According to the Hebrew Bible, Solomon was the fourth king of Israel sometime in the 10th century B.C.E (his predecessors being Saul, Eshbaal, and his father, David). The biblical accounts remember his reign as one of great peace, prosperity, and wealth in the Israelite kingdom. They further describe many of his building projects, including the construction of YHWH’s temple in Jerusalem, as well as the construction of domestic fortifications and storage facilities across his dominion. One of the biblical accounts of King Solomon’s building projects that has intrigued archaeologists for decades is the following account,

Here is the account of the forced labor King Solomon conscripted to build the Lord’s temple, his own palace, the terraces, the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer.

1 Kings 9:15

This text describes the Solomonic construction of (1) YHWH’s temple in Jerusalem (often called “Solomon’s Temple”), (2) King Solomon’s palace in Jerusalem, (3) fortifications at Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.

The relationship between the biblical narratives regarding King Solomon and the United Monarchy have long intrigued historians and archaeologists. Did King Solomon really exist? Was he really as rich and wise as the Bible remembers him? Has Solomon’s temple been found? Is there archaeological evidence that supports or sheds light on the alleged building projects of this Israelite monarch? These are all very common questions in the quest for the historicity that surrounds the world of ancient Israel.

Over the years, many scholars have maintained that many of Solomon’s construction projects, including the ones described above, can be supported archaeologically (Aharoni 1974; Mazar 2010; Ben-Tor and Ben-Ami 1998; Dever 2001, 2021). However, especially since the 1990s, other scholars have been skeptical of the alleged archaeological evidence regarding Solomon’s building activities, and have argued that the territorial, economic, and overall political depiction of Solomonic Israel in the biblical texts is not historically accurate (Wightman 1990; Finkelstein 1996; etc.)

In this post, we’ll take a look at one of the sites that Solomon is alleged to have fortified according to the biblical tradition; the site of Gezer. Archaeological excavations and some new and exciting recently published radiocarbon data from this site can shed some light on the question of King Solomon and his building activities.

Gezer – An Overview

The ancient city of Gezer is mentioned in the Bible various times. Joshua is said to have defeated the Canaanite king of Gezer during his military excursions in the land of Canaan (Joshua 10:33; 12:12). However, the biblical accounts in Joshua and Judges also state that the Israelites failed to fully drive out the Canaanites from this site, and that it remained a Canaanite city after the Israelite settlement (Joshua 16:10; Judges 1:29). Later on, the Egyptian Pharaoh of the time (not named in the text) is said to have campaigned against Gezer in the time of Solomon, capturing the site and killing its Canaanite inhabitants. He then gave control of the city to King Solomon as a wedding dowry to his daughter, who was becoming Solomon’s wife in a political marriage (1 Kings 9:15-16). And, Gezer is reported to have been fortified by Solomon – a report that concerns us in this post (1 Kings 9:15).

Where is Gezer located on a map? Gezer is located in southern Israel, and has been identified with the 33-acre mound of Tell Jezer. It lies in the Judean foothills, on the inland side of the coastal plains of Palestine, about 40 km. west (and slightly north) of Jerusalem. The site is 750 feet above sea level, and guards one of the most important crossroads in Palestine.

Ever since the early 20th century, Gezer has been subject to various archaeological excavations. The site was first excavated by R. A. Stewart Macalister for the Palestine Exploration Fund between 1902 and 1909. It was then excavated by Allan Rowe – again for the Palestine Exploration Fund – in 1934. In 1964, G. Ernest Wright initiated a 10-year long project at Gezer, sponsored by the Hebrew Union College Biblical and Archaeological School (now known as the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology), and was supported by grants from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., and by assistance from the Harvard Semitic Museum. The project was directed by Wright in 1964-1965, by William G. Dever from 1966-1971, and by J. D. Seger from 1972-1974. Dever directed further excavation seasons in 1984-1990. In 2006, excavations were resumed under Steve Ortiz of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Sam Wolff of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), with the Tel Gezer Excavation and Publication Project serving as a multi-disciplinary field to study the history of Gezer. Excavations were completed at the site in 2017.

Stratum VIII – The “Solomonic” City

The stratum (or layer) of Gezer that concerns us in this post is Stratum VIII. This stratum is relevant to the debate regarding King Solomon’s geopolitical status, because the monumental architecture of this stratum has been attributed to Solomon.

