GEZER, gi'zer.
- Documentary History (§ 1).
- Excavations; the Troglodytic Period (§ 2).
- Semitic Period to the Exile (§ 3).
- Syro-Greek Period (§ 4).
- Results of Excavation (§ 5).
The city of Gezer, known from the Old Testament as a stronghold of the Canaanites or frontier
fortress of the Philistines, has acquired no slight
interest at present owing to the thorough and scientific excavations, covering about half the area,
carried on there during 1902-05 by R. A. S. Macalister for the Palestine Exploration Fund. It is
the modern Tel-Jezar, 18 m. w. in a direct line from
Jerusalem, 20 m. s.e. of Jaffa, to the north of the
railroad, near the foot of the hills which border the
extreme northeast of the Plain of Philistia. The
name is in the list of names of places in Palestine left by Thothmes III. at Karnak (c. 1500
B.C.)
as held by him under an Egyptian governor. In
the Amarna Tablets it figures frequently, part of
the time as loyal and furnishing provisions to
Jerusalem (then a city asserting its fidelity to the
Egyptians), later as among the ene
I. Docu- mies of Ebed-tob, king of Jerusalem,
mentary and unfaithful to the Egyptian overHistory. lord. The inscription of the Pharaoh
Meneptah (c. 1280
B.c.)
mentions the
city, though the meaning of the inscription is not
clear in this part, since it has been rendered as
saying that Gazer was captured by the Egyptians,
and on the other hand that it was taken by the
Ashkelonites. According to
Josh. x. 33, xii. 2,
its
king and people were defeated by Joshua, and the
city itself was assigned (theoretically) to Ephraim
(Josh. xvi. 3)
and to the Kohathite Levites
(Josh. xxi. 21),
though it was not captured by the Hebrews
but became tributary to them
(Josh. xvi. 10;
Judges i. 29).
In
II Sam. v. 25
it appears as the limit of
David's pursuit of the Philistines. According to
I Kings ix. 15-16
it figures as the conquest of a
Pharaoh who assigned it to his daughter, the consort of Solomon. Solomon strengthened its fortifications and it became an important fortress, commanding one of the principal routes from the coast
to Jerusalem. Because of this fact it was in Maccabean times, under the name Gazara, the object of
constant struggle between the Syrians and Maccabees
(I Macc. iv. 15, vii. 45, ix. 52, xiii. 43, 53, xiv. 7, 34, xv. 28;
II Macc. x. 32).
It is the Mont
Gisart of the period of the Crusades, where Baldwin
V. gained the victory over Saladin in 1177. Its
site was identified by C. Clermont-Ganneau in 1873,
who discovered there three bilingual inscriptions in
Greek and Hebrew, one has the phrase "Boundary
of Gezer."
The results of the recent excavations are in a
measure checked and confirmed by excavations
at Tel-Hesy, Taanak, and Megiddo,
a. Excava- though the value of the Gezer exca
tions; The vations is in
some respects far greater
Troglodytic than at either of the other places
Period. named because of the continuous his
tory uncovered and the greater an
tiquity to which that history is traced. No less
than eight stages in the story of the population of
Palestine are revealed in these researches, as repre
sented by eight series of dwellings. The lowest of
these stages is referred to troglodytes of a period
about 3000
B.C.
or earlier, the latest to a period
about 100
B.C.
The two lowest strata involve the
existence of two series of cave-dwellers, of low
stature, averaging little above five feet two.inches
in height; they inhabited a chain of underground
chambers somewhat extensive in plan, used flint
and bone weapons of the neolithic type, domesti
cated the cow, pig, sheep, and goat, sacrificed the pig
to an underground deity, and cremated their dead;
the later of them employed extensively the yoni as a
religious emblem. The city of this period was
defended by walls of earth faced with stone.
The next two periods, covering perhaps 2500
1200
B.C.,
are early Semitic; the people ranged in
height from five feet seven inches to five feet eleven
inches, flint is gradually replaced by bronze while
iron begins to appear toward the end, and the fe
male phallic emblems of the previous period are
replaced by those of the male type.
3. Semitic One of the distinguishing features of
Period to this period is a "high place" on which
the Exile. a megalithic temple is indicated in a
series of rough stone pillars, ten in num
ber, of which eight remain, while the places of the
other two are marked, these ten being separated
by an interval into groups of three and seven. Of
the eight still standing seven are of native stone,
while the other has been brought from a distance,
and is still marked by a groove which perhaps held
the ropes by which it was dragged. These pillars
range in height from five feet five inches to ten feet
six, and one of them shows clear traces of having
been an object of worship. The city wall of these
periods and the next was of stone, fourteen feet in
thickness and nearly
a
mile in circumference.
