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THE GATES OF BIBLICAL SHA’ARAYIM. Excavations at the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa overlooking the Elah Valley in the Shephelah revealed a heavily fortified 10th-century B.C.E. city (shown here) that clearly had central authority in Judah during the time of King David. The Iron Age city boasted a monumental administrative building, a casemate wall (a wall composed of two parallel walls divided into internal chambers), and not one, but—the authors argue—two massive city gates. The second, southern gate is the key to identifying Qeiyafa with Biblical Sha’arayim, Hebrew for “two gates.”