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Gezer (Israel)
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Israel

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Gezer ( Hebrew גֶּזֶר gæzær ), later Gazara , was a city in ancient Israel . Today it is predominantly identified with Tell Gezer (also: Tell el-Jezer), which is about halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv . Gezer has had a town partnership with Grimma since 2011 .

Research history

Gezer boundary stone No. 5, the Hebrew inscription is inverted

Tell Gezer was excavated in 1871 by the French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau . Further excavations followed in the years between 1902 and 1907 by Robert Macalister on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund . Even after that, Gezer was the target of intensive excavations, for example in 1934 by Alan Rowe , in 1964 by G. Ernest Wright , and by William G. Dever , Yigael Yadin and Andrews University . Since 2006, the excavations by Steve Ortiz of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary ( Fort Worth , USA) and Sam Wolff ( Israel Antiquities Authority ) have been continued.

history

Victory stele of Merenptah

The first written evidence of Gezer's existence dates back to the time of the Egyptian King Thutmose III. (15th century BC). The reliefs from the Temple of Amun-Re in Karnak show prisoners from Gezer from the Syrian campaign of 1468 BC. An inscription from the burial temple of Thutmose IV. (Approx. 1410–1402.) Mentions prisoners ( kharu ) from a city that is mostly reconstructed as Gezer. From the Amarna letters it can be concluded that Gezer was involved in the conflicts of the city-states of Palestine, which were under Egyptian sovereignty. Over a dozen letters from Gezer to the Egyptian king have been preserved, so that the names of the governors in Gezer can also be reconstructed: Milkilu , Addu-Dabi and Japahu. They report of the constant distress caused by the Apiru , without any remedy apparently from the Egyptian side.

An important writing school seems to have existed in Gezer. A fragment of the Gilgamesh epic , which was found at the beginning of the 1950s by a shepherd from Kibbutz Megiddo on the ramp of the spoil heap of Sector AA, comes from analyzes by Yuval Goren et al. a. probably from Gezer. Juan-Pablo Vita assumes on the basis of paleographic studies that a scribe from Gezer also wrote letters for the allied rulers of Ginti-kirmil , Gath and Ashdod . He also assigned letters from Tagi (EA 266) and Jahtiru (EA 296) to this clerk. But the latter also used other scribes.

Under the Ramessids, Egypt's rule over the area was re-established. The victory stele of Merenptah reports that Gezer was conquered by the Egyptians. An ivory find at Tell Gezer, on which the name Merenptahs was found in a cartouche, supports this report.

In the book of Joshua ( Jos 10.33  EU ) a king of Gezer named Horam is mentioned, who comes to the aid of the city of Lachish , which is besieged by the Israelites under Joshua bin Nun , but is slain in the process. As a result, Gezer was conquered by the Israelites ( Jos 12.12  EU ), the Canaanite population of the place enslaved ( Jos 16.10  EU ). The city was strategically important due to its location on the border with the Philistines . It was the tribe of Ephraim slammed, but then the Levite clan of Kohath as a sanctuary awarded ( Jos 21,21  EU ).

According to the biblical report ( 2 Sam 5,25  EU ) King David struck the Philistines from Gibeon to Gezer . After the Egyptians destroyed the city, King Solomon rebuilt it ( 1 Kings 9 : 15-17  EU ).

During the Maccabees Wars , the city, now called Gazara , changed hands several times. The titular Gazera of the Roman Catholic Church goes back to a late antique bishopric . As a result, the place was abandoned and remained uninhabited until modern times. Today there is a small settlement next to the excavation site.

Ruler

  • Milkilu, Amarna period (EA 267–271)
  • Ba'lu-dānu, Amarna period (EA 293–294)
  • Japahu, Amarna Period (EA 297–300)
  • Horam in the time of Joshua

Construction of the settlement

The monumental city gate is comparable to the gate of Hazor .

Finds

Megaliths in Gezer

Ten megaliths were discovered in Gezer , which probably belonged to a temple complex.

Furthermore, thirteen stones have been found in the area so far, ten of which can be interpreted as border markings. In addition to the Greek name Alkios in the genitive (ΑΛΚΙΟΥ), they bear the Hebrew inscription Territory of Gezer (תחמגזר), which confirms the identification of Tell Gezer with the city of Gezer. The other three stones have their own names. All are dated to the Hellenistic period.

