Ai (historic city-state)
Ai ( Hebrew עי, Arabic التل, DMG at-Tall ) is the name of one that lasted until the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. City-state located near Bethel . The excavations of the settlement mound ( Tell ) have a first settlement from around 2400 BC. Proven. The only around 1200 BC. Rebuilt place had the character of a village and was abandoned by the residents after about 150 years. A horizon of destruction is not recognizable for this epoch. Joseph Callaway suspects that around 1200 BC Villages built in the mountains such as Ai were related to the appearance of the sea peoples . The new residents originally lived in the coastal regions of Palestine . Shortly after the arrival of the Sea Peoples, they founded smaller villages as part of their move to the mountain regions.
According to Old Testament tradition Joshua 7–8 , Ai is said to have been destroyed during the conquest by Joshua. The nameעיis the Hebrew word for heap of rubble, corresponding to the Arabic Tell - this is also the current nameالتل- so that the eponymous population must have found ruins at this site. The historical-critical exegesis therefore assumes that the biblical narrative is an etiological legend that is supposed to explain how the heap of rubble came about.
literature
- Joseph Callaway: Ai. In: David Noel Freedman (Ed.): The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 1. Doubleday, New York 1992, pp. 125-130. ISBN 0-385-19351-3 .
Web links
- Klaus Koenen: Ai. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.
Coordinates: 31 ° 55 ′ 1.1 ″ N , 35 ° 15 ′ 40.4 ″ E