Tel Beit Shemesh

Tel Beit Shemesh is a small archaeological tell northeast of the modern city of Beit Shemesh.

Tel Beit Shemesh from the air

Ain Shems (today known as Tel Beit Shemesh) in the PEF Survey of Palestine c.1880. The pink circles are contemporary villages, and the dotted clear circles are ruins.

It was identified in the late 1830s as Biblical Beth Shemesh – it then was known as Ain Shams – by Edward Robinson. The tel was excavated in numerous phases during the 20th century.

Etymology

Beit Shemesh means "house of the sun" or "temple of the sun" in Hebrew. The Bronze-Age city was originally named after the Canaanite sun-goddess Shapash, sometimes called Shemesh, who was worshipped there in antiquity.

The name Beth-Shemesh was shared by (at least) two other places in Israel, and one more in Egypt, presumably the site known in Greek as Heliopolis, bearing the same meaning.

In the Amarna letters Shamash is mentioned several times, along with Addu, as one of the greatest gods: the Pharaoh is "like Addu and Shamash".

History

Canaanite and Israelite town

The Canaanites of Beit Shemesh named the city after Shapash/Shemesh, the sun-goddess they worshipped. The ruins of the ancient biblical city of the Canaanites and Israelites are located at a site called Tel Beit Shemesh in Modern Hebrew and Tell er-Rumeileh in Arabic, a tell (archaeological mound) situated immediately west of modern Beit Shemesh, and Moshav Yish'i, right on the west side of Highway 38.

The earliest mention of Beit Shemesh is found in Egyptian execration texts, dating several hundred years earlier than its mention in Hebrew canonical books.

The ancient tell of Bet Shemesh

Hebrew Bible

Beit Shemesh is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in the Book of Joshua (Joshua 15:10), as a city in the territory of the tribe of Judah on the border with the tribe of Dan. In Joshua 21:16, this city was set aside as one of the 13 Kohanic cities for the priests of the tribe of Levi, the Kohanim.

Another city by the same name, Beit Shemesh, is later mentioned in Joshua 19:38, being situated in the territory of the tribe of Naphtali.

The city located in the territorial bounds of the tribe of Judah is mentioned in the 6th chapter of 1 Samuel as being the first city encountered by the Ark of the Covenant on its way back from Philistia after having been captured by the Philistines in battle (1 Samuel 6:12–21). According to the chapter, the people of Beit Shemesh looked into the Ark, and God struck them dead. The stone on which the Ark was placed is recorded as still being located there at the time of writing the Books of Samuel. In the King James Version this stone is described as "the great stone of Abel" (1 Samuel 6:18).

In 2 Kings 14, Beit Shemesh is again mentioned as being the site of the battle between King Amaziah of Judea and King Jehoash of Israel.

Iron Age to Persian period

During the 10th century BCE, Beit Shemesh emerged as an Israelite governmental center in the Sorek Valley.

An archaeomagnetic study has dated a destruction layer at the site to the first half of the 8th century BCE, correlating with the time when King Jehoash of Israel is recorded as having defeated King Amaziah of Judah in a battle fought there (2 Kings 14:11–13).

After the destruction of much of Judah by Sennacherib in 701 BCE, the city was abandoned for a while, but there seems to have been an attempt by a group of Judahites at resettling Beth Shemesh, judging by the refurbishing of the water reservoir in the 7th century BCE. However, after the Babylonian conquest of Judah in the early 580s, either the new Babylonian rulers, or the nearby Philistine metropolis of Ekron favoured by them, apparently put an end to the initiative by sealing and covering over the vital water reservoir, which was not uncovered until 2004. During the first Jewish return, at the beginning of the Second Temple period, there was no lasting revival of the city, as opposed to many other places in the vicinity such as Beit Guvrin, Maresha, and others.

In the rescue excavations at the site, a rectangular gas-fired structure was discovered which was identified by the excavators as a synagogue from the Second Temple period. The synagogue is supposed to be moved to another location to clear the area for road 38, which is planned to be paved in the area. Boaz Gross, the head of the excavation expedition at the Tel on behalf of the Israel Institute of Archaeology, believed that the structure is not Hasmonean but probably from the Herodian period. The village around him, he believes, was abandoned during the Bar Kokhba revolt. According to him, purification bowls found near the building, its architectural design, as well as a bench identified inside, strengthen the assumption that it is a synagogue.

Byzantine period

A monastery and other remains from the Byzantine period have been found in the area.

Ancient ruins against backdrop of modern Beit Shemesh

Ottoman period

'Ain Shems, the site of Beth-Shemesh. South of the Wâdy es Sur'ar (Sorek) and nearly opposite to Sur'ah (Zorah). The ancient and modern names Beth-Shemesh (House of the Sun) and 'Ain Shems (NYPL b10607452-80663) (cropped)

The small Arab towns of Dayr Aban and Dayr Rafat used rocks for building from Tell er-Rumeileh (Tel Beit Shemesh).

In the late 19th century the area was known as 'Ain Shems or Khirbet 'Ain Shems and was used as a temporary harvest-time residence by local Arabs. The small mosque of Abu Mizar stood there.

