who lived in the city, and had given it as dowry to his daughter, Solomon's wife;— (1 Kings 9:15-16)
Identifying the pharaoh
The only mention in the Bible of a pharaoh who might be Siamun is the text from 1 Kings quoted above, and we have no other historical sources that clearly identify what really happened. As shown below, Kenneth Kitchen believes that Siamun conquered Gezer and gave it to Solomon. Others such as Paul S. Ash and Mark W. Chavalas disagree, and Chavalas states that "it is impossible to conclude which Egyptian monarch ruled concurrently with David and Solomon". Professor Edward Lipinski argues that Gezer, then unfortified, was destroyed late in the 10th century (and thus not contemporary with Solomon) and that the most likely Pharaoh was Shoshenq I. "The attempt at relating the destruction of Gezer to the hypothetical relationship between Siamun and Solomon cannot be justified factually, since Siamun's death precedes Solomon's accession."
History of excavation
Archaeological excavation at Gezer has been going on since the early 1900s, and it has become one of the most excavated sites in Israel. The site was identified with ancient Gezer by Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau in 1871. R. A. Stewart Macalister excavated the site between 1902 and 1909 on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund. Macalister recovered several artifacts discovered several constructions and defenses. He also established Gezer's habitation strata, though due to poor stratigraphical methods, these were later found to be mostly incorrect (as well as many of his theories). Other notable archaeological expeditions to the site were made by Alan Rowe (1934), G.E. Wright, William Dever and Joe Seger between 1964 and 1974 on behalf of the Nelson Glueck School of Archaeology in the Hebrew Union College, again by Dever in 1984 and 1990, as well as the Andrews University.
Excavations were renewed in June 2006 by a consortium of institutions under the direction of Steve Ortiz of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) and Sam Wolff (Israel Antiquities Authority). The Tel Gezer Excavation and Publication Project is a multi-disciplinary field project investigating the Iron Age history of Gezer.
The first season of the Gezer excavations concluded successfully and revealed some interesting details. Among other things, is a discovery of thick destruction layer that may be dated to the destruction of Siamun (1 Kings 9:16).[dubious ]
One of the best-known finds is the Gezer calendar. This is a plaque containing a text appearing to be either a schoolboy's memory exercises, or something designated for the collection of taxes from farmers. Another possibility is that the text was a popular folk song, or child's song, listing the months of the year according to the agricultural seasons. It has proved to be of value by informing modern researchers of ancient Middle Eastern script and language, as well as the agricultural seasons.
Canaanite city gate, wall
In 2013 the NOBTS team launched a side effort to preserve the ancient Canaanite mudbrick gate and complex near the water system.
Israelite city gate, wall
In 1957 Yigael Yadin identified a wall and gateway identical in construction to remains excavated at Megiddo and Hazor as Solomonic; they have since been identified as dating from the early Israelite kingdom, some centuries later.
Canaanite water tunnel
In 2010 a team from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary ("NOBTS") launched an effort to clear a massive water tunnel, discovered first by Macalister over a hundred years earlier. Macalister never fully excavated the tunnel because a strong storm blew debris back into the tunnel and he considered it too expensive and time-consuming to re-excavate the site. The NOBTS effort to re-clear and examine the tunnel has been chronicled in multiple sources including the Biblical Archaeology Review and the Baptist Press. In 2011 professor Dennis Cole, archaeologist Dan Warner and engineer Jim Parker from NOBTS, led another team in an attempt to finish the effort. In just two years the teams removed 