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85-628: Lachish was first mentioned in the Amarna letters . In the Book of Joshua , Lachish is cited as one of the cities conquered by the Israelites for joining the league against the Gibeonites ( Joshua 10:31–33 ). The territory was later assigned to the tribe of Judah according to Joshua 15 :39 and became part of the united Kingdom of Israel . Following the kingdom's partition, Lachish emerged as one of

170-474: A Neolithic (New Stone Age). The following Chalcolithic period includes the first evidence of metallurgy with copper making its appearance. However, as stone technology remains prevalent, the name, Chalcolithic (Copper/Stone) age combines the two. Bronze is used for the following periods, but is actually a misnomer for a good part of that time. An Early Bronze Age is divided into three major phases, Early Bronze I, II and III, but copper and not bronze

255-486: A complaint by Tushratta to Akhenaten about the situation: I...asked your father Mimmureya [i.e., Amenhotep III] for statues of solid cast gold, ... and your father said, 'Don't talk of giving statues just of solid cast gold. I will give you ones made also of lapis lazuli. I will give you too, along with the statues, much additional gold and [other] goods beyond measure.' Every one of my messengers that were staying in Egypt saw

340-582: A cylinder seal) was found. It was inscribed with "Amarna Cuneiform" and held a letter which appears to be part of the Amarna correspondence. "To Lab'aya, my lord, speak. Message of Tagi: To the King (Pharaoh), my lord: "I have listened carefully to your missive to me ...(illegible traces)" Amarna Letters are politically arranged in a rough counterclockwise fashion: Amarna Letters from Syria/Lebanon/Canaan are distributed roughly: Early in his reign, Akhenaten ,

425-413: A fragmentary early alphabetic inscription. The remaining nine letters, nine of them in three lines, are perfectly discernable, but they cannot be convincingly combined into words and the words into a text. The undecipherable inscription still is of great palaeographic interest, given the scarcity of Late Bronze Age West Semitic inscriptions found in controlled excavations, as it adds to our knowledge about

510-572: A generation" find. A fifth expedition, running from 2015 to 2016, was conducted as part of developing the site as a national park. A gate shrine of Level III, destroyed during the Assyrian assault and a toilet installation were found. It has been suggested that the toilet, in a gate shrine, was part of Hezekiah's campaign against idolatry. Two altars in the shrine also had their horns damaged in possible desecration. The Korean Lachish Excavation Team led by Hong Soon-hwa, reported that they had "uncovered

595-478: A major city in the Southern Levant. An impressive glacis -like structure was constructed around the city, which shaped its present steep slopes and sharp corners. The proposed glacis fronted a city wall built of massive stones. In Area P, a large mudbrick fortress was excavated. Finds from the fortress include 4 scarabs and a number of scarab sealings. These were of "both the local Canaanite MB IIC style and

680-592: A wide range of 10th century BCE items, from houses with earthenware items and cooking stoves, to animal bones, olive seeds, spearheads, fortress walls and other objects" on July 5, 2017. Since 2017, the Austro-Israeli excavation is exploring the Middle and Late Bronze Age strata at the site. The project is conducted a joint project of Hebrew University and the Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology of

765-456: Is "the region formerly identified as Syria-Palestine and including Canaan ." Many scholars studying the region's archaeology have adopted the term Levant (including northern and southern halves) as the "term of choice" due to it being a "wider, yet relevant, cultural corpus" that does not have the "political overtones" of Syria-Palestine. A survey of North American dissertations shows the "overwhelming emphasis and scope of these works has been

850-533: Is a geographical region encompassing the southern half of the Levant . It corresponds approximately to modern-day Palestine , Israel and Jordan ; some definitions also include southern Lebanon , southern Syria and/or the Sinai Peninsula . As a strictly geographical description, it is sometimes used by archaeologists and historians to avoid the religious and political connotations of other names for

935-545: Is among the most extensively excavated regions in the world. The Southern Levant is amongst the oldest inhabited parts of Eurasia, being on one of three plausible routes by which early hominins could have dispersed out of Africa (along with the Bab al Mandab and the Strait of Gibraltar ). Homo erectus left Africa and became the first hominin species to colonise Europe and Asia approximately two million years ago, probably via

