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GENERAL
INFORMATION
The
Tell at Lachish is imposing. The lower parts were formed from
different settlement layers during the Bronze Age. After that
period, the site was uninhabited until the 10th century BC.
During the 9th century BC is was strongly fortified, and a
palace was added. This city lasted until the conquest by
Sennacherib in 701BC. Later on there was some rebuilding, but it
was only a pale reflection of what it had once been.
The fortifications consisted of a
double ring of walls, with the only gate was on the west side;
it had a six-chamber gate extending into the
city.
The center of the city was
dominated by a palace and its support buildings. There was a
large residential building, a row of six storerooms, an entrance
building and an open courtyard. The entrance to the buildings
was via an open stairway leading from the large courtyard. A
street led directly from the city entrance to the entrance gate
of the palace.
Lachish was an important center of
royal administration. The palace seemed to be divided into three
areas: a residential building for the governor who administered
the surrounding land on behalf of the king; storage magazines
for taxes paid in goods and products, or for provisioning of the
army or of court officials; and quarters for servants and staff.
Lachish was certainly the most
important city in Judah after Jerusalem. During his campaign in
701BC, Sennacherib sent an embassy to Jerusalem from Lachish. By
the time it returned, he had already overrun Lachish, something
he must have seen as a significant military victory, since he
portrayed the scene in a relief on the palace walls
in his capital, Nineveh. In a series of scenes, the
Assyrian infantry storm the walls of Lachish, with rows of
archers taking aim at the defenders on the walls; the outer
walls of the city are stormed; Assyrian battering rams and siege
machines advance and then penetrate the walls; Judean captives
are marched out of the city, while others are stripped naked and
impaled on the Assyrian spears; the captives are tortured and
murdered; and then in the last panel King Sennacherib sits on
his throne, receiving the servile captives and the booty that
has been taken from Lachish. A huge pile of stones, used as the
base of a ramp built by the Assyrians to storm the city, can
still be seen in the south-western corner of the ruins.
The
final destruction of Lachish took place at the hands of
Nebuchadnezzar in 587BC - at the same time Jerusalem was
destroyed.
CITIES
IN BIBLICAL TIMES
A city in biblical times could be
anything from 6 hectares (15 acres) - Megiddo, to 10 hectares
(25 acres - Ai, Gezer and Arad. It was protected by a ring of
walls, with gates or posterns. The fortification could be a wall
or a rampart. Inside the walls there were houses of varying
shapes and sizes, but also monumental buildings which covered a
substantial part of the area inside the wall. Among these were
the temple and the palace, often at the center of the settlement
or in a prominent position. All the houses were accessible via
narrow streets.
City walls had different methods
of construction and size. The earliest cities have mud brick
walls from 2 to 6 meters thick on stone foundations, with
projecting semicircular or rectangular towers. In another case,
the walls were 8 to 10 meters wide. The gate had towers flanking
it on either side.
The
earliest type of domestic building was the wide-room house. Its
floor was below ground level and the house was entered by two
steps. Benches ran along the walls. This basic form was enlarged
by the addition of annexes and additional rooms, and a house
often had several rooms, in which the entrance from the street
was in the shorter wall.
Until the beginning of the 1st
millennium BC, the biblical lands were a place of city states,
independent of each other and, if we can judge from the amount
of attention lavished on the walls and fortifications, often
warring with each other.
For much of this time there was an
imperial power lurking in the wings - usually Egypt, but also
Mesopotamia, Assyria, etc. This power would exercise a certain
amount of control, for though generally speaking the area was
not rich and not really worth conquering in its own right, it
lay on several important trading roads, especially the route
between Egypt and the north and east.
In
the struggle for power between Egypt and Syria or the rulers of
Mesopotamia, it was important to control these routes open.
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'Tel Lachish, the mound of the
ancient city of Lachish, is located in the lowlands of the
Judean Hills, some 40 km. southeast of Jerusalem. The abundance
of water sources and the fertile valleys of the area favored the
existence of a prosperous city over a considerable period of
time.
The mound of the city was first
excavated during the 1930s. Systematic and in-depth excavations
of large areas of the mound were again conducted between 1973
and 1987.
THE CANAANITE CITY
A large, fortified Canaanite city
was established at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE on a
hillock dominating the surrounding area. It was fortified by a
wall and a glacis, a ramp-like structure of compressed earth
with a hard, smooth surface of lime plaster. The fortification
was completed by a fosse (moat) at the foot of the glacis.
A large palace of numerous rooms
and a courtyard, probably the residence of the Canaanite King of
Lachish, stood on the acropolis - the highest part of the
city. It could not be completely exposed, as a later Israelite
palace was built above it.
