I. The Debate Continues

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The evidence was puzzling. There were these long, narrow rooms—three to a building (see illustrations). Each of the two side rooms was separated from the center room by a row of stone pillars, rather than a wall. Holes had been cut through the corners of some of the stone pillars. Between the stone pillars were squared-off blocks of stone into the top of which shallow basins had been cut (see illustration).

Two complexes of these puzzling buildings were found at Megiddo. In all, parts of at least 14 such buildings were excavated (see reconstruction). In front of one of the complexes was a large open space. In the center of this open space the excavators found a structure of sun-dried mudbrick about seven feet square which had been sunk into the ground about six feet deep, thus giving the appearance of a deep square pit. The pit was lined with a layer of mud plaster. The pit was as puzzling as the building complexes.

The Megiddo excavators frankly did not know what to make of it. One warm evening in the late 1920’s the senior staff of the excavation was discussing the problem, when one of the men came up with a startling suggestion that seemed to pull everything together. The buildings were found in a stratum the excavators had identified as Solomonic—the buildings were nothing less than Solomon’s Stables!^a

It fit. It fit beautifully. It fit perfectly. The pillared side rooms were just the right width for horses. The side rooms—or horse stalls as they were immediately designated—were paved with rough stones, in contrast to the fine lime plaster which invariably covered the floor of the center room. The rough stones which paved the floor of the horse stalls prevented the horses’ 012hoofs from slipping—naturally. The holes in the pillars were for tethering ropes, of course. The shallow stone basins between the pillars were mangers or feeding troughs. And what of the pit in the courtyard? That was probably a water tank for the horses.

It was not long before the archaeologists were talking of cavalry horses and officers’ horses, a veterinary establishment and a harness store, a paddock and a parade ground—all designations which ultimately found their way into the expedition’s published reports.

Not only did the archaeological evidence fit together so well, but this interpretation of the evidence was supported by the Bible itself. In 1 Kings 9:15, we are told that Solomon raised a levy of conscripted labor to build Megiddo. Later in the same chapter of Kings, we learn that Solomon built cities for his chariots and horses (1 Kings 9:19). The next chapter tells us he had 1,400 chariots and 1,200 horses which he stabled in his chariot-towns (1 Kings 10:26; see also 2 Chronicles 1:14). The inference was too much to resist. Here indeed was specific archaeological confirmation of a Biblical 013text—and the physical remains, when properly interpreted, were more romantic and breathtaking than the Biblical references would have led anyone to imagine.

Unfortunately for this theory, later excavations at Megiddo by Yigael Yadin established to the satisfaction of almost all scholars that the stratum in which the “stables” were found were not Solomonic at all. The “stable” stratum dates from the ninth century, not the tenth century B.C.; the buildings were probably built by King Ahab rather than King Solomon (“Yadin’s Popular Book On Hazor Now Available,” BAR 01:03).

This took a good deal of the romance out of the identification: “Ahab’s Stables” simply doesn’t have the same ring as “Solomon’s Stables”. Moreover, it could no longer be argued that the Bible supported the interpretation of the buildings as stables.

This led Professor James B. Pritchard of the University of Pennsylvania to reassess the whole question—were the buildings stables after all?

In 1970, Pritchard concluded that the buildings were not, and could not be, stables. Indeed, the excavators’ own reports showed that the artifacts found in the buildings were associated with human occupation, not animal occupation. This was, as the excavators had recognized, something of a problem. Twenty-two bowls, 10 storage jars, jugs, a lamp, a flask, amulets, beads, a bronze chisel, a hair pin, three spindle whorls were found in the buildings,—but nothing associated with horses. As Pritchard argues, “When one considers the ornate fittings depicted on the reliefs of Assyrian cavalry of the ninth century, it would be reasonable to expect something in the way of these trappings in an area given over to the housing of horses.” But there was nothing.

