Lost Tombs of the Israelite Kings - The BAS Library
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Lost Tombs of the Israelite Kings

Century-old Excavation Report Yields Startling New Discovery

By Norma Franklin

This is the story of an excavation in Massachusetts—actually in Cambridge—more specifically, in the basement of the Harvard Semitic Museum. I was trying to understand the buildings in an ancient capital of Israel. I ended up finding what may be the tombs of the kings. According to the Biblical narrative, the United Kingdom of Israel split in two in the late tenth century B.C.E., after the reigns of David and Solomon. Judah continued to be ruled by the Davidic line with its capital in Jerusalem. The northern kingdom, however, now called Israel, had to establish a new capital. The […]

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Footnotes

1.

aSee Ephraim Stern, “How Bad Was Ahab?” BAR 19:02.

Endnotes

1.

1The Harvard Expedition was followed in 1931–1935 by the so-called Joint Expedition made up of a consortium of five institutions: Harvard, the London-based Palestine Exploration Fund, the British Academy, the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. However, the Joint Expedition’s excavation did not connect to the area excavated by Harvard in the vicinity of the palace and so did not contribute to our knowledge regarding the palace’s layout or function.

2.

2Lawrence E. Stager, “Shemer’s Estate,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 277/278 (1990), pp.93–107.

3.

3I disagree with the Harvard excavators who believed that Ahab built the larger palace of Building Period II. In my view, Building Period II belongs to a much later period well after the demise of the Omride dynasty.

4.

4M. Bayliss, “The Cult of Dead Kin in Assyria and Babylonia.” Iraq 35 (1973), pp. 115–125.

5.

5R.S. Ellis, Foundation Deposits in Ancient Mesopotamia (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1968).

6.

6Y. Al-Khalesi, “The Bī¯t Kispim in Mesopotamian Architecture: Studies of Form and Function,” Mesopotamia XII (1977), pp. 53–81.

7.

7W. Andrae, Das Wiedererstandene Assur (Leipzig: Hinrichs Verlag, 1938).

8.

8J. Oates and D. Oates, Nimrud—An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed (British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 2001).