From letters sent by the kings of
Lachish to their overlords, the pharaohs of Egypt (the 14th
century BCE el-Amarna correspondence) it may be deducted that
Lachish was an important urban center and the seat of the
Egyptian governor of southern Canaan.
Two temples are known from this
period at Lachish. Finds from the Fosse Temple, at the western
foot of the mound, include cult vessels, offering bowls and
imported items of pottery, faience and ivory, all evidence of
wealth. The temple on the acropolis, with Egyptian architectural
elements, included an entrance chamber, a main hall (16 x 13 m.)
and a raised holy of holies. Two octagonal stone columns
supported the wooden ceiling, while the walls were decorated
with painted plaster.
Canaanite Lachish was totally
destroyed by fire at the end of the 12th century BCE. According
to one theory, the destruction was wrought by the Philistines of
the nearby Coastal Plain; according to another, more widely
accepted theory, it was wrought by the Israelites, whose capture
and destruction of the city is recorded in the Bible. (Joshua
10:31,32)
THE ISRAELITE CITY
Rebuilt as a fortress-city of the
Kingdom of Judah, Lachish gained in importance after the split
of the kingdom into Judah and Israel. As the largest city on the
western border of the Kingdom of Judah facing the Philistines of
the Coastal Plain, Lachish was fortified with a double line of
massive mud-brick walls on stone foundations. The main city wall
on top of the mound was 6 m. wide, with a sloping glacis
supported by a revetment wall along the middle of the slope. The
city gate, in the southwestern wall, is one of the largest and
most strongly fortified gates known of this period. It consists
of an outer gate in a huge tower built of large stones which
protrudes from the line of defenses. The gatehouse, on top of
the mound, consists of three pairs of chambers with wooden doors
on hinges.
A palace-fortress was built on the
acropolis and probably served as the residence of the governor
appointed by the King of Judah. During the 8th century BCE a new
wing was added to the palace, enlarging it to 76 x 36 m. Next to
the palace was a courtyard with stables and storerooms; the
whole complex was surrounded by a wall with a gatehouse.
The city of Lachish was destroyed
by the Assyrian army during Sennacherib’s campaign against the
Kingdom of Judah in 701 BCE. The destruction was total; the
buildings were burned to the ground and the inhabitants exiled.
The Assyrian campaign, during the reign of King Hezekiah, and
the encampment of the Assyrian army at Lachish are described in
detail in the Bible. (2 Kings 18:14-17; 2 Chronicles 32:9) The
conquest of Lachish is depicted in monumental stone reliefs
found at Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh, providing a rare
contemporary "photograph" of the battle and conquest.
These relief-images of the Assyrian attack have been confirmed
by archeological evidence at the site: the attack on Lachish was
launched from the southwest; the attackers built a siege ramp
against the slope of the mound, which according to calculation
contained some 15,000 tons of stones and earth! The ramp was
covered with plaster to allow the Assyrian battering ram to be
moved up to the city wall and breach it. The city’s defenders
constructed a counter-ramp inside the city, thus raising the
city wall, which forced the Assyrians to raise the height of
their ramp in order to overcome the city’s new defenses. The
fierceness of the battle is attested to by the remains of
weapons, scales of armor, hundreds of slingstones and
arrowheads.
During the reign of King Josiah
(639-609 BCE), the city of Lachish was rebuilt and fortified.
This much poorer city was captured and destroyed by the
Babylonian army in 587/6 BCE. (Jeremiah 34:7) In one of the
rooms, which opened onto a courtyard outside the city gatehouse,
a group of ostraca were found during the excavations in the
1930s. Now known as the Lachish Letters, they constitute an
important corpus of Hebrew documents from the First Temple
period. Written in paleo-Hebrew script on pottery sherds, they
are messages sent by the garrison commander of a small fortress
to his commanding officer in Lachish.'
(Quoted from
the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Archaeological Sites in
Israel - Lachish)
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'A wall looms high and vivid in
the northwest corner, bare of the dirt that covers the rest of
the tel. It is probably part of the buttressed wall that stood
as Lachish resisted the invasion of the Assyrian Empire, 2,700
years ago, during the reign of King Hezekiah over the kingdom of
Judah.
Along that buttressed wall, which
exploited an earlier Canaanite trench below, one can easily
imagine the Judeans perched on its ramparts shooting arrows and
hurling stones, torches and perhaps clay jars filled with hot
oil down on the invaders.
For it is war - its shadows and
all-pervasive biblical (not to mention human) reality - that we
see, more than anything else, while picking our way through the
undeveloped but potentially riveting site of Lachish.
We can best understand Lachish by
staring at the Assyrian wall sculptures which were discovered in
Assyria's ancient capital, Nineveh (now Iraq), and other sites,
and are now exhibited in the British Museum. The Assyrian rulers
lined their palaces with battle scenes advertising the awesome
power of their empire.
