Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, 22 May 2012

The idea that a single, spectacular finding can reverse the course of modern research and save the literal reading of the biblical text regarding the history of ancient Israel from critical scholarship is an old one. Its roots can be found in W F Albright’s assault on the Wellhausen School in the early 20th century, an assault that biased archaeological, biblical and historical research for decades. This trend—in different guises—has resurfaced sporadically in recent years, with archaeology serving as a weapon to quell progress in critical scholarship. Khirbet Qeiyafa is the latest case in this genre of craving a cataclysmic defeat of critical modern scholarship by a miraculous archaeological discovery.

I Finkelstein and A Fantalkin

An Extraordinary Discovery

During recent archaeological excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city in Judah adjacent to the Valley of Elah, professor Yosef Garfinkel, the Yigal Yadin Professor of Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and colleagues, uncovered assemblages of pottery, stone and metal tools, and many art and cult objects. Three large rooms were revealed that Garfinkel says were cultic shrines corresponding in their architecture and finds to the time of king David. He adds that this discovery is extraordinary for it is the first time that shrines from the time of the first biblical kings—Saul, David and Solomon—have been uncovered, and shed light on how a cult was organized in Judah at the time of king David. These shrines pre-date the construction of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem by 30 to 40 years.

The discovery is indeed extraordinary, about as extraordinary as finding the Bat Cave of Batman and Robin under the streets of New York City, which was, of course, called Gotham City in those days, as everyone knows from the popular myth! Saul, Solomon and Solomon’s famous temple are all myths with not a single piece of material evidence for any of them, and king David, the father of the mythical Solomon, has the equivocal testimony of an highly contentious piece of a broken inscription. So all three of the earliest kings of Judah are as real as king Arthur, Dr Faustus and William Tell… they are not!

The expedition to Khirbet Qeiyafa has excavated the site for six weeks each summer since 2007, with co-director Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Located approximately 30km southwest of Jerusalem in the valley of Elah, Khirbet Qeiyafa is believed by biblicists to have been a border city of the kingdom of Judah, opposite the Philistine city of Gath. The city, which was dated by 10 radiometric measurements (14C) done at Oxford University on burned olive pits, existed for a short period of time between c 1020 to 980 BC, and was violently destroyed. The revolutionary results of five years of work are presented in a new book, Footsteps of king David in the Valley of Elah, published by Yedioth Ahronoth.

Khirbet Qeiyafa features four main occupational phases, dating to the Middle Bronze Age, the late Iron Age I, the late Persian period (meaning the first decades of the fourth century BC, according to the published pottery and coins (Fantalkin and Tal, 2012), rather than to the early Hellenistic period—as argued by the excavators) and the Hellenistic period. Late Iron I and the Persian periods are the times when the site was most active.

The architecture found at Khirbet Qeiyafa in the imagined David’s age is quite refined, and is interpreted by Garfinkel as evidence of royal activities, and therefore of state formation. An elite social level and urbanism he believes existed in the region in eleventh century Judah. Garfinkel is convinced that this find strengthens the historicity of the Jewish scriptures, and that their description of the architecture of the palace and Temple of Solomon is authentic:

This is the first time that archaeologists uncovered a fortified city in Judah from the time of king David. Even in Jerusalem we do not have a clear fortified city from his period. Thus, various suggestions that completely deny the biblical tradition regarding king David and argue that he was a mythological figure, or just a leader of a small tribe, are now shown to be wrong.

The Jewish bible relates how the people of Israel had a cult different from all other nations of the ancient Near East, being monotheistic and aniconic—free of human and animal figures—and having an aversion to pork. Garfinkel continued:

Over the years, thousands of animal bones were found, including sheep, goats and cattle, but no pigs. Now we uncovered three cultic rooms, with various cultic paraphernalia, but not even one human or animal figurine was found.

No human or animal figurines were found, suggesting the people of Khirbet Qeiyafa observed the biblical ban on graven images.

It suggests that the population of Khirbet Qeiyafa observed two biblical bans—on pork and on graven images—and thus practiced a different cult from that of the Canaanites or the Philistines.

Yet, the Hebrew Univerity press release is clear that no one is sure when these aniconic and monotheistic practices began, during the Israelite and Judahite monarchies (tenth to sixth centuries BC), or only later, in the Persian or Hellenistic eras. The claim that images of humans or animals were absent in the three shrines is, on the face of it, evidence that worshipers here differed from the Canaanites and the Philistines, who made images of their gods.