Stratum VIII of Gezer was the first “Israelite” level of Gezer, and it involved a radical change in the city plans of the site. The site became fortified with a casemate wall, which ran west and east from a four-way entry gate found in the city. The casemate wall was constructed of two rows of large unhewn stones, and was about 70 m. in length (Ortiz and Wolff 2017, p. 79-80; 2021, p. 226-227; Finkelstein 2000, p. 119).

The casemate wall of Gezer only covered the area near the gate, and was probably not a part of a site-wide construction; it was probably never intended to go very far from the gate area (Ortiz and Wolff 2021, p. 232-233).

Above, and adjoining the interior of the casemate wall was an administrative building that has been dubbed “Palace 10,000” (Dever 1985). More recent excavations at Gezer have helped to clarify this structure, and have shown that it had an overall plan of about 19 m. by 12 m., with at least 15 different rooms (called “units”; Ortiz and Wolff 2021, p. 228).

Unit 13 provided the main entrance into this building, and also gave access into Units 14 and 15. North of this entrance was Unit 4. From there, one would go in through the small area of Unit 10, which led into a large central courtyard covered in plaster floor that was comprised of Units 6-9. West of this plastered courtyard was the far western end of the building at Unit 5, which also served as another western entrance to the building. North of Unit 5 was Units 1 and 2, while Units 11 and 12 stood south of the Unit 10 corridor (Ortiz and Wolff 2021, p. 228-231).

The northeastern entry of the administrative building led to a stone-paved monumental stairway that was presumably used to enter the administrative building through the northeast. The stairway was 5 m. in width, and its west side formed a wall that abutted the northern wall of the administrative building (Ortiz and Wolff 2021, p. 231).

The administrative building “Palace 10,000” at Gezer had been compared to another structure, “Palace 6,000” at the site of Megiddo (Dever 1985, p. 222; Ortiz and Wolff 2021, p. 232). The conclusion reached by Gezer excavators Steven Ortiz and Samuel Wolff is that, “while it is no longer agreed that Palace 6000 at Megiddo should be identified as a bīt ḫilāni (and nor, for that matter, should any structure in the southern Levant), we would suggest that our administrative structure at Gezer does belong to the same category as Megiddo’s Palace 6000.” (Ortiz and Wolff 2021, Ibid).

East of the administrative building is the infamous six-chambered gate of Stratum VIII of Gezer (aka the four-way entry gate). The gate was built of fine ashlar masonry, and contained six chambers/guardrooms facing each other, three on one side. Two towers were attached to the gate’s outer face, and the casemate wall was attached to the entrance of the gate (Ortiz and Wolff 2012, p. 6-7; Finkelstein 2000, p. 119).

Overall, Stratum VIII of Gezer, with its impressive monumental architecture and fortifications, testifies clearly to the existence of a centralized state in the region that was capable of having constructed these structures. Where the controversy lies is, was this city layer constructed by King Solomon?

The Date of Gezer VIII

Ever since Yigael Yadin’s 1958 paper, which demonstrated the similarity of the plan of the gate and casemate wall at Gezer to the monumental architecture of Hazor and Megiddo (Yadin 1958), archaeologists have generally dated Stratum VIII of Gezer to the 10th century B.C.E., and attributed it – along with the similar monumental structures at Stratum X of Hazor and Stratum VA-IVB of Megiddo – to the building activity of King Solomon mentioned above in 1 Kings 9:15, based on the pottery of the site (along with stratigraphy, of course), which was conventionally dated to the 10th century B.C.E. (Yadin 1958; Dever 1985; 1986; 2021; Ortiz and Wolff 2021).

However, in the 1990s, in two papers, well-known Tel Aviv University archaeologist Israel Finkelstein proposed a new, revised chronology of the Iron Age in Israel deemed the “Low Chronology” (Finkelstein 1995; 1996). Based on data surrounding the date of the Philistine settlement in Canaan, aswell as considerations surrounding the pottery and architecture of Jezreel and Samaria, Finkelstein proposed lowering the chronology of the Iron Age by several decades. This would push Stratum VIII of Gezer and its monumental architecture – along with Hazor X and Megiddo VA-IVB – to the 9th century B.C.E., the time of the Omride Dynasty of the Northern Kingdom (Finkelstein 2000; 2002).

Ever since Finkelstein’s first publications proposing the Low Chronology, there has been fierce debate regarding its veracity, and the question of whether the monumental architecture from the above-mentioned sites can be dated to the 10th century B.C.E. and attributed to King Solomon and the United Monarchy (for a bibliography of papers related to the Low Chronology debate, see here). But, as we’ll see, a new, recent study can shed light on the date of Gezer VIII and the historicity of Solomon.

