Footnotes

1.

Shishak is his name in the Bible (2 Chronicles 12:2). In Egyptian sources he is called Sheshonq.

2.

Over time, this would change. At the foot of the ancient tell lie the fabulous remains of the largest and best-preserved Roman-Byzantine city in Israel. See “Glorious Beth-Shean,” BAR 16:04.

3.

See the following BAR articles by Hershel Shanks: “Where Is the Tenth Century?” BAR 24:02, and “Mickey Mouse Operation,” BAR 25:02.

5.

For a traditional view of the situation at Hazor, for example, see Amnon Ben-Tor, “Excavating Hazor—Part I: Solomon’s City Rises from the Ashes,” BAR 25:02.

Endnotes

1.

The excavations at Tel Rehov are carried out on behalf of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The excavations are directed by Amihai Mazar and sponsored by John Camp, who is also the field photographer of the expedition. The core staff includes Adi Asudri; SeJin Koh; Robert Mullins; Nava Panitz-Cohen; Amir Sumakai-Pink and Dalit Weinblatt. Maria Caplan is the surveyor.

2.

Shmuel Ahituv (Canaanite Toponyms in Ancient Egyptian Documents [Jerusalem: Magness Press and Brill, 1984], pp. 163–165) classifies the Egyptian sources as referring to three cities of that name: one in the Akko Valley, a second in the northern part of Western Galilee, and the third in the Beth-Shean Valley.

3.

“A Campaign of Seti I in Northern Palestine,” in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ANET), 3rd ed., ed. James B. Pritchard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), p. 253.

4.

Papyrus Anastasi 1, in Pritchard, ANET, p. 477.

5.

A.W. McNicoll et al. in Pella in Jordan 2, Mediterranean Archaeology Supplement 2 (Sydney, Australia: Meditarch, 1992), pp. 97–100, pls. 70–71.

6.

Israel Finkelstein, “The Archaeology of the United Monarchy: An Alternative View,” Levant 28 (1996), pp. 177–187; Amihai Mazar, “Iron Age Chronology: A Reply to I. Finkelstein,” Levant 29 (1997), pp. 157–167. For Finkelstein’s reply to this response, see Finkelstein, “Bible Archaeology or Archaeology of Palestine in the Iron Age? A Rejoinder,” Levant 30 (1998), pp. 167–173. In this rejoinder, Finkelstein preaches against anchoring archaeological phenomena in Biblical data, yet he does exactly that by using the destruction of Jezreel as a datum point for his Achronology!

7.

A test was made on an olive tree, but it apparently was from a very old tree since it dated to a much earlier period (1400–1260 B.C.E.). For this reason, we ignore it here. An elm tree has a much shorter life. The carbon 14 dates were made in the laboratories of the University of Arizona and the Weizmann Institute, Israel.

8.

For further reading, see A. Mazar, “The 1997–1998 Excavations at Tel Rehov: Preliminary Report,” Israel Exploration Journal 49 (1999), pp. 1–42. The article is available on the Web at .