The Discoveries and their Interpretation

The three rooms, part of larger building complexes, are supposed to have been separate shrines. In this respect they are different from Canaanite or Philistine cults, which were practiced in temples—separate buildings dedicated only to rituals. Garfinkel supposes that because the bible speaks of the portable ark being stored in private houses (2 Samuel 6) that it was worshiped in private houses. Yet there was only one such ark at a time, so it could hardly have been worshiped in three separate rooms. Indeed, three separate shrines in one larger building suggests polytheism, the different rooms being devoted to different objects of worship. Cult objects found include five standing stones (Masseboth), two basalt altars, two pottery libation vessels and two portable shrines. Canaanites commonly worshiped masseboth, stones, and even the bible suggests the Judahites and Israelites did, though they were not supposed to according to the tacked on myth of Moses. It is deeply entrenched. Jews today still worship stones!

Two portable shrines or “shrine models”—or naoi as Wlilliam Dever tells us the professionals call them—were found, one made of pottery, c 20cm high, and the other, 35cm high, of stone. These are boxes rather like medieval icons, shaped like miniature temples, which could be closed. The stone shrine is made of soft limestone and painted red. Its façade is decorated by two elements—seven groups of roof beams, three planks in each. This architectural element, the “triglyph”, is known in Greek classical temples, like the Parthenon in Athens. Its appearance at Khirbet Qeiyafa is the earliest known example carved in stone. The second decorative element is the recessed door. This type of door or window is known in the architecture of temples, palaces and royal graves in the ancient Near East. It was a typical symbol of divinity and royalty at the time.

Similar triglyphs and recessed doors can be found in the description of Solomon’s temple (1 kings 6:5;31-33) and in the description of a temple in Ezekiel 41:6. These biblical texts are replete with obscure technical terms that have lost their original meaning over the millennia.

For the first time in history we have actual objects from the time of David, which can be related to monuments described in the Bible.

The stone model shrine helps us to understand these obscure technical terms in the description of Solomon’s palace as described in 1 kings 7:1-6. The text uses the term “Slaoth”, which were mistakenly understood as pillars and can now be understood as triglyphs. The text also uses the term “Sequfim”, which was usually understood as nine windows in the palace, and can now be understood as triple recessed doorway.

What Garfinkel seems to be deliberately omitting is that these house shrines are commonly called “Asherah shrines” because they are found where large numbers of figurines of a Canaanite goddess called Asherah are found. The guess is that the shrine housed the images of the goddess. Several images and references to Yehouah and his Asherah have also been found, and, moreover, in some portable shrines, the throne upon which the deity sat in the recess is a double one! The monotheistic Yehouah must have been sitting with “his Asherah”, the one seat pesumably being left empty, being Yehouah’s throne!

Finally, he also contradicts himself in saying the cult objects found were aniconic. Apparently no Asherah figurines were found, but the small portable shrine is plainly decorated with images of lions, typical of the decoration of such shrines. Asherah, and equivalent goddesses are shown standing on lions or supported and guarded by lions. Aniconic means without images at all, and plainly that is not so of this site.

Criticism

Most of these injudicious claims have been severely criticized as biblicist nonsense, even by biblicists! Thomas Verenna commented on this reporting of Garfinkel’s excesses:

“Will these finds settle the debate over the historical David? Garfinkel would like to think so. ‘Various suggestions that completely deny the biblical tradition regarding king David and argue that he was a mythological figure, or just a leader of a small tribe, are now shown to be wrong’.”

MSNBC coverage on Qeiyafa

Really? Because you found a couple of regional house shrines in a fortified city? Because you have an ostracon with some writing on it? What hubris this is, when someone can so blatantly claim that certain scholars are wrong because you’ve found common ancient Near Eastern artifacts (which have been misidentified) at a dig in the Near East. If anything this only shows the lengths that certain individuals will go to try to prove their presuppositions. They are willing to fabricate whole cultural contexts that never existed so long as in the end they can say they’ve found the facts behind their biblical truth. It is both tragic and disgusting: tragic because most people will never question the validity of the article or the claims therein, and disgusting because it is permitted to happen.

He has a fuller piece on this nonsense here. And even biblicist, George Athas, is skeptical.

I Finkelstein and A Fantalkin have slated the interpretations and the amateurish methodology of the excavation.

