3,000-year-old artifacts reveal history behind biblical David and Goliath
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yosef
Garfinkel, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
shows off an ark, or stone shrine model, that was found during
excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, an ancient settlement southwest of
Jerusalem.
By Alan Boyle
An
archaeological dig near Goliath's biblical hometown has yielded
evidence of Judean religious practices 3,000 years ago, pointing up
fresh historical connections to the stories of King David and King
Solomon.
"We have a city with a population relating to the Kingdom
of Judah," Yosef Garfinkel, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, told me today. "This is totally different from Philistine,
Canaanite or the cult in the Kingdom of Israel."
The site, known today as
Khirbet Qeiyafa,
is about 20 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of Jerusalem, on top of a
hill overlooking the Valley of Elah. For the past five years, Garfinkel
and his colleagues have been excavating the ruins of a fortified city
there, situated across from what was once the
Philistine city of Gath. In the Bible, the giant Goliath came out from Gath to face the Israelites, and was
smitten by a rock hurled from David's sling.
Garfinkel can't vouch for the story of Goliath, but he says the
weapons, the cult items and even the animal bones found around Khirbet
Qeiyafa support his view that the settlement was a key military outpost
for the historical House of David, riven by conflict. "There was
something here quite military and quite aggressive," he said. "It was
not a peaceful village."
Based on radiocarbon dating of burned
olive pits found at the site, archaeologists believe the ancient city
lasted for only 40 years, from 1020 to 980 B.C., before it was
destroyed. Some skeptics have suggested that Khirbet Qeiyafa was just
another Canaanite settlement, and that David was at best a minor
chieftain, or perhaps a folkloric figure like Robin Hood. But Garfinkel
said the items found at the site strengthen the connection to King David
and the religious practices specified in the Bible.
"Over the years, thousands of animal bones were found, including sheep, goats and cattle, but no pigs," he said in a
news release from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
"Now we uncovered three cultic rooms, with various cultic
paraphernalia, but not even one human or animal figurine was found. This
suggest that the population on Khirbet Qeiyafa observed two biblical
bans — on pork and on graven images — and thus practiced a different
cult from that of the Canaanites or the Philistines."
Garfinkel
told me that the absence of human imagery was peculiar to the Judeans.
"In the northern Kingdom of Israel, you find human representations," he
said.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
One of the cultic standing stones can be seen in this picture of the Khirbet Qeiyafa site.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
This basalt altar was found during excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
A decorated clay shrine model was found at the Khirbet Qeiyafa site.
The
cult objects included five standing stones, two basalt altars, two
pottery libation vessels and two portable shrines. Garfinkel said the
shrines reflected a Mesopotamian architectural style that went back
centuries before the era of King David, and probably inspired the look
of the palace built by Solomon, David's son. "It seems that Solomon
didn't want to be Canaanite and took a different model from
Mesopotamia," Garfinkel told me.
The shrines are boxlike
containers made of stone or clay. "I think they were called in Hebrew
'Aron,'" Garfinkel wrote in an email. "This had been translated into
English as 'ark' and became a mystic artifact. I think that the Hebrew
name was just a simple technical term: a box for keeping god symbols."
Such shrines were probably similar in look to the "Ark of God"
highlighted in the Bible as well as in such movies as
"Raiders of the Lost Ark."
The
clay shrine has an intricate facade, featuring two guardian lions,
pillars and birds standing on the roof. The stone shrine was painted
red, and its facade is decorated with characteristic triglyph symbols as
well as a triple-recessed doorway in front. Garfinkel said the Bible
may have referred to those architectural features in its
description of Solomon's palace.
The technical term usually translated as referring to pillars ("Slaot")
may actually be talking about triglyphs, while another term that was
thought to refer to windows ("Sequfim") might instead refer to the
doorways.
"Now you can see by the model that you have triglyphs at
the roof, and you have recessed doorways," Garfinkel said. Such
features are also mentioned in
biblical references to King Solomon's temple, which was built decades after the age that gave rise to the shrines found at Khirbet Qeiyafa.
Will these finds settle the debate over the historical David?
Garfinkel would like to think so. "Various suggestions that completely
deny the biblical tradition regarding King David and argue that he was a
mythological figure, or just a leader of a small tribe, are now shown
to be wrong," he said in today's news release.
But
The Times of Israel quoted Bar-Ilan University's Aren Maeir,
who's in charge of the dig at Gath, as saying the discoveries don't
provide any dramatic new evidence for either side in the debate. For
example, the fact that the clay shrine was decorated with lions and
birds undercuts Garfinkel's claim that no graven images were found at
the site.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted another expert, Tel Aviv University's Nadav Na'aman, as saying that the Canaanites, like the Judeans, observed a ban on eating pork.
Maeir
said the distinctions between the various peoples mentioned in the
Bible — including David's Israelites and Goliath's Philistines — were
"fuzzier than the way they are often described."
"There's no
question that this is a very important site, but what exactly it was —
there is still disagreement about that," Maeir said. In a
blog posting, Maeir said "what is clearly missing is a close interface with
mainstream biblical and [Ancient Near East] textual scholars."
