Into the Heart of Moab: Excavations at Khirbet Balu‘a

FRIEDBERT NINOW / BALU‘A REGIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT

Moab, the biblical land east of the Dead Sea, appears regularly in the Bible but has not received the same archaeological attention as other biblical kingdoms, such as Ammon to the north and Israel, Judah, and Philistia to the west. Based primarily on the famous ninth-century BCE Mesha Stele, discovered in 1868 at the site of Dhiban (biblical Dibon),^a we have only a skeleton history of the Moabite kingdom, including the names of some of its kings, descriptions of a few battles, a broad understanding of its religion focused on the god Chemosh, and some ideas about its social organization.

Still to be unpacked are details of day-to-day life in the Moabite kingdom, including its urban and rural settlements, local economy, trade, household religion, and burial customs. These more local aspects of history are, in fact, where archaeology tends to shine, illuminating the nooks and crannies of everyday life and the lived background to the Bible and its stories. And it is this history that is now being uncovered at Balu‘a, the largest Iron Age site in Moab.

COURTESY OF APAAME / PHOTO BY DAVID KENNEDY

Balu‘a is located approximately 15 miles east of the southern part of the Dead Sea and 40 miles southwest of Amman, the capital of modern Jordan. The site lies on the northern edge of the Karak Plateau at the mouth of the Wadi al-Balu‘a, which eventually empties into the majestic Wadi Mujib, known in the Bible as the Arnon River. It is also just 3 miles from a volcano known as Jebel Shihan. The extensive basalt created by Shihan’s ancient lava flows is visible everywhere in the stone construction at Balu‘a and has probably long played a role in the region’s fertility, which may be reflected in the biblical story of Ruth.

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Balu‘a’s controlling position at the head of a major pass through the Arnon is the site’s most critical feature. The site covers nearly 40 acres, though some areas appear to have been developed only in specific periods, such as the Iron Age settlement at the center of the site and the medieval Islamic remains to the southwest. Excavations have uncovered Iron Age, Persian, Hellenistic, Nabatean, and middle and late Islamic remains.

Some scholars have suggested Balu‘a is biblical Ar or Ar-Moab (Numbers 21:15, 28; Deuteronomy 2:9, 18, 29; Isaiah 15:1), a place described as being at the border of Moab and near a streambed. This identification remains uncertain as the Bible does not clearly indicate whether Ar is a city, a region, or both. Others have suggested Balu‘a is the unnamed “city in the midst of the wadi [Arnon]” (Deuteronomy 2:36; Joshua 13:9, 16), which is described as part of the southern extent of the land that the Israelites conquered from Sihon the Amorite. A third proposal sees a reference to Balu‘a in Genesis 14. In this account, five kings from the Dead Sea area confront Chedorlaomer and the kings of the east. One is designated “the king of Bela‘, which is Zoar” (Genesis 14:2, 8). Although the resemblance to Balu‘a’s name is intriguing, the lack of geographic details precludes confirmation.¹

ERICH LESSING / ART RESOURCE, NY

Another place we might expect to find a reference to Balu‘a is the Mesha Stele, which recounts the wars and territorial gains of King Mesha of Moab against the king of Israel (cf. 2 Kings 3). While there is no clear reference to Balu‘a in the stela, line 26 states that Mesha built Aroer (identified with the site of Arair on the northern lip of the Arnon) and made a road through the Arnon. Mesha does not name a site on the south side of the Arnon in connection with this road, but Balu‘a very well could have been this sister site, since it could easily control and monitor caravans (or armies) passing through the massive gorge.

Such is the limited textual information we have about the site. But what do we learn from archaeology? The first excavations at Balu‘a were prompted by the discovery in 1930 of the famous Balu‘a Stele, found head down in the rubble on the north side of the large building (the Qasr, see below) at the highest part of the site. The Balu‘a Stele is an irregularly shaped basalt stone that stands nearly 6 feet tall. An upper register carries several lines of indecipherable text, below which is a carved relief of what most consider to be a royal investiture scene employing Egyptian artistic conventions. It probably dates to the end of the Late Bronze Age or Iron Age I (c. 13th–11th centuries BCE), though some date it later.² The striking nature of the stela prompted a few simple trial excavations in 1932, which uncovered Iron Age II pottery (ninth–sixth centuries BCE) and a building containing large late Iron Age storage jars.

Some 50 years later, a German archaeological team uncovered additional Iron Age structures, including segments of a casemate wall running along the rim of Wadi al-Balu‘a. During these excavations, two inscriptions dated to the eighth–seventh centuries BCE were found. The first, written on a fragment of a basalt vessel, has only four preserved letters—tav, mem, lamed, kaph—which can be read in several different ways depending on what other letters are assumed to have been part of the text. It could contain part of a personal name and title (such as [kmšy]t mlk [m’b], “Kemoshyat, king of Moab”) or reference a royal palace ([b]t mlk, “house of the king”) or even a member of the Moabite royal family ([’š]t mlk, “wife of the king”).³

The second inscription, incised on a basalt pestle, reads, “We made the pestle for the chief of the sons of the spring, the firstborn with his house.” The inscription probably identifies the head of a clan or group charged with managing water for the settlement, including its many cisterns. Such water management and infrastructure was critical to the survival of both large and small settlements throughout ancient Moab and Israel.⁴

Excavations in 2008 unearthed a fragment of a volute (or proto-Aeolic) capital carved from basalt that was reused in a later Nabatean-period structure at the site. Such decorative architectural elements are well known from sites in Jordan (Mudaybi, Karak, and Amman) as well as in Israel and the West Bank (Jerusalem, Megiddo, Ramat Rahel, and Samaria). They appear in different types of royal and administrative buildings but are usually dated to the eighth and seventh centuries BCE.

