Tel Lachish

Occupation at the site of Lachish began during the Pottery Neolithic period (5500–4500 BCE).

Major development began in the Early Bronze Age (3300–3000 BCE).[3] By the end of the Early Bronze, Lachish had become a large settlement.

During the Middle Bronze (2000–1650 BCE), the Canaanite settlement developed.

In the Middle Bronze I, the mound was resettled. Remains of a cult place and an assemblage of votive cultic vessels were found in Area D.

In the Middle Bronze IIA, the development continued.

In the Middle Bronze IIB-C, Lachish became a major city in the Southern Levant. An impressive glacis was constructed around the city, which shaped its present steep slopes and sharp corners. In Area P, a massive "palace" was found. By the end of Middle Bronze IIC the city was destroyed by fire.

Amarna letter EA 330. A letter from Shipti Ba'al (ruler of Lachish), who reassures the Egyptian pharaoh (Amenhotep III or his son Akhenaten) of his loyalty. 14th century BCE. From Tell el-Amarna, Egypt. British Museum

rkjšꜣ[5][6] in hieroglyphs

In the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BCE), Lachish was re-established and developed slowly, eventually becoming one of the large and prosperous cities of the Southern Levant. It is first attested as Rakisha in a New Kingdom text, the Papyrus Hermitage 1116A.[5][6][7]

It came under the 18th Dynasty of Egypt who built an Egyptian empire, especially following the military campaigns of Thutmose III.

During the Egyptian Amarna Period (c. 1350 BC), a number of letters were written to the pharaoh and were discovered as part of the Amarna archive. It is mentioned in the Amarna letters as Lakisha/Lakiša (EA 287, 288, 328, 329, 335).

During the 20th Dynasty of Egypt, the Egyptian Empire started to loose its control in the Southern Levant. While Lachish had prospered under Egyptian hegemony, it was completely destroyed by fire around 1150 BC. It was rebuilt by Canaanites who built two temples. However, this settlement was soon destroyed by another fire around 1130 BC (cf. nearby fortified Eglon, Philistines). The site then remained abandoned for a long period of time. The reasons for these destructions may have been rebellions and invasions by the Sea Peoples.

Rebuilding of the city began in the Early Iron Age during the 10th and 9th centuries BCE when it was part of the Kingdom of Judah. The unfortified settlement may have been destroyed c. 925 BCE by Egyptian Pharaoh Sheshonk I.[3] In the first half of the 9th century BCE, under the Judahite kings Asa and Jehoshaphat, Lachish became an important city in the kingdom. It was heavily fortified with massive walls and ramparts and a royal palace was built on a platform in the center of the city.[3] Lachish was the foremost among several fortified cities and strongholds guarding the valleys that lead up to Jerusalem and the interior of the country against enemies which usually approached from the coast.

The single inscription which identifies the location depicted in the reliefs reads: "Sennacherib, the mighty king, king of the country of Assyria, sitting on the throne of judgment, before (or at the entrance of) the city of Lachish (Lakhisha). I give permission for its slaughter"

In 701 BCE, during the revolt of king Hezekiah against Assyria, it was besieged and captured by Sennacherib despite the defenders' determined resistance.[8] Some scholars believe that the fall of Lachish actually occurred during a second campaign in the area by Sennacherib ca. 688 BCE. The site now contains the only remains of an Assyrian siege ramp discovered so far. Sennacherib later devoted a whole room in his "Palace without a rival", the South-west palace in Nineveh, for artistic representations of the siege on large alabaster slabs, most of which are now on display in the British Museum. They hold depictions of Assyrian siege ramps, battering rams, sappers, and other siege machines and army units, along with Lachish's architecture and its final surrender. In combination with the archaeological finds, they give a good understanding of siege warfare of the period.[9][10]

Modern excavation of the site has revealed that the Assyrians built a stone and dirt ramp up to the level of the Lachish city wall, thereby allowing the soldiers to charge up the ramp and storm the city. Excavations revealed approximately 1,500 skulls in one of the caves near the site, and hundreds of arrowheads on the ramp and at the top of the city wall, indicating the ferocity of the battle. The city occupied an area of 8 hectares (20 acres).[11]

The town was rebuilt in the late 7th century BCE during the decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Lachish fell to Nebuchadnezzar in his campaign against Judah in 586 BCE. The city was finally destroyed in 587 BCE.[11] Residents were exiled as part of the Babylonian captivity.[3]

During Babylonian occupation, a large residence was built on the platform that had once supported the Israelite palace. At the end of the captivity, some exiled Jews returned to Lachish and built a new city with fortifications. Under the Babylonian or Achaemenid Empire, a large altar (known as the Solar Shrine) on the east section of the mound was built. The shrine was abandoned after the area fell in the hands of Alexander the Great. The tell has been unoccupied since then.[3]

Ivory hand from the Fosse Temple dating to the late Bronze Age excavated by Starkey and now in the British Museum

