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The Last Days of Canaanite Azekah

By Oded Lipschits, Sabine Kleiman, Ido Koch, Karl Berendt, Vanessa Linares, Sarah Richardson, Manfred Oeming, Yuval Gadot

Excavations at Late Bronze Age Tel Azekah reveal various aspects of daily life in this Canaanite city, including its close interactions with Egypt. The gruesome discovery of four human skeletons poses questions about the final days of Azekah and how those dramatic events might be related to the Bronze Age collapse of Mediterranean civilizations.

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Endnotes

1. The site was excavated initially by Bliss and Macalister for 17 weeks in 1898 and 1899. See Sharon Napchan-Lavon, Yuval Gadot, and Oded Lipschits, “Bliss and Macalister’s Excavations at Tell Zakariya (Tel Azekah) in Light of Published and Previously Unpublished Material,” in Samuel R. Wolff, ed., Villain or Visionary? R.A.S. Macalister and the Archaeology of Palestine, Palestine Exploration Fund Annual, vol. 12 (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 2015), pp. 74–95.

2. For the absolute dating of the destruction event, see Lyndelle C. Webster et al., “Preliminary Radiocarbon Results for Late Bronze Age Strata at Tel Azekah and Their Implications,” Radiocarbon 60.1 (2017), pp. 1–23.

3.
This essay particularly draws on the research detailed in masters’ theses by Karl Berendt, Vanessa Linares, Barnea Selavan, and Sarah Richardson.

4. For a complete history of the site, see Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot, and Manfred Oeming, “Tel Azekah 113 Years After—Preliminary Evaluation of the Renewed Excavations at the Site,” Near Eastern Archaeology 75.4 (2012), pp. 196–206; Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot, and Manfred Oeming, “Tel Azekah after Four Seasons of Excavations: Expected and (especially) Unexpected Results,” in Oded Lipschits and Aren M. Maeir, eds., The Shephelah During the Iron Age: Recent Archaeological Studies (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017), pp. 1–25. On Azekah’s history in the Late Bronze Age, see Yuval Gadot, Sabine Kleiman, and Oded Lipschits, “A Tale of Two Cities: Tel Azekah and Tell es-Safi/Gath During the Late Bronze Age,” in Itzhaq Shai et al., eds., Tell It in Gath: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Israel. Essays in Honor of A.M. Maeir on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, Ëgypten und Altes Testament (Wiesbaden: Ugarit-Verlag, forthcoming).

5. For the relative dating of the building, see Sabine Kleiman, Yuval Gadot, and Oded Lipschits, “A Snapshot of the Destruction Layer of Tel Azekah Seen Against the Backdrop of the Final Days of the Late Bronze Age,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 132.2 (2016), pp. 105–133.

6.
See Ido Koch et al., “Amulets in Context: A View from Late Bronze Age Tel Azekah,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 16 (2017), pp. 9–24.