Poor Methodology

To be accurate archaeology depends on accurate recording of stratigraphic details, meaning it has to be done carefully, cleanly and with precise records kept, as prescribed long ago by Sir Mortimer Wheeler and his student Kathleen Kenyon. A photograph of the Khirbet Qeiyafa site suggests a very messy, badly organized and far from precise operation, according to I Finkelstein and A Fantalkin. It shows many volunteers trampling through the excavation ditches with no evidence of sections. Finkelstein and Fantalkin note in particular that a ditch has been cut between the inside of the casemate wall and the adjacent deposits which has severed the links between the fortification and whatever lay next to it making it impossible to identify and possible even to miss altogether the precise relationship between weak but important features in the interior and the wall.

The excavators have admitted in their own documentation that the site is being dug in haste. In the two week long excavation season of 2007, the dig reached bedrock in two squares along the casemate wall, penetrating up to 2.5m at a pace of over 1.25m per week. As a matter of comparison, in Megiddo Area K, it took 46 weeks of excavation to reach down 4m, a rate of less than 10cm per week. Of course the strata at Megiddo are by comparison thick ones but when they are thin or perhaps have been eroded away, as on hilltop sites like this, all the more care is needed to be sure, by the minutest details, just where in the sequence of history of the site any feature is. At Khirbet Qeiyafa, bedrock is sometimes exposed close to the surface because it is on a steep hill, the sides of which slope steeply away, in one place by 4m in less than 20m, a 20 percent gradient. According to the excavators:

The bedrock itself usually serves as the floor level on the site [of the late Iron I (IF and AF)], instead of the typical fine levels with ash and house debris.

Tracking, say, an abandoned living surface lacking pottery is hard enough with meticulously careful archaeology. It is impossible in a hasty operation like this. Moreover, practices like excavation by bulldozer are scarcely conducive to careful archaeology, and simultaneous destruction of a site by simultaneous restoration, as was done here, is farcical.

Major filling and levelling operations took place at the site after Iron Age times—pictures of a fill shows stones, remains of the old settlement, and earth. Two late Hellenistic coins were found about 1.5m below topsoil, and Persian and even in some places Hellenistic pottery was found deep in all squares, sometimes down to bedrock. Eleven of the loci described in a list at the end of the report—(Qeiyafa 1) to which Finkelstein and Fantalkin are making reference—as dating to the Iron Age IIA, D Sandhaus admitted also yielded late Persian (or late Persian and Hellenistic) pottery. Finkelstein and Piasetzky observed that an olive pit in Casemate 214, giving a calibrated 14C date in the second half of the fourth century BC, was found on or close to bedrock where another olive pit similarly situated provided a date in the Iron Age. Both were underneath two more olive pits dated in the Middle Bronze Age. Late Persian pottery was retrieved from the accumulation of stones inside this casemate all the way down to bedrock. Such a poorly stratified site is difficult or impossible to interpret, and requires meticulous archaeology to do it.

Besides the poor archaeological methodology, Garfinkel’s group willfully misinterpret and misassign finds. Suggestive of their poor methodology, Garfinkel and Ganor wrongly identified as an Hellenistic city wall a modern dry stone wall built sometime in the first half of the twentieth century, but after 1932, originally serving as the boundary fence of a farm. Garfinkel, et al, also assigned pottery to early Iron IIA that Singer-Avitz showed was late Iron I, and the excavators at nearby Beth-Shemesh agreed because it matched their Level 4, which closes the late Iron I sequence at that site.

The Iron Age

Regarding the Iron Age phase, the excavators present five main arguments for the discoveries pertaining to the biblical king David, and Finkeklstein and Fantalkin rebut each of them:

1. Date: That the site dates to the early Iron IIA, c 1025-975 BC, and so the 14C dates show that the ceramic typology transition from the late Iron I to the early Iron IIA took place in the late eleventh century BC and thus proves the Low Chronology wrong.

   The settlement was established in the late Iron I. The 14C results from the site agree with the many determinations published in the last few years, determinations that put the transition from the late Iron I to the early Iron IIA around 925 BC. Finkelstein and Piasetzky explained that the procedure of “averaging” the 14C determinations from Khirbet Qeiyafa was erroneous. It is only valid for samples originating from the same event, and some of these samples did not come from clean contexts. The settlement could have been built in the second half of the eleventh century or slightly later and was destroyed or abandoned in the mid to second half of the tenth century BC. It came to an end not later than a transitional late Iron I-early Iron IIA phase. Consequently Khirbet Qeiyafa has no bearing on the Iron Age chronology debate which concerns lower dates than this.