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1020-567: Is as plentiful as dust. May my brother cause me no distress. May he send me much gold in order that my brother [with the gold and m]any [good]s may honor me. Note: Many assignments are tentative; spellings vary widely. This is just a guide. William L. Moran summarizes the state of the chronology of these tablets as follows: Despite a long history of inquiry, the chronology of the Amarna letters, both relative and absolute, presents many problems, some of bewildering complexity, that still elude definitive solution. Consensus obtains only about what

1105-652: Is followed by the Roman period, with an Early and Late Roman sub-period. The 4th century is recognised as the beginning of the Byzantine period, that lasted until the Arab conquest of the region. The following period is known as Early Arab and sub-periods by the names of reigning dynasties. The Crusader conquest of the region is known, appropriately as the Crusader period , which in part overlaps with Ayyubid rule, and it

1190-625: Is generally broken down into two sub-periods, Middle Bronze IIa and Middle Bronze IIb. Some scholars acknowledge a Middle Bronze III. The next period is known as Late Bronze and is often sub-divided into Late Bronze I and II. The introduction of iron , although relatively rare, especially in the earliest phases, caused the following phase to be named the Iron Age . It is variously sub-divided into Iron I, Iron II and sometimes Iron III, with subdivisions becoming increasingly popular as sequences become better known. Some archaeologists suggest that there in

1275-426: Is obvious, certain established facts, and these provide only a broad framework within which many and often quite different reconstructions of the course of events reflected in the Amarna letters are possible and have been defended. ...The Amarna archive, it is now generally agreed, spans at most about thirty years, perhaps only fifteen or so. From the internal evidence, the earliest possible date for this correspondence

1360-589: Is sometimes called " Assyrian " and the following period is universally known as the Persian period. The 333 BCE conquest of the region by Alexander the Great is accepted as the beginning of the Hellenistic period. The Deuterocanonical book 2 Maccabees records: "Apollonius the son of Tharseas, who at that time was governor of Celesyria and Phenicia", Celesyria being the transliteration of Coele-Syria . It

1445-540: Is strong but circumstantial, based mostly on the geographic location of the site, the writing of Eusebius , the royal reliefs of Sennacherib, the site excavations, and an ostracon found there. Israeli archaeologist and historical geographer, M. Avi-Yonah , thought to place Lachish at the ancient ruin of Qobebet Ibn ‘Awwad , near the former Palestinian Arab village by the same name, rather than at Tell ed Duweir . The place has been extensively excavated. The first expedition at Lachish, then Tell ed-Duweir, from 1932 to 1939,

1530-421: Is thanks to the work of David Ussishkin 's team that eight of these stamped jars were restored, thereby demonstrating lack of relevance between the jar volumes (which deviated as much as 5 gallons or 12 litres ), and also proving their relation to the reign of Biblical king Hezekiah . Ussishkin observed that "The renewed excavations confirmed Tufnell's suggestion that Level III had been destroyed in 701 BCE. All

1615-573: Is the final decade of the reign of Amenhotep III , who ruled from 1388 to 1351 BC (or 1391 to 1353 BC), possibly as early as this king's 30th regnal year ; the latest date any of these letters were written is the desertion of the city of Amarna , commonly believed to have happened in the second year of the reign of Tutankhamun later in the same century in 1332 BC. Moran notes that some scholars believe one tablet, EA 16, may have been addressed to Tutankhamun's successor Ay or Smenkhkare . However, this speculation appears improbable because

1700-607: The Austrian Academy of Sciences and is co-directed by Felix Höflmayer and Katharina Streit. The project is funded by the Austrian Science Fund . In 2018 a pottery sherd, dated to the 15th century BCE, was found with alphabetic text. This fills a gap in the development history of alphabetic writing. In 2019 a hieratic ostracon was found, dated to the time of the Egyptian 18th Dynasty. It is described by

