Hello friends and family. We have just returned from our five week excavation at Tel Rehov. It was an amazing and very taxing experience and as you can imagine our feelings at the end were certainly bittersweet – we were relieved to be finished and sad that it was all over at the same time. Tel Rehov is a very unique site among the other ancient cities in the land that have been excavated. The architecture is often very unique and complex and many of the finds are not known anywhere else in Israel. Tel Rehov, or Tel eṣ-Ṣarem as it was once known to local Arabic speakers, is located seventeen miles south of the Sea of Galilee in the valley named for the ancient (and now modern) city of Beth Shean (Mom and Dad should remember this tel!). The site is located just to the east of the Gilboa mountain range, near the junction of two main ancient roads and near the Harod spring that drains in the direction of the Jordan River. This all means that the site had a close water source, arable land, and connection to trade in antiquity. Given the location of the site then it is no surprise to find that it is well known in our ancient texts, primarily the annals of the kings of Egypt. Can you think of a place when Rehov is mentioned in the Bible? There are five instances when a city called Rehov is mentioned, but it is not this particular site. It is too far north. Our Rehov is not mentioned in the Bible, which is quite surprising.
The Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University has been excavating at Tel Rehov since 1997 under the direction of Dr. Amihai Mazar. The 2010 season represents the tenth season of excavation at the tel. Over the course of thirteen years of excavation HU has revealed a number of important things about the ancient cities at Rehov. It is evident from the presence of an Early Bronze Age (EB) rampart that the site was inhabited sometime between ca. 3300-2000 B.C.E. Following the EB in the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1550 B.C.E.) most of the sites in the land were made into massive cities with enormous walls – Rehov was not. There is no evidence of any Middle Bronze occupation at the site. The Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 B.C.E.) was the main period in which Rehov thrived. During this period Canaan was under the rule of the Egyptians. During this time the Egyptian pharaohs ruled the land via a series of local Canaanite governors who were loyal to Egypt. We know from a text written during the reign of Pharaoh Seti I (1290-1279 B.C.E.) that a city in the vicinity of Beth Shean called Rehob was loyal to Egypt and did not participate in the various rebellions led by some of the Canaanites at this time. Other Egyptian texts mention the site and point to its importance and prominence during this period. Following the Late Bronze Age (LB) many sites in the land suffered some kind of collapse, many sites were abandoned and some places were destroyed. The cause of this collapse is not clear, but Rehov survived! There is clear archaeological evidence for the transition between the LB and the Iron Age I (1200-1000 B.C.E.). Archaeologically the Israelite material culture is well attested in the land in the Iron Age II (1000/980 – 586 B.C.E.). At Tel Rehov there is clear evidence for a thriving city in the Iron Age IIA (ca. 980-840 B.C.E.), roughly the time of King David to King Ahab, but it was hardly your typical Israelite town! Interestingly the last mention of the city of Rehov in Egyptian records is during the reign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I (943-922 B.C.E.), who the Bible calls Shishak (1 Kgs 11:40; 14:25; 2 Chr 12). Sheshonq campaigned into Canaan at the close of the united Israelite monarchy. Sheshonq’s record itself is vague because it is only a list of towns and therefore we do not know the purpose of his campaign. That he mentions Rehov is important because it means that despite the lack of attestation in the Bible, Rehov was still an active town during the Israelite monarchy. The nature of the town remains in question however. Rehov is the only Israelite city that we know of where beekeeping and commercial honey production was known. The buildings in the Iron Age IIA strata are not like any seen in the many sites that have been excavated over the years. There are numerous finds, many of which are cultic artifacts like altars or clay model houses, that have no parallels anywhere else in the land or even in Syria, though Egyptian style artifacts are prevalent.
At any rate, Rehov’s Iron Age IIA city was destroyed in a major fire (leaving behind what archaeologists call a “destruction layer” at the site), which was presumably intentional and may stem back to the invasion of the Arameans (1 Kgs 19; 2 Kgs 8-13). Archaeologists love destruction layers because, when a site is destroyed people usually flee and leave all of their belongings behind, an unfortunate result for them but great for the archaeologists! After this, the city was resettled to the south on the higher part of the tel in the eighth century (700’s) B.C.E. This city was destroyed by the Assyrians in the 720s (who also conquered the Northern Israelite capital of Samaria) and was not resettled again for about 1000 years when an Islamic village was established on the upper mound of the tel.
