Beersheba

Tel es Seba' in the northern Negev is believed to be the site of the biblical city of the Beersheba was a market town in the military and administrative center the remains we'll be focusing on are the iron-age ones from the Israelite period we'll start around the gate and the square and administrative buildings that stand behind it this outer gate was built in the tenth century, stratum five unlike the main gate it was not rebuilt after the city was destroyed probably when Pharaoh Sishak led a punitive expedition against Israel the walls of the gate are of mud brick on and uncut stone base just outside the gate the remains of a well over twenty eight meters deep were found it was also used as a cistern to store runoff from the city it takes at least the period of the judges but despite the stories of Isaac and the well at Beersheba in Genesis twenty-six there's no evidence of this well can be dated back to the period of the patriarchs between this gate and the main gate was a small open space the gates will offset from each other to make attack difficult main drain for the city runs down the middle of the roadway to the well outside the main gate was constructed with six piers giving four rooms, two on each side later Israelite gates have six chambers notice the cobblestones paving the entire gate complex because this gate is constructed to a different pattern from those in other Israelite cities from this period Aharoni dated this one to the time of David and the six chamber gates elsewhere to the time of Solomon inside the gate there's a large square with barracks, storage, and the governor's house surrounding it the fact that there are store houses in two different places around the square suggests that one had military and the other a civil use moving over to the left of the square will look at the military storehouse and the governor's house and then we'll follow the road round to look more typical Israelite homes long narrow construction of this building is typical of store houses this one's assumed it had a military function because it was close to the barracks and to the governor's house at the corner where the square and the road join this oddly-shaped large room in the governor's house was a kitchen it's size suggests the relative wealth of the governor at this corner of the square becomes a street following the line of the city wall with one row of homes between it and the wall we'll follow the street ground and look at some typical houses many of the homes in Beersheba are what's called three-roomed houses here the typical planet of a three-roomed house has been extended into the casemate wall of the city a casemate his two walls joined by buttresses with a gap between the walls here the gap has been used to make extra rooms for the home these houses also had open alleys running beside them allowing access to the wall area labeled one is the room which opened to the street had stairs to the roof and contained an oven, it was likely a kitchen rooms 2 and 3 were separated by columns were used for storage and animals the rooms labeled four of the rooms in the casemate and they were likely used by the family this view of such a home taken from above says the casemate construction of the city wall very clearly the other typical home in ancient Israel was called a four-roomed house this example is not from Beersheba but it gives a good plan of what they were like notice the two rows of pillars typical of the four-roomed house during excavations a number of stones were found with an obviously different origin from the rest three of these have an odd shape when fitted together they formed an altar Amos 5:5 reminds us how Beersheba was a cultic center before the reforms of Hezekiah it seems that at Beersheba unlike at Arad rather than covering the altar it was dismantled and the blocks used in other buildings so it seems at Tel es Seba', Beersheba tells the story of Israel and Judah from the patriarchs through the monarchy to the time of the reforms of Hezekiah or Josiah