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Two of a kind. Egyptologist Manfred Bietak recently noticed that this house excavated in Thebes, Egypt, in the 1930s, strongly resembles a so-called four-room house, typical of Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.E.) dwellings in the central hill country of Canaan (see plan). The four-room house has been identified as the standard residence used by the early Israelites when they settled in the central hill country of Canaan. The Theban house dates to the middle 12th to early 11th centuries B.C.E. (just when the Israelites were emerging in Canaan) and bears little resemblance to Egyptian houses of the period. The numbers refer to corresponding rooms in the two plans.