All of the evidence which the excavators cited in support of their “stable” hypothesis, Pritchard found unpersuasive: The so-called tethering holes or halterholes were sporadic, not consistent features of the pillars. In one of the two complexes of these buildings, out of 54 pillars, only 20 were pierced with holes in the corners. The other complex of buildings had no such tethering holes in the pillars.^b Even in columns with holes, the holes were sometimes pierced on the “stall” side, rather than on the center-room side of the pillar. The so-called “water tank” would not hold water, as anyone who has seen the effect of a few heavy rains on mudbrick would know; the mud plaster which lined the pit would have quickly dissolved if the pit had been filled with water. Impermeable lime plaster—used on the floor of the center rooms of the buildings—was easily available, yet it was not used to line the “water tank”. Finally, the rough stones in the “stalls” would have had an adverse effect on horses hoofs; the lime plaster of the center room would have been better. So Pritchard argued.

What of the mangers, or feeding troughs, which, as Pritchard recognized, seemed the clearest evidence for the buildings’ use as stables? Pritchard’s answer was that the depth of the “mangers” was far too shallow to serve the attributed purpose, especially since the stone mason who chiselled out the basin could easily have made it deeper: “The stone mason had cut the block to a depth of only about one-fifth of the thickness of the stone. It is obvious that such a shallow trough—only six inches—would scarcely be the most practical container for grain or other food for a horse.”

Professor Pritchard made these other telling points:

• With all the information we have from the ancient Middle East, is there anything to suggest that horses were kept in stable buildings rather than in open enclosures? “As far as I know,” says Professor Pritchard, “there is no evidence in the ancient Near East for stables.”
• The plan of the Megiddo buildings are peculiarly impractical for use as stables, something the excavators themselves noticed. Each building has a single entrance into the center room only (see plan). Each of the side rooms may be entered only from a single passageway from the center room, near the entrance to the building. This means that the horses would have to be led into the center room and then, in 014single file, led from there into the side stable rooms. The removal of the horses would be especially difficult, for they would again have to be led single file from the side stable rooms through the center room and out the single exit of the building. Worse still, the entire line of horses would have to be removed in order to get at a horse at the far end of the stable room. In short, the heavy stone “mangers” between the pillars prevented the horses from being removed between the pillars.
• Building with similar features at other sites suggested that these Megiddo buildings were not stables. At Hazor, Yigael Yadin had found a very similar long narrow building divided into three long rooms by two row of pillars. Between the pillars of the Hazor buildings, Yadin found evidence of shelves built of two rows of rubble stones, analogous to the “mangers” at Megiddo. Yadin concluded that the Hazor building was a royal warehouse. It could not be a stable because the only entrance to the building was in the corner (see plan). The stabling of horses in the far room on the opposite side of the door, would have been impractical, if not impossible.

Professor Pritchard had himself found a pillared building in his own excavation at Tell es Sa’idiyeh. It had similar shelf installations between the pillars, but the building could not have been a stable as evidenced by its size and shape. The shelf installations must have served some domestic purpose as yet unexplained.

Professor Pritchard concluded that the Megiddo buildings were probably storehouses or barracks for soldiers, but certainly not stables.

After Pritchard published his reassessment of the Megiddo buildings, the excavators of Beer-Sheva, led by Professor Yohanan Aharoni of Tel Aviv University, published plans of similar buildings which they had found in the last few years at Tell Beer-Sheva (see plan). Zeev Herzog, the member of the Beer-Sheva excavation team responsible for that area of the dig, wrote an article in which he concluded that the Beer-Sheva buildings, as well as those at Hazor, Megiddo and other sites with parallel structures, were all storehouses. True, the Beer-Sheva buildings had three outside entrances to the street which might have made it easier to use as a stable. Except for this difference, however, the plan of the Beer-Sheva buildings was remarkably similar to those at other sites—buildings with three long narrow rooms, divided by rows of stone pillars. The spaces between the pillars at Beer-Sheva were filled with unhewn stones and silt. Near the pillars, the stones were piled higher; thus a kind of compartment was created between each set of pillars. As at the other sites, the side rooms were paved with unhewn stones, while the center room was paved with plaster.

