The Gezer High Place with massebot and basin
|Alternate name||Tel Gezer|
Gezer (Hebrew: גֶּזֶר) was a Canaanite city-state in the foothills of the Judaean Mountains at the border of the Shfela region. Tel Gezer (also Tell el-Jezer), an archaeological site midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, is now an Israeli national park. In the Hebrew Bible, Gezer is associated with Joshua and Solomon.
It became a major fortified city in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. It was later destroyed by fire and rebuilt. The Amarna letters mention kings of Gezer swearing loyalty to the Egyptian Pharaoh. Its importance was due in part to the strategic position it held at the crossroads of the ancient coastal trade route linking Egypt with Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia, and the road to Jerusalem and Jericho, both important trade routes.
Discoveries related to biblical archaeology include: a probable Canaanite high place with ten monumental megaliths (up-ended stones, each of which is called a masseba or matseva, plural massebot/matsevot; such are found elsewhere in Israel, but the Gezer massebot are the most impressive examples); a double cave beneath the high place, but predating and not connected to it; 13 inscribed boundary stones, making it the first positively identified biblical city; a six-chambered gate similar to those found at Hazor and Megiddo; and a large Canaanite water system comprising a tunnel going down to a spring, similar to those found in Jerusalem, Hazor and Megiddo.
- 1 Location
- 2 History
- 3 Bible: the sack of Gezer
- 4 Archaeology
- 5 Temple of Amun
- 6 See also
- 7 References
- 8 Further reading
- 9 External links
Gezer was located on the northern fringe of the Shephelah region, approximately thirty kilometres northwest of Jerusalem. It was strategically situated at the junction of the Via Maris, the international coastal highway, and the highway connecting it with Jerusalem through the valley of Ayalon, or Ajalon.
Verification of the identification of this site with biblical Gezer comes from bilingual inscriptions in either Hebrew or Aramaic, and Greek, found engraved on rocks several hundred meters from the tell. These inscriptions from the 1st century BCE read "boundary of Gezer" and "of Alkios" (probably the governor of Gezer at the time).
Early Bronze Age
Inhabitants of the first settlement at Gezer, toward the end of the 4th millennium BCE, lived in large rock-cut caves.
Middle Bronze Age
The tell was surrounded by a massive stone wall and towers, protected by a five meter high earthen rampart covered with plaster. The wooden city gate, near the southwestern corner of the wall, was fortified by two towers.
- Cultic site with massebot
Cultic remains discovered at the site were a row of ten large standing stones, known as massebot, oriented north-south, the tallest of which was 3 meters high, with an altar-type structure in the middle, and a large, square, stone basin. The exact purpose of these megaliths is still debated, but they may have constituted a Canaanite "high place" from the Middle Bronze Age, ca. 1600 B.C.E.
The Canaanite city was destroyed in a fire, presumably in the wake of a campaign by the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III. The oldest known historical reference to the city is to be found on an inscription of conquered sites at Thutmose's temple at Karnak.
The Tell Amarna letters, dating from the 14th century BCE, include ten letters from the kings of Gezer swearing loyalty to the Egyptian pharaoh. The city-state of Gezer (named Gazru in Babylonian) was ruled by four leaders during the 20-year period covered by the Amarna letters. Discoveries of several pottery vessels, a cache of cylinder seals and a large scarab with the cartouche of Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III attest to the existence of a city at Gezer's location in the 14th century BCE - one that was apparently destroyed in that century - and suggest that the city was inhabited by Canaanites with strong ties to Egypt.
Late Bronze Age
In the Late Bronze Age (second half of the 2nd millennium BCE) a new fortification wall, four meters