In its time, Assyria was the
strongest regime to have rolled across the ancient Near East. It
stretched from east of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to the
Mediterranean Sea, and from just below the Black Sea south to
Gaza, Sinai and finally the Nile Delta and points south.
In 701 BCE, the Emperor
Sennacherib invaded and subdued the coastal territory of the
Philistines, stopping an Egyptian army that rushed north to
challenge him. Then he turned ea
ngdom of Judah. Hezekiah paid
heavy tribute, but his kingdom was the only pocket left
uncontrolled by the empire.
One wall relief, taken from
Sennacherib's palace in Nineveh, depicts the battle for Lachish.
That town, which guarded the road from the southernmost coast up
to Hebron and the southern Judean hill country, faced the full
force of Assyrian power and wrath.
If you can't get to London, stare
at a photograph (available in many history and archeology books)
of that multi-panel frieze, and envision it as a
three-dimensional computer model you can enter. You'll be swept
into the chaos of siege and battle.
Four-wheeled battering rams rolled
up a carefully constructed siege ramp and pounded the wall,
probing for weaknesses. Ranks of archers and sling-throwers took
aim at the defenders on the parapets. The Judeans shot arrows
and hurled stones and firebrands.
Bold Assyrian infantrymen raised
their shields while trying to heave the scaling ladders up.
Some, repulsed, hurtled to earth. Bodies piled up. Screams and
smoke filled the air. Still the battering rams pounded.
Assyrian rulers glorified war.
They developed specialized corps - cavalry, sappers, combat
engineers, snipers, aquatic units - and "modernized"
their weapons and strategies. Perhaps that was why Isaiah, who
witnessed the growing Assyrian threat, prophesied a time when
nations would no longer "study war."
You will see the "modern"
military machine Assyria unleashed against Lachish as you follow
the path from the parking lot to the tel's gate structure. On
your right, the cutaway slope of tightly compacted earth and
stones is the Assyrian siege ramp, built against Lachish's
southern wall. (Inside the wall, the Judeans built a
counter-ramp.)
Near the siege ramp, a path slopes
up toward Lachish's ancient gate on what was originally a
chariot ramp. As you climb it to the elaborate gate structure,
the largest in ancient Israel (Lachish was evidently second in
importance only to Jerusalem), note the city wall on your right.
An advancing Assyrian, typically carrying his shield on his left
arm, would expose his right flank to archers on the walls.
At the top, the invaders had to
break through an outer gate, pivot to the right while they were
packed in a small courtyard and exposed to fire from bordering
towers, and break through an inner gate, the remains of which
you can now walk through.
But the Assyrians surmounted the
town's defenses, as they did, according to Sennacherib's own
account, at 45 other Judean towns. Inside Lachish's walls,
though the site is undeveloped and only partially excavated,
there is evidence of fierce burning at the level of the Assyrian
invasion. Arrowheads, sling-stones and the crest of an Assyrian
helmet offer only hints of the tumult and destruction
highlighted in the Assyrian frieze.
The people inside these walls must
have been terrified, perhaps huddling in the palace complex that
still sits just to the left inside the gate complex. Perhaps, in
what might have been a spin-off sanctuary of the Temple in
Jerusalem, priests performed desperate rituals in hope of divine
intervention.
The residents were right to be
afraid, for gruesome fates awaited captives of Assyria. They
were uprooted, tortured, led away with bags over their heads,
with limbs lopped off, with rings in their noses or lips. The
stone relief of Lachish's conquest shows the exile of prisoners
as vividly as the battle itself.
The horror recorded at Lachish
could be reconstructed at virtually any biblical city or
fortress. But toppled stone walls cannot reveal the hatred, the
fear, the blood and the destroyed families. In recalling the
drama of the Lachish conquest, footage of Kosovan refugees takes
on a perspective of timeless, tragic, human experience.
Using Lachish as a base, the
Assyrian army moved into the hills against Jerusalem but,
according to II Kings (20:35), was smitten by an angel of God
and retreated. Lachish was rebuilt, again became the southwest
guardian of Judah and later faced a new enemy, the Babylonians.
Evidence linked to the Babylonian
attack, though sparse, is chilling and poignant. Among the 18
Hebrew ostraca (fragments of inscribed pottery) found in
a guardroom, one reads, "Let my lord know that we are
watching over the beacon of Lachish, according to the signals
which my lord gave, for Azeka is not to be seen."
This is like a movie scene in
which the blip of an aircraft disappears from a radar screen.
That one simple message encapsulates Lachish's isolation and
doom before the Babylonian onslaught.
The book of Jeremiah (34:7) confirms that Azeka and Lachish were
the last cities to fall, leaving Jerusalem alone.'
(Quoted
from an article by Allan Rabinowitz in the Jerusalem Post,
05/06/99)
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