1785-631: The Cisjordan and Transjordan . The Huleh basin feeds into the upper Jordan, which moves southward through a natural basalt barrier into the Sea of Galilee before dropping several hundred metres as it flows through the Jordan Valley . The Jordan River terminates at the Dead Sea , whose banks, at 400 metres (1,300 feet) below sea level, are the world's lowest point on dry land. The archaeology of

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1870-481: The Dead Sea – the lowest point on the Earth's land surface. The Southern Levant has a long history and is one of the areas of the world most intensively investigated by archaeologists. It is considered likely to be the first place that both early hominins and modern humans colonised outside of Africa. Consequently, it has a rich Stone Age archaeology, stretching back as early as 1.5 million years ago. With one of

1955-473: The Late Bronze (1550–1200 BCE) and Iron Age (1200–587 BCE) levels. The Ussishkin expedition's comprehensive 5-volume report set a new standard in archaeological publication. According to Yosef Garfinkel , "The Starkey-Tufnell and Ussishkin expeditions set new standards in excavation and publication. They revolutionized our understanding of various aspects of Lachish, such as the later history of Judah and

2040-649: The New Kingdom , spanning a period of no more than thirty years in the middle 14th century BC. The letters were found in Upper Egypt at el-Amarna , the modern name for the ancient Egyptian capital of Akhetaten , founded by pharaoh Akhenaten (c. 1351–1334 BC) during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt . The Amarna letters are unusual in Egyptological research, because they are written not in

2125-894: The Pushkin Museum in Moscow; and 1 in the collection of the Oriental Institute in Chicago . A few tablets are at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels. The archive contains a wealth of information about cultures, kingdoms, events and individuals in a period from which few written sources survive. It includes correspondence from Akhenaten's reign ( Akhenaten who

2210-524: The Rift Valley , and less than 50 millimetres (2.0 inches) in the eastern deserts and the Negev . Across the region, precipitation is both highly seasonal―most rain falls between October and May, and hardly any in the summer—and subject to large, unpredictable inter-annual variation. Temperature is also highly variable, with cool winters and hot summers. The Jordan River bisects much of the region into

2295-633: The conquest of Jerusalem according to Jeremiah 34 :7. One of the Lachish letters , written in 597–587 BCE, warns of the impending Neo-Babylonian destruction. It reads: "Let my lord know that we are watching over the beacon of Lachish, according to the signals which my lord gave, for Azekah is not seen." This pottery inscription can be seen at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The siege ramp at Lachish, designed for deploying battering rams against

2380-657: The eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea , in the world region known variously as the Near East , the Middle East or Western or Southwestern Asia . It is bordered to the east, southeast and southwest by the Syrian , Arabian and Sinai deserts, respectively. Some definitions include parts of these deserts in the region. The Litani River in southern Lebanon is commonly considered the dividing line between

2465-543: The Amarna archive. It is mentioned in the Amarna letters as Lakisha/Lakiša (EA 287, 288, 328, 329, 335). During the 20th Dynasty of Egypt , the empire of the New Kingdom of Egypt started to lose its control in the Southern Levant . A bronze object bearing the cartouche of Ramesses III may be associated with the city gate. While Lachish had prospered under Egyptian hegemony, fire destroyed it around 1150 BCE. It

2550-502: The Amarna archives were closed by Year 2 of Tutankhamun , when this king transferred Egypt's capital from Amarna to Thebes. A small number of the Amarna letters are in the class of poetry . An example is EA 153 , entitled: "Ships on hold" , from Abimilku of Tyre . This is a short, 20-line letter. Lines 6–8 and 9-11 are parallel phrases, each ending with "...before the troops of the king, my lord." -('before', then line 8, line 11). Both sentences are identical, and repetitive, with only

2635-528: The Fosse Temple III at Level VII, which dates it back to the 13th century BCE. The Lachish bowl was discovered in Tomb 527 at Lachish Level VII, dated to the 13th century BCE. The Lachish bowl fragment was discovered in a Level VII context and dated to the 12th century BCE. The "Lachish jar sherd", found in 2014 in a stratigraphic context (Level VI) which allows dating it to around 1130 BCE, contains

