Scholars’ Corner: Is the Solomonic City Gate at Megiddo Really Solomonic?

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In the 1930s, a team of archaeologists from the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute uncovered a massive six-chambered city gateway at the great mound of Megiddo. The excavators assigned the gate to the period from 1000–800 B.C.; they ascribed the construction of the gate to King Solomon.1 In the 1950s and 1960s, excavations at Hazor and Gezer revealed city gates that were virtually identical to the Megiddo gate. Not only did they have the same plan, but their dimensions were very similar. All three gateways were constructed of the same material—well-dressed ashlar stone blocks, well-matched and carefully laid out. […]

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Footnotes

This awkward terminology to designate the two strata results from the fact that the strata as designated by the original excavators in the 1930s have since been clarified. The original excavators divided stratum IV into two phases, IVa and IVb the latter being earlier. Subsequent excavation and analysis have shown that strata Va and IVb should be combined into one stratum. As is customary, the excavators number the strata from the top down.

Endnotes

R. S. Lamon and G. M. Shipton, Megiddo I. Seasons of 1925–34, Strata I–IV, Oriental Institute Publications 42, Chicago: University of Chicago 1939; G. Loud, Megiddo II. Seasons of 1935–39, Oriental Institute Publications 62, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1948.

D. Ussishkin, “Was the ‘Solomonic’ City Gate at Megiddo Built by King Solomon?” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 239 (1980), pp. 1–18.

Y. Yadin, “A Rejoinder,” BASOR 239 (1980), pp. 19–23.

Y. Yadin, Hazor. The Schweich Lectures 1970, London: Oxford University Press, 1972; Y. Yadin, Hazor: The Rediscovery of a Great Citadel of the Bible, New York: Random House, 1975.