest. Hazor, identified with the huge mound of Tell el-Waqqas in upper Galilee on the basis of its location and prominence, proved to be the largest city of Late Bronze Canaan. It covered an area of eighty hectares, eight times larger than such prominent sites as Megiddo and Lachish.

Yadin discovered that although Hazor’s peak of prosperity occurred in the Middle Bronze Age (
2000
–
1550
BCE
), it continued to prosper well into
the Late Bronze Age. It was a fabulous city, with temples and a huge palace. That palace’s opulence in architectural style, statuary, and other small finds—already hinted at by the results of Yadin’s excavations—has since been uncovered in the
1990
s in the course of the renewed excavations at Hazor led by Amnon Ben-Tor of the Hebrew University. A number of cuneiform tablets hint at the presence of a royal archive. One of the recovered tablets bears the royal name Ibni, and a king of Hazor named Ibni-Addu is mentioned in the Mari archive. Though both date to much earlier times (in the Middle Bronze Age), they may relate etymologically to the name of Jabin, the king of Hazor mentioned in the Bible. The suggestive recurrence of this name may indicate that it was a dynastic name associated with Hazor for centuries—and remembered long after the city was destroyed.

The Hazor excavations showed that the splendor of the Canaanite city, like that of so many other cities in various parts of the country, came to a brutal end in the thirteenth century
BCE
. Suddenly, with no apparent alarm and little sign of decline, Hazor was attacked, destroyed, and set ablaze. The mud brick walls of the palace, which were baked red from the terrible conflagration, are still preserved today to a height of six feet. After a period of abandonment, a poor settlement was established in one part of the vast ruins. Its pottery resembled that of the early Israelite settlements in the central hill country to the south.

Thus, for much of the twentieth century, archaeology seemed to confirm the Bible’s account. Unfortunately the scholarly consensus would eventually dissolve.