Endnote 5 – It’s Not There: Archaeology Proves a Negative

Kathleen Kenyon dated terraces near the Gihon Spring to the Amarna period (Digging Up Jerusalem [London: Ernest Benn, 1974], pp. 95–97). The dating is wrong, but the terraces are still very important, as they are now to be dated to Iron Age I. Yigal Shiloh excavated another part of the same terrace system and followed Kenyon’s interpretation, although with some caution. Shiloh wrote, “It is possible that it was built only c. the 13th century B.C.E.” (Excavations at the City of David I, 1978–1982: Interim Report of the First Five Seasons, Qedem 19 [1984], p. 16.) Study of the pottery in both Leiden and Jerusalem has now clearly shown that the terraces did not originate in the Late Bronze Age (Jane Cahill and David Tarler, “Response,” in Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990: Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem, June–July 1990, ed. Avraham Biran and Joseph Aviram [Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993], pp. 625–626; Steiner, “Redating the Terraces of Jerusalem,” Israel Exploration Journal 44 [1994], pp. 13–20). In the terrace fill Kenyon recovered only 15 pottery sherds from the Late Bronze Age (some postdating the Amarna period), as opposed to several hundred sherds dating to Iron Age I. No Late Bronze Age pottery was found in any of the other terrace fills excavated in the city.