Image Details

Photo by Thomas E. Levy

Standing guard for the entire site, this gatehouse controlled the sole entrance into the massive Iron Age fortress at Khirbat en-Nahas. Confirming Nelson Glueck’s earlier suggestions that a gateway lay buried here, archaeologists recently discovered a typical four-chamber gate (only two of the chambers have been excavated). The entrance was through a passage on the far side of the two exposed gate chambers on the western side of the site. Large amounts of charcoal here and at other structures on the site were dated by precision radiocarbon dating, which fixed the date of early construction of the fortress in the tenth century B.C.E., just as Glueck had suggested decades before.