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2720-638: The Hyksos style". Radiocarbon dating produced a date in the mid-16th century BCE. By the end of Middle Bronze IIC the city was destroyed by fire. Some features originally ascribed to the Iron Age by the early excavators have now been redated to the MBA and LBA. In the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BCE), Lachish was re-established and developed slowly, eventually becoming one of the large and prosperous cities of

2805-399: The Iron Age history of the site on behalf of the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Institute of Archaeology, Southern Adventist University . Other consortium institutions include Virginia Commonwealth University , Oakland University and Korea Biblical Geography Research Institute. The excavations were concentrated in the northeast corner of the site near

2890-659: The Late Bronze Age but the burials contained few dateable elements so it is uncertain if the burials date to the LBA or later. Rebuilding of the city began in the Early Iron Age , during the 10th and 9th centuries BCE, when it was part of the Kingdom of Judah . The unfortified settlement may have been destroyed c.  925 BCE by the pharaoh Shoshenq I , founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty of Egypt . In

2975-726: The Southern Levant and the Northern Levant (i.e. Syria ), or sometimes the Orontes River , also in Lebanon. For the most part, the climate of the Southern Levant is arid or semi-arid , however a narrow strip along the coast experiences a temperate , Mediterranean climate due to its proximity to the sea. Average annual rainfall decreases sharply away from the coast, from over 1,000 millimetres (39 inches) per year in Galilee , to 200–400 millimetres (7.9–15.7 inches) in

3060-639: The Southern Levant. During this phase of the Pleistocene epoch the region was wetter and greener, allowing H. erectus to find places with fresh water as it followed other African animals that were dispersing out of Africa at the same time. One such location was ' Ubeidiya , on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee , where some of the oldest hominin remains in Eurasia have been discovered, dating to between 1.2 million and 1.5 million years ago. Several Stone Ages , when stone tools prevailed and make up

3145-617: The Southern Levant. It is first attested as rkjšꜣ ( Lakisha ) in a New Kingdom text, the Papyrus Hermitage 1116A . Lakhish came under the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt , which expelled the Hyksos and established an empire that was most powerful following the military campaigns of Thutmose III . During the Amarna Period ( c.  1350 BCE ), several letters were written to the pharaoh and were discovered as part of

3230-516: The archaeological finds, they give a good understanding of siege warfare of the period. Modern excavation of the site has revealed that the Assyrians built a stone and dirt ramp up to the level of the Lachish city wall, thereby allowing the soldiers to charge up the ramp and storm the city. Excavations revealed approximately 1500 skulls in one of the caves near the site, and hundreds of arrowheads on

3315-596: The area. Like much of Southwestern Asia , the Southern Levant is an arid region consisting mostly of desert and dry steppe , with a thin strip of wetter, temperate climate along the Mediterranean coast. Geographically it is dominated by the Jordan Valley , a section of the Great Rift Valley bisecting the region from north to south, and containing the Sea of Galilee , the Jordan River and

3400-577: The basic conventions indicate a number of Stone Ages , followed by a Copper/Stone Age, in turn followed by a Bronze Age . The names given to them, derived from the Greek , are also used widely for other regions. The different ages in turn are often divided up into sequential or sometimes parallel chrono-cultural facies, sometimes called “cultures” or “periods”. Sometimes their names are derived from European prehistory , at other times from local sites, often where they were first discovered. Archaeologically, it

3485-488: The bulk of artifacts, are followed by periods when other technologies came into use. They lent their names to the different periods. The basic framework for the southern Levant is, as follows: Paleolithic or Old Stone Age is often divided up into phases called, from early-to-late: Lower Paleolithic , Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic. An Epipaleolithic (latest Paleolithic) period, also known as Mesolithic (transition to Neolithic) follows and is, in turn succeeded by

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3570-674: The city during the Neo-Assyrian siege, is the oldest known in the world and the sole example found in the ancient Near East . Occupation at the site of Lachish began during the Pottery Neolithic period (5500–4500 BCE). Flint tools from that period have been found. Major development began in the Early Bronze Age (3300–3000 BCE). By the end of the Early Bronze, Lachish had become a large settlement. Most of

