The Search for Biblical Heshbon

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In 1968 Siegfried Horn of Andrews University began large-scale excavations at a site everyone thought was Biblical Heshbon. This was Tell Hesban (or Hisban). Horn, his chief archaeologist, Roger Boraas of Upsala College, and other staff members had participated in the influential Shechem excavations led by the dean of American archaeologists at that time, G. Ernest Wright of Harvard University. The Hesban dig was the largest ever to be fielded in Jordan up to that time.

By uncovering this 50-acre mound about 15 miles southwest of Amman, the modern capital of Jordan, Horn hoped to find evidence of the Israelite defeat of the Amorite king Sihon as recounted in Numbers 21:21–32. The era’s archaeological giants, such as William F. Albright, Roland de Vaux, Martin Noth and Wright, all encouraged Horn to dig at Hesban for this reason.

According to Numbers, when the Israelites were approaching the Promised Land at the end of their 40-year trek from Egypt, they had to pass through the lands east of the Jordan to get to the river. They sent a message to the Amorite king Sihon that they would not even drink from the wells. Sihon responded by engaging the Israelites in battle. But the Israelites were victorious, burning Sihon’s capital city, Heshbon, and settling the tribe of Reuben in the land of the Amorites.

Horn wanted, among other things, to dig up that Israelite destruction. Although it was hotly debated, most American archaeologists at that time visualized the conquest as a monolithic invasion of Canaan by a coalition of tribes known as Israel at the end of the Late Bronze Age, about 1550–1200 B.C.E. Although Horn was looking for evidence of a conquest about 200 years earlier in the Late Bronze Age than most archaeologists,^a he and other archaeologists fully expected Hesban to produce a significant destruction layer dated to the Late Bronze Age, which could be ascribed to the Israelites.

But it was not to be. Along with other sites connected with the Israelite conquest of Canaan, such as Jericho and Ai,^b Hesban produced no evidence whatsoever of any Late Bronze Age remains, let alone of a destruction from the Israelite conquest. Recently, however, James Sauer of Harvard’s Semitic Museum, the team’s pottery chronologist, has been studying the pottery in more detail. He now suspects that a few of the small, simple broken pieces of pottery (potsherds) dug up by the excavation belong to the Late Bronze Age.

But these are very few in number, and no remains of houses, walls or floors from that time were found. The Late Bronze Age pottery is mixed in with later deposits. If there was a settlement at Hesban when the Israelites passed through, it probably was very small, certainly not what we imagine a capital city to be. Needless to say, Horn and many others were disappointed.

But Sihon’s Heshbon refused to die completely. Horn instituted a regional survey to study the archaeological remains in the whole Hesban region. The team’s many agenda items included a search for any Late Bronze Age remains. Perhaps Horn was excavating the wrong site. He also tapped the expertise of numerous professionals in a whole range of disciplines, from geologists to anthropologists, helping to pioneer the multidisciplinary approach to archaeology that many digs use today.

When Horn retired after three seasons at 037Hesban, his successor, Lawrence Geraty, also of Andrews University, directed the project through its last two seasons, expanding the multidisciplinary aspect of the team and conducting probes over a wide area, leaving no major area untouched. Still, no Late Bronze Age remains could be found.

Although Tell Hesban did not produce very many Bronze or Iron Age remains (but note the large pool mentioned in the preceding article), it was a gold mine for the later periods. It included a large Hellenistic fortress, perhaps built by one of the Hasmoneans (c. 150–63 B.C.E.). The early Roman period (63 B.C.E. to 135 C.E.) saw the beginnings of village and town life, while during the late Roman period (c. 135–330 C.E.), it grew into a full-fledged city called Esbus, complete with a temple and its own coinage.

During the Byzantine period (c. 330–650 C.E.), it had at least two churches, each with fine mosaic floors, and it even had its own bishop. The Christian city continued into the Omayyad, or early Islamic period (c. 650–750 C.E.), but gradually faded, as did most of Palestine, during Abbasid times (c. 750–970 C.E. in Palestine) when the caliphate moved from Damascus to Baghdad. But when Ayyubid and Mameluke military leaders from Egypt held power during the Middle Ages (c. 1175–1516 C.E.), another prosperous town covered the site.

Because Horn’s and Geraty’s teams had carefully excavated these late remains, deeming them as important as earlier “Biblical” remains, Hesban became a major type site for the archaeology of Jordan in the late historical periods. It also trained many young Jordanian archaeologists and provided a springboard for other archaeologists who now direct excavations in Jordan.

The Hesban project ended with an intact group of young archaeologists, led by Geraty, who credit Horn as their intellectual father. The team’s most dynamic force was Øystein LaBianca, an anthropologist at Andrews, who, while still a student, moved the Hesban excavations into the so-called New Archaeology, as practiced in North America.¹

As this new brood of young Turks looked for a new site to excavate, we (I must now include myself in the story) were still bothered by the lost city of Sihon’s Heshbon. Although this was not, by any means, our primary concern, we often wondered if Biblical Heshbon could be located elsewhere.