The first expedition at Lachish, then Tell ed-Duweir, from 1932 to 1939, was the Starkey-Tufnell[15] British expedition which included James Leslie Starkey as expedition leader, Olga Tufnell, G.L. Harding and C. Inge.[16] It was funded by Charles Marston and Henry Wellcome with the aim of finding the Biblical city of Lachish.[17] They succeeded in finding Lachish, with a "wealth of well-stratified pottery", a "key part of the ceramic corpus of Palestine",[16] and the Lachish Letters, c. "written to the commander of the garrison at Lachish shortly before it fell to the Babylonians in either 589 or 586 B.C."[16] Starkey was murdered in 1938 while travelling to Jerusalem to open the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum. Tufnell, Harding and Inge remained for the 1938-9 season. Tufnell returned to London and over the next two decades, worked at the Institute of Archaeology in London, "sorting, collating, studying and presenting the material found at Lachish". She completed her final publication Lachish IV in 1957. She had already become a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1951.[18][19][15][20][21]

Tel Lachish 1947 (1:20,000)

The second was an Israeli expedition directed by Yohanan Aharoni that took place over two seasons in 1966 and 1968.[15] The dig, which focused mainly on the "Solar Shrine", was worked on behalf of Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University.[3] Aharoni published the findings in his 1975 publication, Investigations at Lachish: The sanctuary and the residency.[22]

The third expedition, 1973 and 1994, by a Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology and Israel Exploration Society team was led by David Ussishkin.[23]^:1–97[24]^:97–175[25]^:3–60 Excavation and restoration work was conducted between 1973 and 1994 by a Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology and Israel Exploration Society team led by David Ussishkin. The excavation focused on the Late Bronze (1550–1200 BCE) and Iron Age (1200–587 BCE) levels.[3] The Ussishkin expedition's comprehensive 5-volume report set a new standard in archaeological publication. According to Yosef Garfinkel, "The Starkey-Tufnell and Ussishkin expeditions set new standards in excavation and publication. They revolutionized our understanding of various aspects of Lachish, such as the later history of Judah and the pre-Israelite Late Bronze Age Canaanite city."[15] Excavations of Tel Lachish continued in 2012 under the auspices of Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology, conducted by Nissim Golding-Meir.[26]

In 2013, a fourth expedition to Lachish was begun under the direction of Yosef Garfinkel, Michael G. Hasel, and Martin G. Klingbeil to investigate the Iron Age history of the site on behalf of the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Institute of Archaeology, Southern Adventist University. Other consortium institutions include Virginia Commonwealth University, Oakland University and Korea Biblical Geography Research Institute.[27][28]

In 2014, during the Fourth Expedition to Lachish, led by archaeologist Saar Ganor, a small potsherd with letters from a 12th century BCE alphabet, was found in the ruins of a Late Bronze Age temple. One researcher called it, a "once in a generation" find.[29][30][31]

A 2016 expedition found indications of Hezekiah's campaign against idolatry. The excavated gate shrine in the city contained a toilet in the holy of holies of the shrine, which according to researchers was "the ultimate desecration" of the shrine, as well the truncation of the horns of two altars.[32]

The Korean Lachish Excavation Team led by Hong Soon-hwa, reported that they had "uncovered a wide range of 10th century BC items, from houses with earthenware items and cooking stoves, to animal bones, olive seeds, spearheads, fortress walls and other objects" on July 5, 2017.[33][34]

Since 2017, the Austro-Israeli excavation is exploring the Middle and Late Bronze Age strata at the site. The project is conducted a joint project of Hebrew University and the Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and is co-directed by Felix Höflmayer and Katharina Streit. The project is funded by the Austrian Science Fund.

The first archaeological expedition, the Starkey-Starkey-Tufnell (1932-9) uncovered the Lachish letters, which were "written to the commander of the garrison at Lachish shortly before it fell to the Babylonians in either 589 or 586 B.C."[16] The Hebrew letters were written on pieces of pottery, so-called ostraca. Eighteen letters were found in 1935 and three more in 1938, all written in Paleo-Hebrew script. They were from the latest occupational level immediately before the Chaldean siege of 587 BC. At the time, they formed the only known corpus of documents in classical Hebrew that had come down to us outside of the Hebrew Bible.[35][36]

Another major contribution to Biblical archaeology from excavations at Lachish are the LMLK seals, which were stamped on the handles of a particular form of ancient storage jar. More of these artifacts were found at this site (over 400; Ussishkin, 2004, pp. 2151–9) than any other place in Israel (Jerusalem remains in second place with more than 300). Most of them were collected from the surface during Starkey's excavations, but others were found in Level 1 (Persian and Greek era), Level 2 (period preceding Babylonian conquest by Nebuchadnezzar), and Level 3 (period preceding Assyrian conquest by Sennacherib). It is thanks to the work of David Ussishkin's team that eight of these stamped jars were restored, thereby demonstrating lack of relevance between the jar volumes (which deviated as much as 5 gallons or 12 litres), and also proving their relation to the reign of Biblical king Hezekiah.[37] Ussishkin observed that "The renewed excavations confirmed Tufnell’s suggestion that Level III had been destroyed in 701 BCE. All the royal storage jars, stamped and unstamped alike, date to the reign of Hezekiah, to shortly before the Assyrian conquest.'[38]

The 1898 Reference by Bliss, contains numerous drawings, including examples of Phoenician, etc. pottery, and items from pharaonic Egypt, and other Mediterranean, and inland regions.