Canaanite Worship at Lachish—New Details Emerge

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Recent excavations of a temple found at Tel Lachish offer a window into Canaanite worship in the mid-12th century B.C.E., just before the powerful city-state was destroyed. Our authors examine the rich array of cultic and ritual objects found amid the destroyed remains of the site’s Northeast Temple and explain what these finds reveal about Canaanite religious practice.

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Footnotes

1. Yosef Garfinkel, Michael Hasel, and Martin G. Klingbeil, “An Ending and a Beginning,” BAR, November/December 2013.

2. Shua Kisilevitz and Oded Lipschits, “Another Temple in Judah! The Tale of Tel Moẓa,” BAR, January/February 2020.

Endnotes

1.
I wish to thank professors Yosef Garfinkel, Michael G. Hasel, and Martin G. Klingbeil, who jointly direct the renewed excavations at Lachish. Much of this text derives from their contribution to our joint publication: Itamar Weissbein, Yosef Garfinkel, Michael G. Hasel, Martin G. Klingbeil, Baruch Brandl, and Hadas Misgav, “The Level VI North-East Temple at Tel Lachish,” Levant 51.1 (2019), pp. 76–104.

2.
Olga Tufnell, Charles H. Inge, and G. Lankester Harding, Lachish II (Tell ed-Duweir): The Fosse Temple (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1940); David Ussishkin, “Area P: The Level VI Temple,” in David Ussishkin, ed., The Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (1973–1994), vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2004), pp. 215–281.

3.
Yosef Garfinkel, “Sceptres of Life-Size Divine Statues from Canaanite Lachish and Hazor,” Antiquity 94.375 (2020), pp. 669–685.

4.
Itamar Weissbein, Yosef Garfinkel, Michael G. Hasel, and Martin G. Klingbeil, “Goddesses from Canaanite Lachish,” Strata 34 (2016), pp. 41–55.

5.
Benjamin Sass, Yosef Garfinkel, Michael G. Hasel, and Martin G. Klingbeil, “The Lachish Jar Sherd: An Early Alphabetic Inscription Discovered in 2014,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 374 (2015), pp. 233–245.

6.
Gabriel Barkay and David Ussishkin, “Area S: The Late Bronze Age Strata,” in David Ussishkin, ed., Renewed Archaeological Excavations, pp. 316–410.