3655-989: The collections of various museums. The initial group of letters recovered by local Egyptians have been scattered among museums in Germany , England , Egypt , France, Russia, and the United States. Either 202 or 203 tablets are at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin ; 99 are at the British Museum in London; 49 or 50 are at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo; 7 at the Louvre in Paris; 3 at

3740-634: The commander of the garrison at Lachish shortly before it fell to the Babylonians in either 589 or 586 B.C." Starkey was murdered in 1938 while travelling to Jerusalem to open the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum . Tufnell, Harding and Inge remained for the 1938–9 season. Tufnell returned to London and over the next two decades, worked at the Institute of Archaeology in London, "sorting, collating, studying and presenting

3825-477: The country against enemies who usually approached from the coast. In 701 BCE, during the revolt of Hezekiah , king of Judah, against the Neo-Assyrian Empire, it was besieged and captured by Sennacherib despite the defenders' determined resistance. Some scholars believe that the fall of Lachish occurred during a second campaign in the area by Sennacherib ca. 688 BCE. The site now contains

3910-745: The culture and language of the Canaanite peoples in this time period. Though most are written in Akkadian, the Akkadian of the letters is heavily colored by the mother tongue of their writers, who probably spoke an early form of Proto-Canaanite , the language(s) which would later evolve into the daughter languages of Hebrew and Phoenician . These "Canaanisms" provide valuable insights into the proto-stage of those languages several centuries prior to their first actual manifestation. These letters, comprising cuneiform tablets written primarily in Akkadian –

3995-399: The earliest sites for urban settlements, it also corresponds to the western parts of the Fertile Crescent . The Southern Levant refers to the lower half of the Levant but there is some variance of geographical definition, with the widest definition including Israel , Palestine , Jordan , Lebanon , southern Syria and the Sinai Desert . In the field of archaeology, the southern Levant

4080-466: The evolution of alphabetic script. The first archaeological expedition, the Starkey-Starkey-Tufnell (1932–1939) uncovered the Lachish letters, which were "written to the commander of the garrison at Lachish shortly before it fell to the Babylonians in either 589 or 586 B.C." The Hebrew letters were written on pieces of pottery, so-called ostraca . Eighteen letters were found in 1935 and three more in 1938, all written in Paleo-Hebrew script . They were from

4165-437: The excavators as a name list with allocated provisions in Canaanite. As many as 12 purported Proto-Canaanite inscriptions had been discovered at Lachish by 2022. Six were discovered in the Starkey-Tufnell excavations, two during the renewed excavations by Ussishkin, and four in more recent excavations. At least three of the purported inscriptions are likely to have been merely figural pottery designs or pseudo-inscriptions Among

4250-431: The find in the international press. Subsequently the Israel Antiquities Authority issued a statement saying that the sherd was not authentic and had been created by an expert demonstrating inscription techniques to her students. She had come forward after the publicity surrounding the find, and explained she had used an original scrap of worthless pottery from the site and engraved the writing on it. She then discarded it at

4335-468: The findings in his 1975 publication, Investigations at Lachish: The sanctuary and the residency . The third expedition, 1973 and 1994, by a Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology and Israel Exploration Society team was led by David Ussishkin . Excavation and restoration work was conducted between 1973 and 1994 by a Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology and Israel Exploration Society team led by David Ussishkin . The excavation focused on

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4420-399: The first half of the 9th century BCE, under the Judahite kings Asa and Jehoshaphat , Lachish became an important city in the kingdom. It was heavily fortified with massive walls and ramparts. A royal palace was built on a platform in the center of the city. Lachish was the foremost among several towns and fortified strongholds guarding the valleys that lead up to Jerusalem and the interior of

4505-454: The first time that an inscription bearing the name of Darius the Great had been found in the territory of Yehud Medinata , then a province of the Achaemenid Empire ruled by Darius. Levy reported it to Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority —the director of excavations at Tel Lachish—who concluded after laboratory testing that the sherd was authentic, probably a receipt for goods received or shipped. This led to widespread coverage of

