Yigael Yadin Finds a Bama at Beer-Sheva

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On my last visit to Jerusalem, I stopped in to see Yigael Yadin—as I always do. It was a fascinating hour—as it always is.

This time, he told me how he found what he believes to be a bama^a destroyed by King Josiah—and found it in someone else’s dig.

I sat enthralled, listening to this great scholar—lean, crisp, precise and articulate, puffing his pipe, eyes dancing, jumping up to pull a book from the shelf to find a quotation or drive home a point.

His claim to have found the bama is sure to be disputed by the Beer-Sheva team of excavators. But that is for a later issue of the BAR, not this one.

Yadin began by telling me about Josiah.

Josiah was the last great king of Judah. He reigned from about 640 to 609 B.C. The Bible tells us that “he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and he walked in all the ways of David his father, swerving neither to the right nor to the left” (2 Kings 22:2; 2 Chronicles 34:2). Josiah surpassed those who went before him and those who went after, as we are told: “There was no king before him who had turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might as he did, according to all the laws of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him” (2 Kings 23:25).

His reign was accompanied not only by a territorial expansion, but also by a spiritual revival. He restored the temple (2 Kings 22:5; 2 Chronicles 34:8). He reinstituted the Passover, whose observance had fallen into desuetude (2 Kings 23:21–23; 2 Chronicles 35:18). And he centralized worship in Jerusalem, suppressing cultic installations elsewhere and abolishing idolatry (2 Kings 23:4–20; 2 Chronicles 34:3–7).

While the Temple was being cleansed and repaired, a great law book was discovered (2 Kings 22:8; 2 Chronicles 34:14), which is generally considered by scholars to have been the book of Deuteronomy, written in the time of Josiah.

Yadin told me that one evening while studying the Biblical passages relating to this great king, he read a verse he had read many times before—but suddenly he read it in a new light. The verse was 2 Kings 23:8. He pulled his Bible from the shelf and read to me:

“He [Josiah] brought all the priests from the cities of Judah and destroyed the bamot where the priests had burnt sacrifices, from Geba to Beersheba, and dismantled the bamot of the gate that was in front of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, to the left of the city gate as one enters.”

This reference to a specific bama^b of the gate that was in front of the gate of Joshua, to the left of the city gate has unanimously been taken by scholars to be a bama in Jerusalem. The verses both before and after the verse Yadin read to me record Josiah’s suppression of pagan practices in Jerusalem and its surroundings; so it is perfectly logical to assume that this particular bama to the left of the city gate refers to a bama in Jerusalem.

But, Yadin told me, as he studied the verse in isolation, it did not seem to him to refer to Jerusalem. The reference to this specific bama “in front of the gate of Joshua … to the left of the city gate” followed immediately upon a statement about the many bamot where the priests had burnt sacrifices “from Geba to Beersheba.” Could it be, Yadin wondered, that the specific bama described in this verse was the bama at Beer-Sheva, the city named immediately before the reference to the specific bama?

As he had thought about it, he told me, it seemed to him that the specific bama referred to could not be in Jerusalem: no Joshua gate is mentioned in connection with Jerusalem in any other source. It is unlikely that a Jerusalem gate would be named after a governor. It is unlikely that a bama would be located inside the city of Jerusalem; in fact, there is no other reference to a bama inside the holy city. Perhaps most compelling is the fact that the Biblical narrator finds it necessary to tell us that this bama is not only in front of the Joshua gate, but also “to the left of the city gate as one enters.” These are very specific directions. Certainly a bama for sacrifices inside Jerusalem would be well known; why would the Biblical narrator find it necessary to describe its location so exactly if it were in Jerusalem. For these reasons, Yadin told me, he concluded that the bama referred to in the Biblical text was not located in Jerusalem.

Verse 8 is obviously an interpolation in the general flow of the text—which deals with Josiah’s activities in Jerusalem and its surrounding—so perhaps it is proper to look at the sentence in isolation, Yadin reasoned. The subject of the verse is the bamot from Geba to Beer-Sheva, the last place mentioned before reference to the specific bama. The location of the specific bama, “in front of the gate of Joshua, the governor of the city” may have indicated that the Governor’s house in Beer-Sheva was located near the city gate, and that gate was therefore called after him; close by was the bama, located on the left hand side as one entered the city gate.

Whether or not this Biblical verse actually refers to the bama of Beer-Sheva, Yadin cannot be sure. It seems to him likely that it does. But whether or not this is so, it was this reading of the verse that led him to discover—on independent archaeological grounds—what he believes to be the actual bama of Beer-Sheva which Josiah defiled.

When Yadin first read verse 8 as referring to the bama of Beer-Sheva, he immediately reexamined the Beer-Sheva excavation report,^c turning to the plan of the great Iron Age II city, the last city to be built on the tell.