2. Construction: That the Iron Age settlement features a massive casemate wall and two gates, one in the west and one in the south. The casemate wall and the belt of houses abutting it are the earliest known example of such a city plan, a precursor of urban planning in Judahite cities of the Iron IIB in the eighth century BC.

   Presenting the casemate wall system as matchless is wrong, although it is the most elaborate such fortification from this relatively early period found so far in the southern Levant. The late Iron I casemate wall of Khirbet Qeiyafa has its roots in northern sites as early as the Middle to Late Bronze Age IIC. Walls built on a casemate plan from the Iron I to early Iron IIA are known in several inland regions in the southern Levant. Elaborate casemate walls are known at several late Iron I sites in Moab. A group of such fortifications are attested over a compact area in the highlands of Gibeon-Bethel. The gates are reviewed below. In summary, the western gate as seen today at Khirbet Qeiyafa represents, a mainly post-Iron Age occupation of the site. Little remained of the southern gate and in any event, its reconstruction goes far beyond the evidence in the field.

3. Site identification: That the site is the town of Shaaraim, mentioned in the Bible in connection with the combat between David and Goliath (1 Sam 17:52), in the list of towns of Judah (Josh 15:36) and in the genealogical list of Simeon (1 Chr 4:31). The excavators think all three describe tenth century BC realities.

   The late Iron I settlement cannot be identified with seventh century BC Shaaraim. Na’aman’s suggestion to identify the site with biblical Gob is a better proposal, though it is possible that Khirbet Qeiyafa, which had been destroyed or abandoned as early as the tenth century BC, is not referred to in the bible. It is possible that toponym No 11 in the Shoshenq I Karnak list mentions the same Gob.

4. Identity of the inhabitants: That Khirbet Qeiyafa was a Judahite stronghold on the border with the Philistines, so the inhabitants of the site were Judahites.

   Based on culinary practices, pottery and the Khirbet Qeiyafa proto-Canaanite ostracon, the identity of the people who dwelt at the site is uncertain. An affiliation with a highlands polity is, however, more likely in view of the architecture of Khirbet Qeiyafa.

5. State formation: That Jerusalem, Hebron and Khirbet Qeiyafa were the main centres of Judah in the time of king David. The ostracon found at the site was indeed written in Hebrew and attests to a writing tradition, including documentation of historical events, in Judah as early as the beginning of the tenth century BC.

   There is no evidence that Jerusalem, Hebron and Khirbet Qeiyafa were the main centres of tenth century Judah, and there is no reason to state that the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon testifies to a writing tradition, including documentation of historical events, in Judah of that time. Of the two possibilities for the territorial affiliation of Khirbet Qeiyafa with a highlands entity, Judah or an early north Israelite polity, the latter seems the more attractive one.

Finkelstein and Fantalkin enlarge upon these summaries.

The Gates

The western gate, identifed as iron Age has several problems of interpretation showing at the least that whatever existed in Iron I was extensively modified later. The three oldest coins found on the site were of the Persian period and found in the passageway of this gate. Hellenistic work on the gate is evident, two Alexander Jannaus coins were found, and the threshhold shows clear signs of not being original, or of having been reused. An Iron Age gate was here, but it was either severely damaged, or much of it cleaned and reused in the Hellenistic period. So, the gate as now seen is not Iron Age.

A southern gate is described as having a similar origin, but no detailed description has yet been published. The gate was immediately reconstructed when excavating was concluded, but examining the aerial photographs of the remains made by Garfinkel at the end of the dig compared with an aerial photograph after the gate’s restoration, then checking the remains in the field, reveals that the restoration of the gate goes far beyond the actual data uncovered during the excavation. Piers of the gate are built where none are evident, in the eastern wing of the gate the central pier is restored from a wall that blocks the gate’s entrance, and in the western wing the inner (northern) pier does not exist and the central pier is restored from a short stub. The central pier of the eastern wing seems to have been built over what looks like another installation. Had there been a “four entry gate” here, it was built over installations that should then be dated to the Middle Bronze Age, or to an early phase of the late Iron I settlement. All of it demonstrates hasty, indeed sloppy, archaeology.

Tenth Century BC

What of the claim that the site reflects the early tenth century according to the bible, implying that the biblical description is contemporary. Finkelstein points out that the biblical references reflect the time he believes the bible began to be written, the Iron Age II period. Both textual criticism and archaeology show that Joshua 15 depicts the administrative organization of Judah in the late seventh century BC, towards the time of its demise in 586 BC.