4590-435: The gold for the statues with their own eyes. ... But my brother [i.e., Akhenaten] has not sent the solid [gold] statues that your father was going to send. You have sent plated ones of wood. Nor have you sent me the goods that your father was going to send me, but you have reduced [them] greatly. Yet there is nothing I know of in which I have failed my brother. ... May my brother send me much gold. ... In my brother's country gold

4675-407: The history and the chronology of the period. Letters from the Babylonian king, Kadashman-Enlil I , anchor the timeframe of Akhenaten's reign to the mid-14th century BC. They also contain the first mention of a Near Eastern group known as the Habiru , whose possible connection with the Hebrews —due to the similarity of the words and their geographic location—remains debated. Other rulers involved in

4760-475: The king". More of these artifacts were found at this site (over 400; Ussishkin, 2004, pp. 2151–9) than any other place in Israel ( Jerusalem remains in second place with more than 300). Most of them were collected from the surface during Starkey 's excavations, but others were found in Level 1 ( Persian and Greek era), Level 2 (period preceding Babylonian conquest by Nebuchadnezzar ), and Level 3 (period preceding Assyrian conquest by Sennacherib ). It

4845-427: The language of ancient Egypt, but in cuneiform , the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia . Most are in a variety of Akkadian sometimes characterised as a mixed language , Canaanite-Akkadian ; one especially long letter—abbreviated EA 24 —was written in a late dialect of Hurrian , and is the longest contiguous text known to survive in that language. The known tablets total 382 and fragments (350 are letters and

4930-417: The latest occupational level immediately before the Babylonian siege of 587 BCE . At the time, they formed the only known corpus of documents in classical Hebrew that had come down to us outside of the Hebrew Bible. Another major contribution to Biblical archaeology from excavations at Lachish are the LMLK seals , which were stamped on the handles of a particular form of ancient storage jar, meaning "of

5015-444: The letters include Tushratta of Mitanni, Lib'ayu of Shechem, Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem, and the quarrelsome king, Rib-Hadda , of Byblos , who, in over 58 letters, continuously pleads for Egyptian military help. Specifically, the letters include requests for military help in the north against Hittite invaders, and in the south to fight against the Habiru. During excavation in 1993 a small, damaged, clay cylinder (first thought to be

5100-399: The location of the Middle Bronze Age gate and fortress. In the topsoil, unstratified, was found a dark blue diorite scarab of the Egyptian New Kingdom period. In 2014, during the Fourth Expedition to Lachish, led by archaeologist Saar Ganor , a small potsherd with letters from a 12th-century BCE alphabet, was found in the ruins of a Late Bronze Age temple. One researcher called it, a "once in

5185-436: The material found at Lachish". She completed her final publication Lachish IV in 1957. She had already become a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1951. The second was an Israeli expedition directed by Yohanan Aharoni that took place over two seasons in 1966 and 1968. The dig, which focused mainly on the "Solar Shrine", was worked on behalf of Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University . Aharoni published

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5270-423: The most important cities in the Kingdom of Judah , second only to the capital, Jerusalem . Lachish is best known for its siege and conquest by the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 701 BCE, an event famously depicted on the Lachish reliefs , which can be seen today in the British Museum . According to the Book of Jeremiah , Lachish and Azekah were the last two Judean cities to fall to the Neo-Babylonian Empire before

5355-476: The only remains of an Assyrian siege ramp discovered. Sennacherib later devoted a whole room in his "Palace without a rival", the southwest palace in Nineveh , for artistic representations of the siege on large alabaster slabs, most of which are now on display in the British Museum . They hold depictions of Assyrian siege ramps, battering rams, sappers, and other siege machines and army units, along with Lachish's architecture and its final surrender. Combined with

5440-468: The pharaoh of Egypt, had conflicts with Tushratta , the king of Mitanni , who had courted favor with his father, Amenhotep III , against the Hittites. Tushratta complains in numerous letters that Akhenaten had sent him gold-plated statues rather than statues made of solid gold; the statues formed part of the bride-price that Tushratta received for letting his daughter Tadukhepa marry Amenhotep III and then later marry Akhenaten. An Amarna letter preserves

