Shechem Ruins, 3700 Years Old, Uncovered

Press, Volume C, Issue 29435, 10 February 1961, Page 14

Shechem Ruins, 3700 Years Old, Uncovered

CAMBRIDGE (Mass.). Scholars from 10 American educational institutions this summer have uncovered remains some 3700 years old at Israel’s first capital, Shechem. The archaeologists have fixed the historical dates of Biblical events, such as the destruction of the city, 1150 years before the birth of Christ. The Book of Judges, 9th Chapter. 45th verse, says of it: “And Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt” Incident in Long History

Abimelech’s story is just one incident in the long record of the city's life buried in a 25acre mound near the modern village of Balatah, Jordan

The excavation of Shechem is the largest American archaeological project in the Holy Land. Directing the work is professor G. Ernest Wright, of the Harvard Divinity School. He is assisted by Professor Lawrence E. Toombs of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, and Professor Edward F Campbell, of McCormick Theological Seminar in Chicago Early City in Bible When Shechem flourished during ancient Egyptian and Biblical times, it occupied a strategic position at the eastern opening of the pass between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. At the edge of the site is Balatah. whose beautiful spring and the nearby Jacob’s well once supplied Shechem with water. Shechem is an early city mentioned in the Bible. When Abraham and Jacob visited it during their travels through the land, the city was a stronghold of an empire ruled from Egypt R was in this prosperous period that Shechetn's inhabitants first built their massive temple-fortress, the 35-foot high main wall around the city and the two gieat city gates It remained in Egyptian hands for 400 years until the thirteenth century 8.C., when the Israelites, under Joshua, conquered the land of Palestine.

After the death of King Solomon, all Israel assembled at Shechem to make Rehoboam. Solomon's son, king But there the 10 tribes of

Israel revolted and joined together into the Northern Kingdom of Israel, with Shechem as its first capital. Later, during the time of Alexander the Great, the Samaritans, a dissident religious sect, tried to make Shechem the rival of Jerusalem. (The Samaritans believed that Mount Gerizim, rather than the sacred hill of Jerusalem, was the mountain, where God first entered into covenant with his people.)

Shechem’s final destruction occurred about 107 B.C, when the Samaritan capital was captured by John Hyrcanus, high, priest and prince of the Judeans in Jerusalem. The general purpose of the expedition at Shechem is to help place Biblical history within the context of known ancient history. The project is also training graduate students and young teachers in the expanding field of Biblical archaeology A major part of the team’s work this summer, the project’s third season, went toward unravelling the history of Shechem’s great templefortress the largest in Palestine.

This temple fortress, which Abimelech destroyed for the last time during the revolt against his reign, was first uncovered in 1926 by a German expedition, working without today’s refinements in archaeological methods. The building is about by 70 feet, and has walls that are 17 feet thick. In the years following the German find, the purpose and date of the building became a controversy, but leaders of the DrewMcCormick expedition believe they have now largely settled the matter.

The original structure was erected by the Hyksos about 1650 8.C., the expedition discovered. The Hyksos were an Asian people who invaded the Nile Valley and usurped the throne of Egypt. A century later the Egypttians destroyed the building when they drove the Hyksos out of the country About 1400 B.C the people of the city rebuilt the temple-fortress with a different plan and orientation.

It was this rebuilt temple which Abimelech destroyed, a Biblical event which the Drew-McCormick team pinpointed for the first time this summer at about 1150 B.C.