We have now had the privilege of being a part of two seasons of excavations at this unique site (we dug at Rehov in 2008, our first visit to Israel). This season we participated in the dig for credit through the Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University. We spent five weeks excavating, learning how to draw top plans and sections, take heights, record finds, wash, “read,” and mark pottery, and keep an excavation log. This archaeological “field school” will fulfill our archaeology practicum requirements for our degree at JUC.
This season at Rehov we excavated in Area C, which is on the lower part of the tel and contains the remains from the Iron Age IIA, in a building labeled C-P. This season we opened up a whole square (a 25 square meter area) and a half-square (12.5 square meters). Both of these areas revealed a part of the northeastern corner of a very large complex of three rooms/buildings. The architecture of the large complex is like nothing ever seen in the architecture of the Iron Age and the finds are unique. What’s almost more amazing than this is that the destruction debris of this building began only about 10 centimeters under topsoil!
In our first square that we opened we worked with two other people (LeAnn and Becky, who are in our photo album :0) and excavated the square down to the floor of the room, which was a little over a meter below the topsoil. In this area there were a ton of sherds (broken pieces of clay vessels) and many whole containers – storage jars, jugs, and bowls. The main thing that we were looking for in the square, however, was not the “goodies” but the architecture – and really this is what archaeology is about. We essentially spent the first 3 1/2 weeks excavating this square and the final week in the second half-square, in which we were attempting to define two walls that would close off the large room that we began working in, in our first square. We have pictures posted of a few of our finds, but we had to pick the photos judiciously because the material has yet to be published (check out www.rehov.org for more pics to be posted at some point in the future!).
The past five weeks have been both amazing and grueling at the same time. If any of our readers have ever been on a dig you know how this works, but for those who have not, I will explain our basic daily routine. We stayed at a kibbutz (a Jewish community centered around agriculture and in more modern times, housing guests like a hotel) called Beit Alfa, which is about a 15 minute drive from the excavation site. Every day from Monday through Friday we needed to be on the bus to leave for the tel at 4:45 am, which means getting up around 3:45 so that we could have time to get ready and have a few minutes to eat something before running out the door. We set foot out of our air-conditioned room and into the mid-80 degree early morning. Once on the bus we would drive to the tel and arrive around 5:15 (or 5:30 depending on how long the bus driver waited for latecomers). Work begins right away so that we can get the really heavy stuff out of the way before it gets too hot. Temperatures in the Beth Shean Valley typically are above 100 degrees (the hottest recorded temperature in the Middle East, 129 degrees, was in fact recorded in the Beth Shean Valley). We then have our very Israeli breakfast of tuna, bread, cottage cheese, tomatoes, and cucumbers on site about 8:30 am. Then we work until 11 and take a short break for juice (or popsicles on Fridays!) and finally end the excavation at 12:15 pm. We then have lunch from 1-2 and have two and a half hours until we wash the pottery that we excavated the day before. So this is where most people take naps and relax and where the students and excavators do homework. Pottery washing generally lasts until about 5 and then we “read” and sort the pottery from two days prior, meaning that we decide what pieces to keep and mark and what pieces get thrown away. This generally lasts until about 6pm. From 6 to 7 we have an hour of free time unless there was a workshop for the students participating in the dig for credit. Dinner lasts from 7-8 and then very often there was a lecture at 8:15 that lasted until 9 or 9:30. Then bed and then do it all over again. This was basically a VERY intensive five-week archaeology class for us! And, now that it’s over we have to prepare our top plans, lists of finds, and excavation reports to turn in to Hebrew University as soon as we can.
Now that our dig is over we are back on Mount Zion at JUC. The directors of the school just left for their month-long vacation to the States and we are holding down the fort along with two other students. The current student life directors are getting ready to leave and we are planning on moving in to our little apartment on campus probably sometime next week. We are attempting to work on Tel Rehov related homework and a few other projects that we have put on hold for the five weeks while we have been digging. In addition to this we are just trying to relax a little before the fall semester kicks in and we get back to classes and figuring out how to work in our new position as Student Life Directors at JUC.
We hope that you enjoy seeing the pictures of the dig. We had a lot of fun at Tel Rehov this season and we are hoping for maybe another season of excavation there before we finish out at JUC. Blessings to you all!
Justin & Mandy
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