His eye followed the circular street which ran around the perimeter of the city, parallel to the casemate city wall^d (see plan). Then he focused on the four-chambered city gate. In his mind he walked through the gate and arrived at the broad open area which the excavator Yohanan Aharoni refers to as the “city-square” (p. 14) and which Aharoni associates with the Biblical rehav sh’ar ha’ir, the “street of the city gate” of 2 Chronicles 32:6.

After walking through the gate and crossing the square, one arrives on the left at a building “much larger than the ordinary building” (see plan). It measures 49 feet by 58 feet. This building, Aharoni tells us, “consists of three long halls [A, B and C] with a row of pillars flanked by living quarters. The western wall of the halls, with its three doors, is built of ashlar masonry creating a monumental facade” (p 14). Professor Aharoni concluded—and Yadin agrees—that this building was “perhaps the residence of the city-ruler”, or to use the Biblical term sar ha’ir (p. 14). If the Biblical passage in Kings does indeed refer to the bama of Beer-Sheva, this building must have been the official residence of Joshua governor of the city. (He is, of course, a different Joshua than the one who served with Moses and led the Israelite armies as described in the book of Joshua.)

But what really interested Yadin was the building opposite the governor’s residence “to the left of the city gate as one enters”. That is where, if Yadin’s reading of the Biblical text was right, the bama of Beer-Sheva was located when Josiah tore it down.

As Yadin is quick to point out, Aharoni says very little about this building in the one paragraph he devotes to it (p. 14). Apparently, says Yadin, the building presented something of a problem to Aharoni. The building itself consists of four rooms (1 through 4), with two additional rooms (5 and 6) in the adjacent casemate wall (see plan). The second and third rooms (as numbered in the plan) are separated from one another by a row of pillars rather than a wall. The particular room in this building which was of special interest to Yadin was the first room as one enters—or, as Yadin believes it to be, the courtyard. At the middle of the northern wall of this first room (or courtyard) is a low stairway installation. It consists of four steps beside the northern wall, the stairway then takes a 90-degree turn left into the middle of the room (see illustrations). According to Aharoni’s excavation report, this “staircase, made of stone slabs, started in the middle of the first room, but unfortunately the rest of it was destroyed by a Hellenistic silo [which had been built above it at a later period].” The location of this staircase was difficult for Aharoni to explain:

“The location of a stairway in the middle of the room is unusual, and only makes sense were it to have continued beside the pillars [separating rooms 2 and 3] in the direction of this city [casemate] wall; it must, therefore have been a long staircase ascending to a considerable height. Apparently this was the principal staircase leading to the top of the casemate wall and from there to the roof of the gatetower” (p. 14).

Yadin points out that Aharoni says not another word about this building critically located to the left of the main city gate and opposite the governor’s house.

“If there is one thing certain,” Yadin told me, “it is that the stairway found in this building cannot have followed the path suggested by Professor Aharoni. From the first step to the near side of the casemate city wall is about 50 feet. The stairs are only about 2½ feet wide. No side walls were found on the stairway to support or retain it [see illustration]. How could a freestanding staircase so narrow stretch for 50 feet and rise to a height of about 20 feet [the assumed height of the casemate city wall]? And why should a staircase to the top of the city wall be built in such an unusual way? Clearly the stairs must have led elsewhere and served a different function than that suggested by the excavator.”

Yadin was to return to these stairs, but next he pointed out to me from his well-thumbed Beer-Sheva excavation report another feature of the city gate area, a “drain, leading towards the gate” (p. 14). Aharoni has described this drain:

“One of the outstanding technological achievements of the city was discovered in the area of the gate: the central drainage canal leading toward the gate. Stone-built channels, covered by stone slabs, were found beneath the street surface; these were fed from plastered gutters in the walls of the houses. The channels became larger as they approached the gate.”^e

These channels can be seen on Aharoni’s plans, indicated by dotted lines (see plan). “Strangely enough,” says Yadin, “Aharoni does not comment on the fact that the main, large channel comes out of the building with the steps, the building to the left of the city gate.^f Moreover, the large channel from this building does not lead from a plaster gutter in a wall [as Aharoni suggests in the quotation above], but from the immediate vicinity of the steps.”

“Why is a main drainage channel coming from the middle of a room—and a strange room at that, one with a peculiar narrow set of stairs in the middle of it?” Yadin asked. He proceeded to answer his own question.

“The answer is obvious, is it not? The puzzling steps led not to the city wall, but to a sacrificial altar! The oversized drainage channel carried away the large amounts of blood and water connected with the ritual performed on and around the altar [see 1 Kings 18:32, 1 Kings 18:35]. This building was the bama of Beer-Sheva opposite the governor’s house to the left of the city gate as one enters. It is this bama which King Josiah destroyed in the late 7th century, as described in the Bible.”