5525-403: The pre-Israelite Late Bronze Age Canaanite city." Excavations of Tel Lachish continued in 2012 under the auspices of Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology, conducted by Nissim Golding-Meir. A Linear A inscription was also found at the site. In 2013, a fourth expedition to Lachish was begun under the direction of Yosef Garfinkel , Michael G. Hasel, and Martin G. Klingbeil to investigate

5610-399: The ramp and at the top of the city wall, indicating the ferocity of the battle. The city occupied an area of 8 hectares (20 acres). Lachish fell to the Neo-Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar II in his campaign against Judah in 586 BCE. The city was finally destroyed in 587 BCE. Residents were exiled as part of the Babylonian captivity. During Babylonian occupation, a large residence

5695-422: The recovered pottery is of Khirbet Kerak Ware . The MBA period has not been extensively excavated at the site. During the Middle Bronze (2000–1650 BCE), the settlement developed. In the Middle Bronze I, the mound was resettled. Remains of a cult place and an assemblage of votive cultic vessels were found in Area D. In the Middle Bronze IIA, the development continued. In the Middle Bronze IIB-C, Lachish became

5780-403: The regional language of diplomacy for this period – were first discovered around 1887 by local Egyptians who secretly dug most of them from the ruined city of Amarna, and sold them in the antiquities market. They had originally been stored in an ancient building that archaeologists have since called the Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh . Once the location where they were found was determined,

5865-621: The rest literary texts and school texts), of which 358 have been published by the Norwegian Assyriologist Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon in his work, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln , which came out in two volumes (1907 and 1915) and remains the standard edition to this day. The texts of the remaining 24 complete or fragmentary tablets excavated since Knudtzon have also been made available. Only 26 of the known tablets and fragments were found in their archaeological context, Building Q42.21. The Amarna letters are of great significance for biblical studies as well as Semitic linguistics because they shed light on

5950-446: The royal storage jars, stamped and unstamped alike, date to the reign of Hezekiah, to shortly before the Assyrian conquest.' In 2022, Eylon Levy , an adviser to the Israeli president Isaac Herzog , found an inscribed potsherd while visiting Tel Lachish. The sherd bore an Aramaic inscription that read "Year 24 of Darius," which if genuine would have indicated a date of 498 BCE. The find appeared significant, because it would have been

6035-408: The ruins were explored for more. The first archaeologist who successfully recovered more tablets was Flinders Petrie , who in 1891 and 1892 uncovered 21 fragments. Émile Chassinat , then director of the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo , acquired two more tablets in 1903. Since Knudtzon's edition, some 24 more tablets, or fragments, have been found, either in Egypt, or identified in

6120-405: The southern Levant is generally conceived as a series of phases or stages in human cultural and evolutionary development based, for the most part, on tool technology for early pre-historic, proto-historic and early historic periods. Later phases are generally associated with historical periods and are named accordingly. While there is no single, accepted sequence that all archaeologists agree upon,

6205-548: The southern Levant, an area formerly identified as Syria-Palestine including Canaan", but with most modern Ph.D. dissertations using the terms 'Israel' and 'Canaan'. The term "Southern Levant" has also been criticized as imprecise and an awkward name. The term Southern Levant has been described in academic discourse as a "at least a strictly geographical" description of the region, avoiding religious and political connotations of names such as " Canaan ", " Holy Land ", " Land of Israel ", or "Palestine". The Southern Levant lies on

6290-430: The subject statement changing. The entire corpus of Amarna letters has many standard phrases. It also has some phrases, and quotations used only once. Some are parables : ( EA 252 : "...when an ant is pinched (struck), does it not fight back and bite the hand of the man that struck it?" ....) Amarna letter EA 15 , from Ashur-uballit I ; see also Amarna letter EA 153 . Southern Levant The Southern Levant

6375-557: The tourist section. Amarna letters The Amarna letters ( / ə ˈ m ɑːr n ə / ; sometimes referred to as the Amarna correspondence or Amarna tablets , and cited with the abbreviation EA , for "El Amarna") are an archive, written on clay tablets , primarily consisting of diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru , or neighboring kingdom leaders, during