New Radiocarbon Data

Recently, a new paper was published in the journal PLOS ONE entitled, “The chronology of Gezer from the end of the late bronze age to iron age II: A meeting point for radiocarbon, archaeology egyptology and the Bible”, written by a variety of authors, including Gezer excavators Samuel Wolff and Steven Ortiz. I will refer to the authors of the paper as “Webster et al.” This paper “presents the first substantial radiocarbon dataset and Bayesian chronological analysis for Gezer spanning the last part of the Late Bronze Age (LBA; LB IIB) through Iron Age II” (Webster et al. 2023, abstract). In other words, the authors attempt to shed light on the archaeological history of Gezer from the 14th-8th centuries B.C. (roughly) through radiocarbon samples presented in a Bayesian model from Strata XII-VI at Gezer.

Radiocarbon dating is a common dating method in archaeological science that involves measuring amount of the carbon isotope ¹⁴C in once living organisms (wood, bones, charcoal, grain, etc). Because ¹⁴C is a radioactive isotope, it slowly decays in organisms that die in a predictable manner, and scientists in a laboratory are able to date the life of those organisms according to the ¹⁴C that remains. When remains of once-living organisms are found at archaeological sites in secure loci (contexts), we can use the radiocarbon dates from them to date those sites. Radiocarbon dating has many limitations and difficulties that prevent it from being exact, but it is a commonly used dating method that has helped shed light on many issues in archaeology.

Webster et al. present a total of 35 radiocarbon dates from Strata XII-VI at Gezer, which were measured at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), the University of Groningen, and BETA Analytic (Webster et al. 2023, p. 14). The authors of the paper further combine the radiocarbon dates with a Bayesian model (Webster et al. 2023, Ibid). The dates that concern us in this discussion are, of course, those from Stratum VIII; what do they seem to indicate?

The radiocarbon dates from Stratum VIII of Gezer come from several charred seeds that were found on the floors of Units 1 and 2 and above the courtyard surface of Unit 6 of the administrative building that we mentioned above (Webster et al. 2023, Ibid). The following is a table of the radiocarbon dates from Stratum VIII of Gezer:

And here are the dates from all of the radiocarbon dated strata at Gezer, after being placed in a Bayesian model:

Two of the unmodelled dates from Stratum VIII gave high dates in the 13th-12th centuries B.C., and thus seem to be unreliable outliers; Webster et al. state that, “these seeds were found close to surfaces but not in large clusters and hence the risk of residual material is higher” (Webster et al. 2023, p. 18). The radiocarbon dates from Stratum VIII combined with a Bayesian model gave 998-957 B.C. at a 68.3% hpd (highest posterior density), and 1023-942 B.C. at a 95.4% hpd as a start date (Webster et al. 2023, p. 21). Further dates given were 983-949 B.C. (68.3% hpd) and 1006-937 B.C. (95.4% hpd). The dates, when placed in a Bayesian model, thus firmly place Stratum VIII in the first half of the 10th century B.C.

The dates from Stratum VII – which postdates Stratum VIII stratigraphically – are also useful for looking at the date of Stratum VIII. The radiocarbon samples from Stratum VII come from charred seeds found in destruction debris and burnt contents in Rooms 5 and 6 of Unit D of the Stratum VII domestic units, and seeds found in other areas as well. The Bayesian model gave 957-913 B.C. (68.3% hpd) and 979-889 B.C. (95.4% hpd) for Stratum VII’s life, and 927-885 B.C. (68.3% hpd) and 970-857 B.C. (95.4% hpd) for the end of Stratum VII. The data thus place Stratum VII also in the 10th century. This is significant, because if Stratum VII is to be dated to later in the 10th century B.C., then it follows that Stratum VIII cannot postdate the 10th century B.C. as Israel Finkelstein has claimed, since – by law of stratigraphy – Stratum VII postdates Stratum VIII.

According to the Israeli news source Haaretz, Finkelstein has argued that the radiocarbon data from Gezer is useless for the chronology of the site (or of the wider Iron Age), because – he claims – the dates do not come from secure archaeological contexts. Haaretz says the following,

Finkelstein, the leading voice in the more skeptical approach to biblical historicity, says the publication is “meaningless” because it lacks data on the archaeological contexts in which the samples were collected and their surrounding pottery finds. Without this information “it is impossible to study the relationship between the strata” and the results “have very little value for the chronology of the site,” he says.

In other words, it’s all well and nice to find a seed that dates to the 10th century B.C.E., but one must provide evidence showing that it truly belonged to that contested Stratum 8, and not, for example, to an earlier layer, Finkelstein says.