Other evidence at Beer-Sheva is consistent with this conclusion, Yadin told me. Between the room with the stairs and the city gate is another room (room X on the plan), which “was found packed with straw to a height of 3 m,” according to the excavation report (p. 14). This room may well have been used to store wood and straw for the altar and even as a hayloft for the animals to be sacrificed, Yadin believes.

But the most dramatic support for Yadin’s contention that the building to the left of the city gate was in fact the bama that Josiah destroyed comes, he said, from the most dramatic find in seven seasons of excavation at Tell Beer-Sheva: The large horned altar found in secondary use as part of a wall. (This impressive altar has already been described for BAR readers. See “Horned Altar for Animal Sacrifice Unearthed at Beer-Sheva,” BAR 01:01.) The well-dressed ashlar stones of the altar were found reused as part of a repaired wall in another area of the city. When reassembled, the stones formed an unusually large altar with horns on each of the four corners (see illustration). In Yadin’s opinion, this altar originally stood in the right angle formed by the stairs in the building to the left of the city gate and was in fact the altar to the top of which the stairs led; that is, the altar was the raison d’etre for the stairs. Thus he explains these mysterious stairs which Aharoni struggled to account for.

One problem with this suggestion regarding the altar is that Aharoni dates to the 8th century the wall in which the stones of the altar were found. If this is correct, then the altar must have been dismantled no later than the 8th century. Professor Aharoni suggests the altar was dismantled by King Hezekiah in the late 8th century. According to Aharoni’s dating of the wall, the altar could not have been dismantled, as Yadin suggests, by King Josiah in the late 7th century.

However, Yadin told me, a problem with Aharoni’s suggestion that the altar was dismantled by King Hezekiah is that while Hezekiah did lead a religious reform, nowhere in the Bible is it suggested that he destroyed a cult center in Beer-Sheva. More important, Yadin believes Aharoni misdated the wall in which the stones of the altar were found; the wall should be dated, according to Yadin, to the end of the 7th century, about 100 years later than Aharoni dated it.

Yadin notes that many difficulties are created by Aharoni’s 8th century dating of the pottery by which the wall itself was dated. One difficulty arises from the stratigraphy of Beer-Sheva itself. After this stratum (Stratum II) in which the dismantled altar blocks were found, there was no proper city on the tell. To recur to Aharoni’s words:

“After the severe destruction of Stratum II [by Sennacherib in 701 B.C., according to Aharoni’s dating of the pottery; by the Egyptians at the end of the 7th century B.C. or by the Babylonians in the late 7th or early 6th century, according to Yadin], the original city was never rebuilt although a retaining wall, clearly intended to keep and strengthen the ruined wall was found all around the casemate wall. No clear floor level or other evidence of construction relating to this stratum have so far been found. Thus, either re-building was attempted, but not completed, or—and this seems more probable—only the wall and a few structures in the centre of the tel were repaired. In any case, from this time on, no regular settlement existed on the tel, merely fortresses surrounded by some domestic structures (p. 67) [Italics supplied].

But, according to Yadin, this contradicts the clear Biblical record that King Josiah’s reform in the late 7th century included the systematic destruction of bamot, including the one at Beer-Sheva (2 Kings 23:8). This act, the historical authenticity of which is not doubted by scholars, indicates quite clearly, says Yadin, that Beer-Sheva with its cult place was still in existence in the days of Josiah. The Bible also indicates that the Beer-Sheva high place was one of the most important, equal in status to those in Geba, Bethel and the vicinity of Jerusalem. Yet, according to Aharoni, there was no regular settlement on the tell after 701 B.C.

The Bible is not alone, says Yadin, in indicating that Beer-Sheva was an important settlement in Josiah’s time in the late 7th century. An inscription from one of the Arad ostraca datable to King Josiah’s time also mentions Beer-Sheva.

Aharoni’s suggestion that the Beer-Sheva of Josiah’s time was not situated on the tell (thus accounting for the fact that, according to his dating, there was no city on the tell at this time) but was an open settlement around the tell is hardly adequate, according to Yadin.

Other, more technical reasons indicate to Yadin that the pottery from Stratum II which Aharoni dates to the 8th century should be dated about a hundred years later. For example, on a specimen of one of the most characteristic storage jars of Beer-Sheva Stratum II, Aharoni found a potter’s mark consisting of an X with vertical lines closing the sides of the X (see illustration). In a remarkably rare occurrence, the mark of this same potter was found on vessels at Lachish, but unfortunately, it is not entirely clear in what stratum this potter’s mark was found; therefore, it cannot be dated with absolute assurance. However—miracle of miracles—a third example of this potter’s mark was found recently by Eliezer Oren in excavations at Tell Shari’a. The stratum in which this example was found is absolutely clear, as Yadin explained. Much of the other pottery with which the “X-marked” storage jar was associated at Tell Shari’a is identical to the pottery from Beer-Sheva Stratum II. But the clincher, according to Yadin, is that in this same stratum at Tell Shari’a was found 7th century so-called “Assyrian palace ware” and a Corinthian jug clearly datable to 620–600 B.C. In the face of evidence like this, says Yadin, it is difficult to contend any longer that this Stratum II pottery at Beer-Sheva should be dated to the 8th century.