These two strata, as well as the one immediately
preceding, yielded many scarabs, most of them
belonging to the middle kingdom of Egypt, and in
particular abundance rude pottery
images of a cow
the emblem of fertility and connected with Astarte.
This period also yielded several examples of the
foundation sacrifice, including infants, a young girl,
and an aged and deformed woman and an old man.
Some such cult as Moloch-worship is implied by the
many charred remains of skeletons of infants. One
object belonging to the end of this period is a
masonry box-tomb with objects of art in silver and
alabaster and a mirror, an exotic suggesting, per
haps the Philistine occupation. The fifth and sixth
strata cover the Hebraic period, the fifth being
apparently that of the city destroyed by the Pharaoh
of
I Kings ix. 16,
and the next the Gezer of the
Hebrew regal period. In this age foundation sacrifice was merely symbolical, indicated by deposition of bowls without the skeleton.
The end of
this age, corresponding to the Assyrian occupation, is
represented by two tablets in the cuneiform, neither
of them entire, but both dated, one either 649 or
651
B.C.,
the other two years later. The first relates
to the sale of an estate of which a slave and his
family formed part, and the governor is Hur-wasi,
an Egyptian name, regarded as showing, when
taken in conjunction with other Egyptian remains,
Egyptian control of the city continuously from
Solomonic times. The second records the sale of a
field by a Hebrew named Nethaniah. The record
of dealings in the Assyrian script under an Egyptian
governor repeats the characteristic of the Amarna
Tablets.
The seventh period is the Syro-Greek, including
the Maccabean age. Characteristic of this is a
votive altar, bearing on one side a
4. Syro- dedication to Heracles, on the other
Greek the name Yahweh in its Greek form.
Period. This reflects the religious eclecticism
of the pre-Maccabean age in which
Jason the high priest led in
promoting the circu
lation of Greek ideas. A result of the excavations
here is the uncovering of the bastions added to the
wall by the Syrian occupants and of the palace or
castle of Simon, identified by a graffito of limestone
with inscription in rude Greek, reading probably,
"(Says) Pampras, may fire follow Simon's palace !"
This is interpreted as a magic charm made by a hater
of that ruler. The eighth stratum is that of the
late Syrian, pre-Roman occupation, after the palace
of Simon had been destroyed and on its site a
structure reared in which a remarkable series of
baths with basins and drain and furnace existed.
The special results of the excavation are the following: (1) The tracing of successive populations
backward to the earliest troglodytic
g. Results inhabitants; (2) the
existence of conof Excava- tinueus traces of Egyptian occupation
tion. from the second troglodytic popula
tion (a scarab of Usertesen III., c.
2500
B.C.)
to about the middle of the seventh pre
Christian century, including an inscribed statuette
of the period of the
twelfth dynasty, four and one
eighth inches in height; (3) the existence of a ,high
place where the worship of Astarte is abundantly
indicated, especially by a bronze statuette of two
horned Astarte and by numerous phallic emblems;
(4) the votive altar already described; (5) the
possibility that an inscribed sherd carries back
Phenician writing four centuries earlier than the
Baal-Hermon inscriptions (c. 600
B.C.)
to an age
when it was written bodstrophedon like the early
Greek and the Hittite inscriptions; (6) the illus
tration of many Biblical features, such as the
" tongue" of gold (R.V., " wedge,"
Josh. vii. 21),
two ingots of gold in this form being discovered,
one of them being fifty-two shekels in weight. Of
gold and silver objects comparatively few were
found, but
bronze was relatively abundant; the
pottery, while fragmentary, is valuable for its
epigraphic illustration of Hebrew names and per
haps also of Hebrew genealogy.
Geo. W. Gilmore.
Bibliography:
C. Clermont-Gannesu, ArAmological Re
searches in Palestine ii. 257, London, 1881; idem, Recueil
d'arch&logie orientate, i.
351-391, Paris, 1885; PEF,
Quarterly Statements,
1903-date, particularly that for
July, 1907, giving latest results; R. A. S. Macalister,
Bible Side Lights from the Mound of Gezer, London, 190';
H. Vincent, Canaan d'aprls l'exploration rtcente, pp. 109
sqq., Paris, 1907