These doubts, however, are simply unfounded. As we discussed before, the radiocarbon dates from Stratum VIII come from the administrative building next to the six-chambered gate – a structure which everyone seems to agree belongs to Stratum VIII. This was made clear by Webster et al. The administrative building seems to be a secure archaeological context for assessing dates from Stratum VIII.

Webster et al. – based on the above-mentioned data – conclude that Stratum VIII cannot date to the 9th century B.C., and that the radiocarbon data indicate that this layer of Gezer dates to the first half of the 10th century B.C.E.,

The construction of Stratum VIII (Tandy Stratum 8) likely occurred in the first part of the
10th century BC (Start 8: 998–957 BC, 68.3% hpd; 1023–942 BC, 95.4% hpd). The data and
model–with constraints provided by overlying Stratum 7 –rule out a 9th century BC date for
Stratum VIII…

Webster et al. 2023, p. 25.

Conclusions

Archaeologists at the site of Gezer discovered a layer of the site – Stratum VIII – which exhibits signs of impressive fortifications and monumental architecture, which were traditionally attributed, on the basis of pottery data, to King Solomon. This date was challenged by Israel Finkelstein and numerous other scholars, who adopted an alternative chronology that placed Gezer Stratum VIII in the 9th century B.C. and connected it with the reign of the Omride Dynasty in the Northern Kingdom. However, as we have seen, radiocarbon data from both Stratum VIII and the later Stratum VII indicate that Stratum VIII is to be placed in the first half of the 10th century B.C., and cannot postdate this century.

What does this mean? Does this mean that Stratum VIII is, in fact, to be dated to the 10th century B.C.? Does this mean that King Solomon did, in fact, fortify Gezer and rule over a united Israelite state with monumental building activity? It is important, in the contexts of these debates, to remember the principle of total evidence, which says that we should consider the best explanation of all the available evidence when determining between different hypotheses. Radiocarbon dates from one site cannot – in one foul swoop – settle the decades-long debate on the chronology of the Iron Age, when the debate is centered around variety of different sites and when radiocarbon data from other sites also exists. It is also worth noting that some scholars have questioned whether radiocarbon dating in particular is even useful in the context of the debate surrounding Iron Age chronology (Frese and Levy 2010, p. 193-198).

At the end of the day, when deciding our positions on the debate surrounding King Solomon’s historicity and the chronology of the Iron Age – and, really, any other debate, for that matter – we should strive to weigh all the evidence and be willing to wait on future data, and we should not make hasty conclusions based on some data and disregard all the other data. Ultimately, though, the new radiocarbon data from Stratum VIII are very useful in this debate, and seem to shed new insight and light on the many questions surrounding King Solomon and Ancient Israel, bringing us closer to the truth.

Bibliography

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Ben-Tor, Amnon, and Doron Ben-Ami. “Hazor and the Archaeology of the Tenth Century BCE.” Israel Exploration Journal (1998): 1-37.

Dever, William G. “Solomonic and Assyrian Period ‘Palaces’ at Gezer.” Israel Exploration Journal (1985): 217-230.

Dever, William G. What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2001.

Dever, William G. “Solomon, Scripture, and Science: The Rise of the Judahite State in the 10th Century BCE.” Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology 1 (2021).

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Frese, Daniel A., and Thomas E. Levy. “The Four Pillars of the Iron Age Low Chronology.” Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future: The New Pragmatism (2010): 187-202.

Mazar, Amihai. “Archaeology and the Biblical Narrative: The Case of the United Monarchy.” in One God–One Cult–One Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives. de Gruyter, 2010.

Ortiz, Steven, and Samuel Wolff. “Guarding the Border to Jerusalem: The Iron Age City of Gezer.” Near Eastern Archaeology 75.1 (2012): 4-19.

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Ortiz, Steven M., and Samuel R. Wolff. “New Evidence for the 10th century BCE at Tel Gezer.” Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology 1 (2021): 221-40.

Ortiz, Steven M. “Gezer Destructions: A Case Study of a Border City.” “And in Length of Days Understanding”(Job 12: 12) Essays on Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond in Honor of Thomas E. Levy. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023. 723-751.

Webster LC, Wolff SR, Ortiz SM, Barbosa M, Coyle C, Arbino GP, et al. (2023) The chronology of Gezer from the end of the late bronze age to iron age II: A meeting point for radiocarbon, archaeology egyptology and the Bible. PLoS ONE 18(11): e0293119. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293119

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