The Hesban survey had located only four Late Bronze Age sites within a six-mile radius of Hesbon. And only one of those was large enough to be considered a candidate for a capital city: Tell Jalul, about five miles south of Heshban and directly east of Madaba (pronounced MAH-dah-bah). It was the largest site in Jordan south of Amman. Moreover, our survey had told us that it contained pottery from all of the Bronze and Iron Ages. Squatting in the dead center of the Madaba Plain like a brooding hen, it had enticed archaeologists for decades, but no one had put trowel and pick to it.

The presence of pottery from all the early periods and the absence of evidence from the later periods was attractive to us because, by excavating it, we could combine what we already knew of the later periods from Hesban with new finds from the earlier periods at Jalul. We could thus reconstruct a complete history for the region from about 3000 B.C.E. to the present. Plus, we could not avoid asking the question: Could Jalul just possibly be Sihon’s Heshbon?

And so, renaming ourselves the Madaba Plains Project, we mounted an expedition to the site in 1982. That year the Israelis invaded Lebanon, causing nervousness throughout the Middle East; there were silly stories about the Ark of the Covenant having been found near Madaba;^c and there was political instability in Madaba. As a result, after several of us were already in Jordan, our dig was canceled, and we were told the site would be unavailable to us for the foreseeable future.

We regrouped with the same basic goals minus the side issue of the location of Sihon’s Heshbon. Fortunately, we were able to find another site on the northern edge of the Madaba Plain with Bronze and Iron Age occupation. It had actually been rediscovered by the Hesban survey in 1974. In 1984, Geraty led a large-scale project to Tell el-‘Umeiri, a site of about 11 acres located immediately west of the airport freeway, about six miles south of Amman. The forested Amman National Park borders the site on two sides.

The modern name of the site has nothing to do with its ancient name, but according to Donald Redford of the University of Toronto, who studied an itinerary of King Tuthmose III through our region, it may be Abel-Keramim of Judges 11:33.² Four seasons of excavation by the largest team to work in Jordan have now taken place at ‘Umeiri. During each season there were hinterland excavations at smaller sites, as well as a multifaceted regional survey.^d

The site has produced a block of houses and streets from the Early Bronze Age (c. 2500 B.C.E.), A massive rampart fortification system from the end of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600 B.C.E.), a few weak walls from the Late Bronze Age (13th century B.C.E.), one of the best-preserved early Iron I cities in all of Palestine (12th century B.C.E.) and a governmental administrative center from the end of the Iron Age (c. 650 B.C.E. and later). The preceding article describes the important results from this last settlement.

But the story does not stop here. In 1989 we also began digging at another important Iron Age site near ‘Umeiri named Tell Jawa, under the leadership of Michele Daviau of Wilfrid Laurier University. This has now become a major independent project. But the most significant development for us is that finally, in 1992, our initial dreams were fulfilled when we received the green light to excavate Tell Jalul. Randall Younker of Andrews University now directs a new, young team digging at that site for us.

The Madaba Plains Project seeks to understand the history of the people of Jordan in the southern region of the ancient Ammonites, where the hills of Ammon—on which Hesban and ‘Umeiri are perched—meet the Madaba Plain with Jalul at its center. Because the region is a climatic and geographical frontier between the desert and the sown area, as well as an ancient political border between the Ammonites and Moabites during the Iron Age, people lived there in broad cycles of settled life interspersed with periods of nomadism.

When people settled down, they were able to tame the temperamental forces of nature and develop a system of food production that allowed considerable luxury, similar to that of western Palestine and Syria. But a combination of factors, from small climatic changes to political 068instability, periodically broke the system, resulting in a precipitous decline in prosperity. In order to live, people abandoned their houses and fields and followed their flocks, which could produce a living more quickly and with less capital investment.

Our questions today are very different than the ones Horn asked when he began the project 25 years ago. We are concerned much more with the way people lived in the ancient world, and not so much with Sihon’s Heshbon (although we would still love to find it, if it’s there). New people and new times bring changes. But, at the age of 85, Siegfried Horn still keeps an eye on our work and would have it no other way.

In 968 Siegfried Horn of Andrews University began large-scale excavations at a site everyone thought was Biblical Heshbon. This was Tell Hesban (or Hisban). Horn, his chief archaeologist, Roger Boraas of Upsala College, and other staff members had participated in the influential Shechem excavations led by the dean of American archaeologists at that time, G. Ernest Wright of Harvard University. The Hesban dig was the largest ever to be fielded in Jordan up to that time. By uncovering this 50-acre mound about 15 miles southwest of Amman, the modern capital of Jordan, Horn hoped to find evidence of the […]