State of Israel

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Egyptian Army invaded the area and set up a fortified post, called "Mishlat" in Hebrew, on a hill overlooking Beit Shemesh, within the Arab village Dayr Aban. The post changed hands several times during fighting. The Harel Brigade occupied part of the post for several months, giving rise to the name "the joint post" or the "Mishlat HaMeshutaf", with 60 meters dividing them and the enemy forces. The Mishlat was finally taken by the Harel force in the Ha-Har offensive, during the night of 19–20 October 1948.

Beit Shemesh is the point from which the so-called Convoy of 35 set out to bring provisions to besieged Gush Etzion. On 15 January 1948, a group of 38 Palmach volunteers left Hartuv near Beit Shemesh. After one member of the group sprained his ankle and returned, accompanied by two others, the group, now numbering 35, continued on its way. Their presence was discovered by two Arab women who encountered two scouts of the group near Surif. (An earlier version, that the soldiers were discovered by an Arab shepherd who they graciously let go, was based on a eulogy written by Ben-Gurion and is apparently apocryphal). The Convoy of 35 was subsequently killed in fighting with Arab villagers and militiamen.

Archaeology

Old wall of the ancient ruin, Beit Shemesh

Middle Bronze gate system unearthed at Tel Beth-Shemesh

Middle Bronze

In 1971, excavations at Givat Sharett conducted by Israeli archaeologist Claire Epstein revealed a residential settlement of the Middle Bronze Age, including a temple.

Late Brone and Iron Age

The most ancient iron workshop in the world was discovered in Beit Shemesh in 2003. The only remnants of a fortified city with an advanced water system, from the time of the early Kingdom of Judah was found here. The bones of animals found in the 12th–11th centuries BCE layer indicate a diet typical of the Israelites who inhabited the hill country in this period. These together with the pottery finds indicate the cultural influences on the inhabitants of this border town. However, it is not possible to determine their specific ethnic identity, which could be Canaanite, Philistine, or Israelite.

In August 2012, archaeologists from Tel Aviv University announced the discovery of a circular stone seal, approximately 15 millimetres in diameter. The seal was found on the floor of a house at Beit Shemesh and is dated to the 12th century BCE. According to Haaretz, "excavation directors Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman of Tel Aviv University say they do not suggest that the human figure on the seal is the biblical Samson. Rather, the geographical proximity to the area where Samson lived, and the time period of the seal, show that a story was being told at the time of a hero who fought a lion, and that the story eventually found its way into the biblical text and onto the seal."

Animal bones found nearby may also be a clue to boundary disputes between different cultures. Pig bones have been found a few kilometers from Beit Shemesh, but only a few have been found actually at Beit Shemesh and at some point during the 11th century BCE it appears that the local population stopped eating pig. Haaretz reports that "According to Bunimovitz, when the pork-eating Philistines arrived in the country from the Aegean, the local people stopped eating pork to differentiate themselves from the newcomers."

Tel Beit Shemesh on the left, and on the right the large salvage excavation that revealed the eastern part of the mound

As part of the works to expand a nearby road, Route 38, many archaeological finds were uncovered in Tel Beit Shemesh, the Beit Shemesh Municipality promoted the transformation of the complex into a visitor center and park with an investment of tens of millions of shekels. National Roads Company of Israel agreed to significantly reduce the width of Route 38, which crosses Tel Beit Shemesh, after archaeologists warned that it might bury rare and unusual artifacts from the First Temple period that were discovered there.

In these excavations, an impressive settlement from the end of the days of the biblical Kingdom of Judah was discovered, whose very existence challenges the accepted view regarding the history of the Kingdom of Judah during the reign of Assyria. So far it has been claimed that the city of Beit Shemesh was destroyed during the campaign to suppress Hezekiah's rebellion by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 701 BC, and that the lowland area was torn from the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Judah. However, the new discoveries showed that after its destruction the settlement was re-founded on the eastern slopes of the tel, and was used As an important administrative and economic center of the Kingdom of Judah under the rule of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Later history

In the excavations, they also discovered a dense system of public buildings, storage rooms, and agricultural industrial facilities, including 14 oil mills for the storage of olive oil from the days of the Kingdom of Judah. Next to one of the canvas houses, a large cellar was discovered with plastered floors and walls. Also, more than 44 royal seals identified with the period of King Hezekiah were discovered in the hundreds of structures that were uncovered. According to Lederman's hypothesis, the site west of Beit Shemesh was a row of royal agricultural farms, which Hezekiah established mainly to produce olive oil. The salvage excavation indicates that, contrary to the accepted view, according to which the Judean plain was emptied of its Jewish population in the seventh century BC, Beit Shemesh had a high-level built settlement with a sophisticated and profitable industry.

Calcite alabaster was quarried in ancient times in the cave known today as the Twins Cave near Beit Shemesh. Herod used this alabaster for baths in his palaces during the 1st century BCE.

In 2014, archaeologists Irene Zilberbod and Tehila Libman announced the nearby discovery of a large compound from the Byzantine period that was most probably a monastery. It comprised a residential area and an industrial area with wine and olive presses. The remains of buildings with two or three stories and impressive mosaic floors were discovered. The compound ceased to function in the early Muslim period and was subsequently occupied by other residents. The excavations were continuing with additional finds through late 2017.