Neat Link: Iron Age Images

Tim Bulkeley has another neat on-line resource that people should know about. One of his sites has a fine collection of images from various archaeological sites relating to the period of the Hebrew Bible (click here). His albums of photos include Arad, Beersheba, Carmel, Gezer, Hazor, Lachish, and Megiddo. Several of these albums also have video introductions. A few weeks ago, he added a video introduction to Ancient Empires, Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia, which lasts about 7 minutes. Our thanks to Tim for all the work that has gone, and is going, into this e-resource.

Here is a sample image from his album on Gezer:



This is the well-known City Gate of Gezer. Note the monumental scale of the gate, and the expensive ashlar ("cut stone") building materials. To the upper right of the image, a casemate (two-layered) city wall and barracks extends in a south-western direction. Israel made a major investment in fortifying this site, since it commanded a major crossroads in the land. By building up Gezer, the monarchic leadership was claiming a state for itself, bearing witness to its rule and the rule of its God.

Note also how an ancient city gate was really a gate-complex, an entire building with several rooms. The city's elders would meet in such rooms, and legal cases would be decided there. This gate at Gezer has the six-chambered "Solomonic" form, three chambers, each lined with benches, on each side of the central road running up to the top of the image and out of the city. You can see a large stone basin in the upper-left gateroom.

The road has been artificially raised and a drain runs down its middle and out and down steeply into the valley. In ancient times, that is how a city got rid of its waste, and only lepers and outcasts would spend much time in a valley below a city's gate.