Khirbet Bet Ley

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Coordinates: 31 ° 33 ′ 49 ″  N , 34 ° 55 ′ 41 ″  E

Map: Israel
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Khirbet Bet Ley​
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Israel

Khirbet Bet Ley is an archaeological site in Israel eight kilometers east of Lachish near the Green Line .

During road works in 1961, two chamber tombs carved into the rock were found on the eastern slope of Khirbet Bet Ley. One of the two caves consists of an anteroom and two lateral burial chambers (south and west side) with surrounding stone benches. A third, northern chamber is unfinished, only the carved door frame exists. Skeletons and smaller pieces of jewelry were found in situ as grave goods in the chambers . In the anteroom, drawings of warriors and ships as well as seven short inscriptions in Old Hebrew have been carved into the limestone. Due to the material and the apparently fleeting execution of the inscriptions, however, they are difficult to decipher and interpret and can hardly be determined palaeographically . Nevertheless, numerous researchers date the inscriptions to around 700 BC. BC, some authors, however, in the late royal period or even in the fourth century BC. Since no pottery was found in the grave itself, an archaeological classification is difficult. The type of grave complex corresponds more to the pre-exilic model. Persian ceramics in front of the grave probably only came to their place after the grave was sealed and thus represent more of a terminus ante quem .

The drawings, especially the depiction of a possibly Assyrian army camp, are often associated with the conquest of the kingdom of Judah by Sennacherib . The content of the inscriptions, however, is too unspecific to provide any information.

literature

  • N. Haas: Human Skeletal Remains in Two Burial Caves. In: Israel Exploration Journal 13 (1963), pp. 93-96.
  • Joseph Naveh: Old Hebrew Inscriptions in a Burial Cave. In: Israel Exploration Journal 13 (1963), pp. 74-92.
  • Johannes Renz; Wolfgang Röllig : Handbook of old Hebrew epigraphy I: The old Hebrew inscriptions 1. Text and commentary. Darmstadt 1995, pp. 242-251.
  • Pekka Särkiö: Call for help to Yahweh from hiding. A new interpretation of the inscription yšr mḥr from Ḫirbet Bēt Lēy. In: Journal of the German Palestine Association 113 (1997), pp. 39–60.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the information in Renz / Röllig 1995, p. 243 and Särkiö 1997, p. 40f.