Image Details

Gezer’s great gateway, the best-preserved Solomonic gate in all of Israel. In this photo we look through the gate from inside the city. At the entrance, top, jambs of fine ashlar masonry may be seen at right and left. Three rooms with plastered benches around the walls flank each side of the entryway. A drainage channel, formerly covered by pavement, is now visible along the length of the entryway. The nearly identical plan of tenth-century B.C. gates at Gezer, Hazor and Megiddo suggests the possibility that the same architect designed all three. The Bible, too, links the three sites as part of a single construction effort: “And this is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon levied to build … the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer … ” (1 Kings 9:15).