The similarity in plan suggested to Herzog that the buildings at all of these sites 017must have had the same function. And that function must have been as storehouses. This conclusion he based on the rich pottery finds discovered in the Beer-Sheva buildings. The evidence of the finds is particularly striking in that almost all of the pottery was found in the side storage rooms, rather than the center room which was used for loading and unloading. The center rooms were almost devoid of finds—just a few incidental sherds. By contrast, in the side rooms of one Beer-Sheva building were found 136 intact vessels, which included bowls, cooking pots, storage jars, flasks, jugs, juglets and a strainer. A variety of provisions such as flour, oil and wine must have been stored in these rooms. The variety of vessels suggests that buildings were in constant use. Products were brought in, measured, prepared and then taken out according to the needs of the administrative unit (civilian or military) for which they were intended. The center room served as a passageway for the transportation of goods. So suggests Herzog.

Herzog reconstructs the Beer-Sheva storehouses as indicated in the illustration (See also the illustration of the Beer-Sheva buildings). Since there was a common wall between the several storehouse buildings (see illustration), there could be no windows in the storehouse rooms. Herzog reasons that light for the siderooms came from clerestory windows above the center room; that is, the windows of the building were set in the two raised sides of the center room. The rows of pillars allowed passage of light and air to the side rooms. Structurally, the pillars supported the roof of the low side rooms and served to raise the ceiling of the center room.

Herzog identifies these storehouses with the Mishkenot or storehouses mentioned in 2 Chronicles 32:27–29: “Hezekiah built for himself … storehouses for the harvests of corn, new wine and oil.”

However, Herzog is still bothered about some of the evidence that the Megiddo buildings were used as stables—like the holes in the pillars and the “mangers” between the pillars. In Herzog’s opinion, the provisions to be stored in the side rooms, both at Megiddo and Beer-Sheva, were brought into the center room by donkey. At 018Megiddo, the donkeys were tied up through the holes in the pillars. The mangers at Megiddo and the basin installations between the pillars at Beer-Sheva, were indeed used as feeding troughs for the donkeys while they were being unpacked and loaded, says Herzog. (It is less clear why the center room at Beer-Sheva would have been used as a donkey passageway since each of the side rooms had its own outside entrance for loading and unloading.)

But the real support for the Megiddo buildings as stables comes not from Herzog, but from the most unexpected of sources—from the man who destroyed the notion that the Megiddo buildings were Solomonic, from the man who excavated the parallel buildings at Hazor with their corner entrances, from the man who regards the Hazor buildings as storehouses—Yigael Yadin. The Megiddo buildings, he says, are stables.

According to Yadin, Pritchard is wrong when he says that there is no evidence from the ancient Near East that horses were housed in stable buildings. Pritchard is also wrong, says Yadin, in his contention that the mangers are too small to be of practical use. Moreover, a text of Shalmaneser III records the fact that Ahab too had large fleets of chariots and horses, 2,000 of which he lent to fight against Shalmaneser.

Because Yadin’s argument has appeared till now only in Hebrew, we re-print in a slightly condensed form his original article on the subject which appeared in the Hebrew journal Eretz Israel. The condensation was made by BAR and is re-printed with Professor Yadin’s permission.

The evidence was puzzling. There were these long, narrow rooms—three to a building (see illustrations). Each of the two side rooms was separated from the center room by a row of stone pillars, rather than a wall. Holes had been cut through the corners of some of the stone pillars. Between the stone pillars were squared-off blocks of stone into the top of which shallow basins had been cut (see illustration). Two complexes of these puzzling buildings were found at Megiddo. In all, parts of at least 14 such buildings were excavated (see reconstruction). In front of one of […]