JENNA L. T YSON, USING MUDAYBI VOLUTE MD-5 AS A MODEL

FRIEDBERT NINOW / BALU‘A REGIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT

Since 2017, excavation at Balu‘a has continued under the Balu‘a Regional Archaeological Project (BRAP), which seeks to understand the organization and experience of human life at Balu‘a and the role the site played in the socio-econ­omic and political history of Moab. The BRAP excavations have focused on several areas of the site that contain Iron Age remains. We have termed these three areas the Qasr, the House, and the Wall.

UDO WORSCHECH

FRIEDBERT NINOW

The Qasr (Arabic for “fortress”) is a large, monumental building that measures approximately 140 by 115 feet, with walls more than 6 feet thick and standing to a height of more than 20 feet. Positioned at the highest point of the site, the Qasr was presumably of some importance even though we do not yet know its function (e.g., palace, temple). The main goal of the Qasr excavation was to date its initial construction. To achieve this, we opened a probe on the northern side of the Qasr close to where the first trial excavations were conducted in the 1930s. We uncovered parts of two buildings: a late Iron Age building (c. sixth century BCE) with large storage jars embedded in the floor, and an earlier Iron Age pillared building (ninth–eighth centuries BCE) where an intact figurine of the Egyptian dwarf god Pataikos was found. We eventually reached the Qasr’s foundation, which we dated by pottery to the Iron Age IIB, or roughly the ninth–eighth centuries BCE.

At the House, excavations revealed a large domestic structure. Its earliest phase dates to the 11th–10th centuries BCE, though most of the excavated architecture dates to the Iron Age IIB (ninth–eighth centuries BCE). Work has focused on enlarging the exposure of the building as well as understanding its phasing and destruction, although its full size and extent is not yet known. Three doors with intact lintels were found between the building’s excavated rooms. Much of the Iron Age IIB structure was preserved under an undisturbed destruction layer. The floors and debris contained an assemblage of pottery, grinding stones, lithics, copper slag, glass beads, and figurines. The house was possibly destroyed by an earthquake, as its walls shifted and collapsed in a noticeable pattern.

At the Wall, we excavated the site’s major Iron Age fortification. The earliest phase consisted of a single large wall dated to the 11th century. By the tenth century, a parallel wall and interior stub walls were added to form a casemate system that created a wall more than 20 feet thick. Domestic materials, including grinding stones and nearly 50 loom weights, indicate the spaces between the walls were likely used as houses or workrooms. The wall’s latest phase, dated to the sixth–fifth centuries BCE, included towers built on top of the casemate fortification system. By this time, the city had expanded significantly and the wall served to separate the original settlement from the area of new building to the east.

No single destruction event is visible across the excavated areas of the site. Some structures, like the House, appear to have been destroyed during a single event, while other remains seem to have collapsed during a more gradual abandonment. As such, we still do not know exactly how or why the Iron Age settlement at Balu‘a came to an end. Portions of the Iron Age site continued to be settled into the Persian and Hellenistic periods, and the site expanded to the west of the Iron Age ruins during the Roman and Islamic periods.

COURTESY FRIEDBERT NINOW, BALU‘A REGIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT

BALU‘A REGIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT

What do the excavations at Balu‘a contribute to our understanding of the world of the Hebrew Bible? The major period of Iron Age IIB occupation that we have identified fits nicely with what we know of the emergence of the Moabite kingdom from the Bible and the Mesha Stele. In Israel, the Omride kings of the mid-ninth century, especially Omri and Ahab, played a major role in building the economic and military strength of the Northern Kingdom. Their efforts resulted in major building projects and significant conflicts with Assyria, Aram-Damascus, and Moab.

COURTESY FRIEDBERT NINOW, BALU‘A REGIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT

Similarly, as suggested by the Mesha Stele, the Moabite kingdom’s first major period of expansion came in the ninth century. Mesha’s claim that he made a road through the Arnon points to what we know from many other times and places: that navigable and safe roads are critical to economic and social development. Given its strategic position on a tributary of the Arnon, Balu‘a must have played a role in Mesha’s strategic planning. Indeed, the ninth-century date for the construction of the Qasr and significant phases of both the House and the Wall suggests Balu‘a developed in tandem with the rise of the Moabite kingdom, possibly under Mesha. Even as the Assyrian Empire came to dominate much of the region in the eighth and seventh centuries, Balu‘a continued to serve as a strategic center for the Moabite kingdom. In particular, the inscriptions and volute capital found at the site suggest that the kingdom’s rulers and officials were part of a broader culture of ruling elites stimulated by Assyrian imperialism, regional competition, and long-distance trade.

The BRAP excavations will help fill in some of the blank spots in the history of ancient Moab. What social, political, and religious factors gave rise to the Moabite kingdom during the Iron Age? Was the monumental Qasr, which we now know was built in the ninth century, a Moabite bastion, temple, or palace? Finally, were the cities and towns of biblical Moab destroyed in a sudden catastrophe, or was their decline more gradual? Our excavations at Balu‘a have a real chance at providing answers to these and many other intriguing questions.

Despite Moab’s proximity to Israel and Judah and its prominence in the biblical account, we still know little about this ancient kingdom east of the Jordan. A more fulsome picture is coming to light thanks to excavations at the site of Khirbet Balu‘a, one of the largest Moabite sites ever discovered. Journey into the heart of Moab to see what archaeology has revealed about this ancient city and its connections to the biblical past.