The result of dating this pottery a hundred years later than Aharoni dated it is that the large and impressive altar which Aharoni found in secondary use was probably dismantled by Josiah in the 7th century rather than by Hezekiah in the 8th century, Yadin told me.

One final bit of negative evidence suggests to Yadin that this horned altar was originally part of the bama installation to the left of the city gate. The negative evidence is that Aharoni did not find even a trace of another building in which the altar could have been installed. Indeed, says Yadin, this was contrary to Aharoni’s fondest expectations.

Yadin explained what he meant: “Aharoni had previously excavated a cult place (which he called a ‘temple’) at Arad. From this he developed the theory that temples were to be found in all border cities, particularly Beer-Sheva. Indeed, that was one of the major reasons which prompted Aharoni to excavate Beer-Sheva. And that is why the discovery of the magnificent altar came as no surprise to him; it was, he thought, part of the soon-to-be-discovered temple.” Yadin showed me what Aharoni had written about his expectation of discovering a temple at Beer-Sheva:

“Discovering the altar of Beer-Sheva was a highlight of the excavations, but no great surprise to us. In my essay on the Arad temple, I developed the hypothesis that there was an institution of royal border sanctuaries, and, consequently that the most promising site for the discovery of another Israelite temple would be the tell of biblical Beer-sheba. It took us five years to find it, but now with the discovery of the altar we have confirmation of a temple’s existence. The goal of the coming season will be to locate the temple’s place in the city plan. The beautiful altar indicates that the temple must have been a far more elaborate structure than the simple shrine of Arad.”^g

Aharoni never found a temple at Beer-Sheva. Aharoni explained his failure to find a temple on the theory that the temple had been completely removed, stone by stone, when another Stratum II building was built on the site of the supposed temple which previously existed.^h In Yadin’s view, Aharoni failed to find the temple of Beer-Sheva because it never existed. If Yadin is correct, this leaves the question of the original location of the horned altar. The fact that no other building has been found in which the altar might have been placed suggests to Yadin that he has correctly placed the altar in the building to the left of the city gate.

Returning now to the subject of bamot, which are mentioned so frequently in the Bible: A bama, Yadin told me, is distinguished from a temple by the fact that a bama consists mainly of an altar, while a temple proper is a “house of the Lord.” “A temple (Israelite or pagan) had to have an altar, but the building is the main feature, and the altar is of secondary importance,” Yadin explained. “By contrast, in a bama, the altar is of primary importance; however, although no god resides in the bama, the bama does include a nearby building of no cultic importance. The Biblical references themselves indicate that the bama complex consisted of more than its operative element, the altar. For example, in 1 Samuel 9:19–22, we read of a bama with an eating chamber. As Professor Tur-Sinai shrewdly observed almost 40 years ago, ‘Bamot’ are not ‘high places,’ but sacred buildings both on high as in low places’”ⁱ This observation, said Yadin, has now been dramatically confirmed at Beer-Sheva. “Because the main feature of the bama was the altar, the building (which was purely practical in connection with the sacrifices and offerings) did not have to conform to a rigid plan or orientation which would be required of a temple proper, the house of the deity. Moreover, Yadin explained, we may assume that the Mosaic prescriptions concerning the altar and buildings associated with the ‘House of the Lord’ did not apply to bamot, especially because most of them appear to have been used for pagan cults. This may be why the Beer-Sheva altar was made of hewn ashlars instead of the unworked stones which the Bible requires an altar to be made of (Exodus 20:25; Deut. 27:5–6; Joshua 8:30–31).” [See “Horned Altar for Animal Sacrifice Unearthed at Beer-Sheva,” BAR 01:01.]

“In conclusion,” Yadin told me at the end of a fascinating one-audience lecture, “in looking for bamot, we should rid ourselves of two misconceptions: We are not looking just for a platform in the open air, or for a building with the rigid plan of a temple. We should look for an altar with a building nearby to store the animals and cult vessels and to house the bama’s servants. This is what the excavator has found at Beer-Sheva.”^j

(Professor Yadin has written a more technical report on the views expressed here, which appeared in The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research No. 222 (April 1976) under the title “Beer-Sheba: The High Place Destroyed by King Josiah”.

On my last visit to Jerusalem, I stopped in to see Yigael Yadin—as I always do. It was a fascinating hour—as it always is.