Qeiyafa is 10km from Gath and about 40km from Jerusalem. So was it Philistine or Judahite?

Assigning identity to the inhabitants of an early Iron Age site solely on the basis of the archaeological record is notoriously difficult, as most traits can be interpreted in more than one way.

I Finkestein and A Fantalkin

Garfinkel, et al, have pointed to the lack of pig bones as indicating an Israelite or Judahite identity of the inhabitants. Pig bones are common at coastal and lowland sites, but uncommon in highland sites, perhaps because they naturally prefer shady wet alluvial sites not desiccated exposed rocky hillsides. Qeiyafa is twixt sea and hills, and so too is Beth-Shemesh, in the Shephelah, six km to the north of Khirbet Qeiyafa. Pig bones are also rare at Iron I sites in other, non-Israelite, inland sites in the lowlands, such as Megiddo and Aphek. So, although it may suggest that the people were culturally affiliated closer to the highlands, it cannot necessarily mean a religious identity.

The pottery is typical of a settlement in the Shephelah, between the Coastal Plain and the highlands, having some Philistine features and lacking others, and lacking popular highland forms like collared rim jars. The excavators refer to the pottery of Khirbet Qeiyafa was “mostly locally made”, implying it is Judahite, but objectively it is true. The pottery is typical of the brown soil of Khirbet Qeiyafa towards its west, the soils of the southwestern Shephelah and the southern Coastal Plain. The local people bought their pottery from local manufacturers.

Biblicists identify the language of a late proto-Canaanite ostracon found at the site as Hebrew, and take it as proof of widespread literacy in the kingdom of Saul and David. C Rollston rebuts such fancy:

There are no discernible features in the ostracon that mandate such a conclusion… the script of this inscription is certainly not Old Hebrew, nor is it the immediate precursor of the Old Hebrew script.

A Millard concurs:

[It] reveals nothing directly about the kingdom of David and Solomon! Since there is no proof the text is written in Hebrew rather than Canaanite, we cannot say it is an Israelite product.

Curiously, almost all known late proto-Canaanite inscriptions found in excavations come from the Shephelah and southern Coastal Plain, with a special concentration around Gath, the hub of the Late Bronze III Egyptian administration in Canaan. So, the concentration of such inscriptions in this territory may reflect a continuous administrative and cultural tradition in the south stretching from the times when Palestine was an Egyptian colony. Only one such inscription has been found in situ in the highlands, at Khirbet Raddana. The Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon goes nowhere to proving the people living here were Judahites or Israelites.

I Finkelstein and N A Silberman, and G Lehmann maintain that Judah and Jerusalem of the tenth century BC was still “Amarna-like”, meaning it consisted of sparsely populated latifundias, or former latifundias once dependent on Egyptian ateliers, but left independent and defenceless by the weakness of Egypt. They have not argued that no one lived in the highlands, but simply that its population was small, the district was poor, inaccesible and unattractive, and life for its natives, mainly shepherds, was hard. Even Jerusalem, if it had ever been large, which is unlikely, was small in population until the seventh century, after the fall of Samaria to Assyria.

Who Then Built It?

The casemate wall style of architecture of Khirbet Qeiyafa—with houses, some pillared, using the casemates as their back broadrooms—is one that is typical of highland, that is hilly and therefore inland, areas of the Levant, including Iron I and Iron IIA examples in Ammon, Moab, the highlands north of Jerusalem, and some sites in the Negev highlands. No example have been found in lowlands. So, its casemate wall architecture does associate Khirbet Qeiyafa with the highlands of Judah or the Israelite entity that emerged to its north.

Garfinkel, et al, suggest that Judah had three administrative centers, Jerusalem, Hebron and Khirbet Qeiyafa, in the tenth century BC. It is a biblicist assertion not an archaeological one. The Stepped Stone Structure and the Large Stone Structure in Jerusalem are the only elaborate buildings in Jerusalem ascribed to the tenth century BC, but Finkelstein has shown they are of a later phase in the Iron Age. There is no unquestionable evidence for Hebron in the late Iron I.

But once the biblical glory is discarded in favor of the archaeological reality, affiliating Khirbet Qeiyafa with Judah and Jerusalem has difficulties anyway:

1. the sparse population of the Judahite highlands, and their poverty, militates against their building something sophisticated peculiarly as far west as Qeiyafa—they neither had the wealth nor the manpower
2. no comparably elaborate building is known in the highlands of Judah, even in Jerusalem.