Gezer calendar

During the excavation of the tell, the so-called Gezer calendar was found, which dates back to the 10th century BC. Is dated. It is widely considered to be one of the earliest texts in the Hebrew language. It may be a calendar for determining seasonal agricultural activities. But it is also conceivable that it is a kind of folk song or student records.

literature

Final publication

  • William G. Dever, H. Darrell Lance, G. Ernest Wright: Gezer I: Preliminary Report of the 1964-66 Seasons (= Annual of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archeology I). Jerusalem 1970.
  • William G. Dever et al. a .: Gezer II: Report of the 1967-70 Seasons in Fields I and II (= Annual of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archeology II). Jerusalem 1974.
  • Seymour Gitin: Gezer III: A Ceramic Typology of the Late Iron II, Persian and Hellenistic Periods at Tell Gezer (= Annual of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archeology II). Jerusalem 1990. ISBN 965-222-202-X
  • William G. Dever: Gezer IV: The 1969-71 Seasons in Field VI, the “Acropolis” (= Annual of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archeology IV). Jerusalem 1986. ISBN 0-87820-304-4
  • Joe D. Seger: Gezer V: The Field I Caves (= Annual of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archeology V). Jerusalem 1988. ISBN 0-87820-305-2

Others

  • Immanuel Benzinger : Gazara . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VII, 1, Stuttgart 1910, Col. 887-889.
  • William G. Dever: Gezer revisited: New excavations of the Solomonic and Assyrian period defenses. In: The Biblical Archaeologist 47/4, 1984, pp. 206-218.
  • William G. Dever: Late Bronze Age and Solomonic defenses at Gezer: New evidence. In: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 262, 1986, pp. 9-34.
  • Israel Finkelstein : On archaeological methods and historical considerations: Iron Age II Gezer and Samaria. In: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 277/278, 1990, pp. 109-119.
  • John S. Holladay, Jr .: Red Slip, Burnish, and the Solomonic gateway at Gezer. In: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 277/278, 1990, pp. 23-70.
  • H. Darrell Lance: Gezer in the land and in history. In: The Biblical Archaeologist 30/2, 1967, pp. 34-47.
  • Joe D. Seger: Reflections on the gold hoard from Gezer. In: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 221, 1976 (Memorial Issue: Essays in Honor of George Ernest Wright), pp. 133-140.
  • Daniel Sivan: The Gezer Calendar and Northwest Semitic Linguistics. In: Israel Exploration Journal 48,1–2 (1998), pp. 101–105 (A recent linguistic analysis of the text [English]).
  • David Ussishkin: Notes on Megiddo, Gezer, Ashdod, and Tel Batash in the Tenth to Ninth Centuries BC In: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 277/278, 1990, 71-91.

Web links

Commons : Gezer  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikivoyage: Gezer  - travel guide

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b H. Darrell Lance, Gezer in the land and in history , in: The Biblical Archaeologist 30/2, 1967, p. 36.
  2. ↑ Yuval Goren, Hans Mommsen, Israel Finkelstein, Nadav Na'aman, A Provenance Study of the Gilgamesh Fragment from Megiddo , in: Archaeometry 51/5, 2009, pp. 763-773.
  3. ↑ Juan-Pablo Vita, Das Gezer-Corpus von El-Amarna: Extent and writer , in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 90, 2000, pp. 70-77.
  4. ↑ a b c Yuval Goren, Israel Finkelstein, Nadav Na'aman, Inscribed in clay: provenance study of the Amarna tablets and other Near Eastern texts (= Tel Aviv Monograph Series 23). Tel Aviv, Institute of Archeology, Tel Aviv University 2004, pp. 271-274.
  5. ↑ Eric Mitchell R. Adam Dodd, S. Cameron Coyle: More 'Boundary of Gezer' Inscriptions: One New and Another Rediscovered, in: Isael Exploration Journal 64 (2014), pp. 191-207.
  6. ^ But see Dennis Pardee: A Brief Case for Phoenician as the Language of the “Gezer Calendar”, in: Robert D. Holmstedt, Aaron Schade (Ed.): Linguistic Studies in Phoenician in Memory of J. Brian Peckham. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake 2013, pp. 226–246.

Coordinates: 31 ° 53 '  N , 34 ° 55'  E