Friday 5 March, 2010

World
Middle East
Science/Nature

Archaeologist Eilat Mazar has excavated a wall she believes was built by King Solomon.

By Andrew Halloway

A Jewish archaeologist has found evidence that King Solomon’s kingdom not only existed but was as powerful as described in the Bible.

The archaeology establishment has long been sceptical of the great biblical kings like David and Solomon, asking that if this period in Jewish history was so significant, why haven’t more remains been found?

But now an ancient wall in Jerusalem that dates back 3,000 years could shake such cosy assumptions to their foundations.

Archaeologist Eilat Mazar says she has found pottery shards that accurately date the wall to the tenth century BC – the time of Solomon. If she is right – and no-one has yet been able to refute her other discoveries that have shed light on the Bible – then her findings show that a strong kingdom existed in Jerusalem at this time, because such substantial city walls are only built when there are sufficient resources and organisation.

The wall’s location, as well as its age, indicates that it was built by Solomon. Miss Mazar has called her discovery “the most significant construction we have from First Temple days in Israel.

“It means that at that time, the tenth century, in Jerusalem there was a regime capable of carrying out such construction… A comparison of this latest finding with city walls and gates from the period of the First Temple, as well as pottery found at the site, enable us to postulate with a great degree of assurance that the wall that has been revealed is that which was built by King Solomon.”

The impressive wall – about 70 metres long and six metres high – includes a monumental gatehouse for access into the royal quarter of the city and a corner tower that overlooks the Kidron valley below. It is located just outside the present-day walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, next to the Temple Mount area. The Bible says that Solomon built the first Jewish Temple, as well as fortifying the city.

Archaeologists have excavated the same wall in the past, first in the 1860s and then in the 1980s, but Mazar has exposed much more of it and is the first to find evidence that dates it to Solomon’s reign.

Fellow archaeologist Aren Maeir, a professor at Bar Ilan University, admits there are remains from the tenth century in Jerusalem, but is still reluctant to agree that there was a strong Solomonic kingdom until he has seen the evidence for himself.

But Mazar’s track record is promising. She has previously discovered remains of a palace in Jerusalem that she attributes to King David – Solomon’s father – along with a string of other biblical finds. No-one has yet been able to prove her wrong, and she has become a world authority on the history of Jerusalem.

But the reasons behind the dispute over the historicity of this era of the Bible record are more than academic. Not only do they hold interest for those on both sides of the pro-Bible/anti-Bible debate, but they are also of political significance. Muslim authorities in Jerusalem have been trying to deny that the city has any historic links to the Jewish people in order to bolster Palestinian claims to the city.

Not only that, but the Waqf – the Muslim group in control of the Temple Mount – have destroyed huge amounts of the site’s archaeological record by the building works they have carried out. Over 100 truckloads of Temple Mount rubble and soil containing precious artifacts were secretly removed and dumped around Jerusalem. This is careless at best, and intentional at worst, because the Mount is the site of the First and Second Jewish Temples (the first one was built by Solomon). Destroying evidence of these would be in the Palestinians’ political interest. Indeed, the Waqf consistently denies that the temples ever existed.

In addition, the world’s archaeologists and historians have shown little interest in preserving the historical evidence of the temples that may still exist on the Mount. In fact, many have labelled the united kingdom – the reigns of David and Solomon – as pure fiction, dismissing the Bible as unhistorical. Some of these academics have a clear political agenda, arguing that the historical value of the Old Testament is only being promoted by modern Zionists who want to lay claim to Palestinian land.

But the fact is that evidence for the biblical account of history was sought long before the State of Israel was conceived, and over the last 200 years of archaeological endeavour the quantity of evidence discovered that favours the Bible is huge.

Yet even in Israel itself, there are biblical ‘minimalists’ who seek to minimise the significance of archaeological discoveries. Israel Finkelstein, chairman of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology, has long been arguing that David and Solomon were at best mere local chieftains, and at worst purely mythical. His attempts to revise the dates of discoveries so that the evidence for the united kingdom is moved into another century have been disputed and, many historians would say, disproved. But his books, like the best-selling The Bible Unearthed, have found willing support in the liberal media and his school of thought has permeated the academic world.

As a result of the political background, Mazar has been accused of bias and error. But the accusations haven’t stuck. She says: “In truth, when I began to excavate, I had to be prepared for any result. I even had to be prepared to accept Finkelstein’s hypothesis if that’s what the facts indicated. Still, I am a Jew and an Israeli, and I feel great joy when the details on the ground match the descriptions in the Bible. Today it’s become fashionable to say there was no David, no Solomon, no Temple, no prophets. But suddenly the facts on the ground are speaking, and those outspoken voices are stammering.

“Today the scholarly approach to Tanach [the Bible] is that it’s not true unless you can prove it true. Maybe we should do a little reverse. Why don’t we say it’s true unless we can prove otherwise?”

Why indeed. There have been so many discoveries that align perfectly with the biblical text that it seems churlish of archaeologists to assume that those parts of the text that are awaiting evidence must be wrong. If the Bible has been proved right so many times, why not trust it as ‘innocent until proven guilty’? Instead, many of today’s scholars prefer to believe that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. History is not on their side when it comes to the Bible.

As an example of faith in the Bible text, consider Mazar’s own story. Over ten years ago she wrote an article in the Biblical Archaeological Review arguing that David’s palace would have been located outside the current city walls, basing her argument on the Bible’s own descriptions. As a result, she couldn’t find any financial backers to support a dig despite her considerable qualifications and experience. It was as if no-one in the academic world really wanted to find David’s palace.

It was a similar experience for Adam Zertal in 1983. He discovered a huge sacrificial altar on Mount Ebal, the exact place where the Bible says Joshua set up an altar after leading the Jews across the Jordan River (Joshua chapter 8, verses 30-31). He even found tools that dated to the time the Jewish people are thought to have entered the land of Israel after their epic escape from Egypt under Moses. The style of the altar also matched descriptions in the Bible and rabbinic texts. Surely such amazing proof would be global news and change archaeology’s scepticism about the Bible for ever?

No. Zertal’s professional colleagues tried to keep him quiet and downplay his discovery. Some even said his work couldn’t be trusted because he supported Jewish settlement in the area around Mount Ebal, in Shechem (modern day Nablus).

With that kind of prejudice in academia, Mazar could have been forgiven for giving up her search for David’s Palace, but eventually she found a sponsor – the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. It is funded by American Jewish investment banker Roger Hertog, who makes no secret of the fact that he wants to find evidence in support of the Bible. But given that Mazar had no funding, she had no choice but to accept despite the accusations of bias it would inevitably attract. The Center itself says: “We want to create an environment where serious scholars can pursue their research without feeling intimidated.”

Only time will tell if Mazar succeeds in changing prevailing academic opinion. But there is hope! When she discovered David’s Palace, Amihai Mazar, one of the leading voices in Israeli archaeology and author of the standard textbook on the subject, described her discovery as “something of a miracle”.

As we know a God of miracles, anything is possible!

Photo: pbs.org