6460-576: The transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, the large cultural differences are explained by foreign invasion, that is, the introduction of new ethnicity. More recent evidence indicates that the large culture changes were not the result of a foreign invasion. Rather, the Iron Age people of the southern Levant were related to their Bronze Age predecessors. The post-Iron Age is generally thought of as historical and accordingly names of periods reflect this. The very latest Iron Age phase

6545-634: The well-known legitimate inscriptions are the Lachish Ewer, Lachish Bowl, the Cypriot Bowl Fragment, and the Ivory Lice Comb. The few known inscriptions from the Late Bronze Age, the 13th and part of the 12th century BCE, show a certain " linearisation " when compared to the earlier, Proto-Sinaitic script , but the undergone process is not yet understood. In 2016, an inscribed elephant ivory lice comb dating to about 1700 BCE

6630-559: Was also titled Amenhotep IV ), as well as his predecessor Amenhotep III 's reign. The tablets consist of over 300 diplomatic letters; the remainder comprise miscellaneous literary and educational materials. These tablets shed much light on Egyptian relations with Babylonia , Assyria , Syria , Canaan , and Alashiya ( Cyprus ) as well as relations with the Mitanni , and the Hittites . The letters have been important in establishing both

6715-637: Was built on the platform that had once supported the Israelite palace. At the end of the captivity, some exiled Jews returned to Lachish and built a new city with fortifications. Under the Achaemenid Empire (Level I), a large altar known as the Solar Shrine on the east section of the mound was built. The shrine was abandoned after the area fell in the hands of Alexander the Great . The tell has been unoccupied since then. Initially, Lachish

6800-474: Was discovered, dating to the mid fifteenth century BCE. The inscription consists of nine letters. The authors of the editio princeps offer to read two words on the inscription, ʿbd meaning "servant, slave" and npt meaning "honey, nectar." The inscription is, however, too fragmentary to suggest much else but represents one of the earliest examples of alphabetic writing from the Levant. Inscribed ewer, found in

6885-486: Was found at Lachish during the Garfinkel excavations. The find is purported to bear the oldest sentence found written in the early Canaanite script . In the editio princeps , the authors suggest to read 15 letters, constituent of a wish to eradicate lice. They offer the following translation: "May this tusk root out the lice of the hai[r and the] beard." In 2018, an inked rim fragment of a Cypriot White Slip II milk bowl

6970-469: Was identified by Flinders Petrie with Tell el-Hesi , an identification supported when a relevant cuneiform tablet was found there. The tablet mentions Zimredda a governor of who is known from one of the Amarna Letters (EA 333). The current identification of Tell ed-Duweir as Lachish was first suggested by William F. Albright in 1929 and subsequently accepted by many scholars. This suggestion

7055-514: Was rebuilt by Canaanites, who built two temples. However, this settlement was soon destroyed by another fire around 1130 BCE (cf. nearby fortified Eglon, Canaan ). The site then remained sparsely occupied for a long time (Level V). The reasons for this may have been rebellions and invasions by the Sea Peoples . Four mass graves were found at the site with over 1500 individuals interred, about half women and children. The tombs themselves dated to

7140-554: Was the Starkey-Tufnell British expedition which included James Leslie Starkey as expedition leader, Olga Tufnell , G.L. Harding and C. Inge. It was funded by Charles Marston and Henry Wellcome with the aim of finding the Biblical city of Lachish. They succeeded in finding Lachish, with a "wealth of well-stratified pottery", a "key part of the ceramic corpus of Palestine", and the Lachish letters , c. "written to

7225-432: Was the most common metal in use, while stone technology continued to contribute the bulk of tools . Early Bronze III is followed by another period, alternately named Early Bronze IV, Middle Bronze I, Intermediate Bronze or Early Bronze-Middle Bronze. In this period the name is apt; true bronze (a tin alloy of copper ) makes its appearance in this time span. The next period is generally known as Middle Bronze II and

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