The other possibility is to affiliate Khirbet Qeiyafa with an Israelite entity, albeit not the biblical Israel, otherwise known by biblicists as the United Monarchy. So, rather than an unlikely Judah, Finkelstein and Fantalkin think Khirbet Qeiyafa was established as a southwestern outpost of this proto-Israel that faced the Philistine centers of Gath and Ekron and which threatened the Egyptian 22nd dynasty’s interests in Canaan. The tradition of the battle in the Valley of Elah puts the spotlight on the Philistines, who were known to the Deuteronomistic Historian as likely adversaries of Judah, though really the Judahite enemy could have been Egypt. The Egyptian pharaoh wanted to restore the Ramesside empire in Canaan and needed the help of the Philistine city states to get copper transported from Wadi Feinan to Egypt. The Philistines were only in the service of Egypt.

The hub of the conjectured proto-Israel—based on archaeological finds, pre-Deuteronomistic biblical material on the House of Saul passed down perhaps as tradition to the eighth century, and the Shoshenq I Karnak relief—was in the area of Gibeon-Bethel, but it could have stretched as far north as the Jezreel Valley, and its growing power could have been the reason for Shoshenq I’s invasion of the highlands. The notion has several compelling arguments in its favor:

1. Population. The area between Gibeon and the Jezreel Valley had over 200 sites, characterized by a clear size-hierarchy, with a total built-up area of over 100 hectares, compared with less than 20 late Iron I sites with a total built up area of no more than 10 hectares in the highlands south of Jerusalem, most of them small.
2. Casemate walls. The Gibeon-Bethel plateau, unlike Judah, has a high density of casemate walls built in the same short time period over a small area, evidence for public construction of casemate fortifications in the late Iron I and the period immediately thereafter.
3. Bronze and iron work. Garfinkel has found what seems to be an exceptional number of bronze and iron items at Khirbet Qeiyafa matching finds at contemporary highland sites north of Jerusalem, such as Bethel, et-Tell and Khirbet Raddana, but unlike the situation in Philistia, or, so far, Judah.
4. Architecture. The architecture of the domestic shrines and their paraphernalia unearthed at Khirbet Qeiyafa seem comparable with finds at northern sites, such as Tel Qiri VIII
5. Proto-Canaanite inscriptions. The only late proto-Canaanite inscription from the hill country was found at Khirbet Raddana, located in the hypothetical territory dealt with here. Three more sites of late proto-Canaanite inscriptions—Izbet Sartah, Beth-Shemesh and Khirbet Qeiyafa—could also have been in the hypothesized entity.
6. Scripture. Saul’s battle against the Philistine in the Valley of Elah can be explained on the basis of the geography of the region, supposing that the Deuteronomic historian had some local myth of the battle, a story in which David was Elhanan, to work with. Various scholars including Finkelstein have observed on Homeric parallels and the description of Goliath as an heavily armored Greek hoplite, dating the author much later than the biblical events, as well as his being familiar with Greek weaponry. Of course, the geography doesn’t change over mere centuries, and the authors of the bible often must have been able to see suitable places to set local myths, or purely imaginary events. Equally, iron age buildings could sometimes have still been in use, and could often still be seen, albeit ruined, and so could have been incorporated in the imaginary history the Deuteronomists were inventing.
7. Shoshenq’s targets. Khirbet Qeiyafa may have been destroyed and abandoned because it was part of a polity considered dangerous by the Pharaoh Shoshenq I, who led a punitive campaign here reported in inscriptions at Karnak. The decline of this conjectured proto-state might have allowed the Philistine cities to expand to their east, and what was to become Judah to expand to its west. There is, though, a huge degree of doubt about the places in the Egyption inscriptions and the order in which they were meant to be read. So, in fairness, all that can be said is that they might support Finkelstein’s reasonable but speculative hypothesis.

According to this hypothesis, the section in the Shoshenq I list that includes Toponyms 11 = Gob(?), 12 = Makaz(?), 13 = Rubutu, 26 = Aijalon, 25 = Kiriath-jearim(?), 24 = Beth-horon and 23 = Gibeon refers to the southwestern and southern flanks of this Israelite entity. Nothing only a short distance to the west, like Gath, Ekron, Timnah, Gezer, and Aphek, appears in the Shoshenq I list. The Qeiyafa settlement may have been abandoned during Shoshenq’s campaign, or Shoshenq I’s assault on the proto-Israel caused its decline and later its probable annexation by the growing kingdom of Israel.

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