GRIM SACRIFICES

Taranaki Daily News, 27 October 1932, Page 13

GRIM SACRIFICES

DISCOVERIES AT GAZA. A PIT OF VENGEANCE. A discovery at Gaza by Sir Flinders Petrie, the veteran archaeologist, is taken to show that the terrible vengeance upon Achan, who committed sacrilege after the fall of Jericho, was a traditional punishment in the stern history of South Palestine. ' The discovery refers to a date 1000 years before the Jews invested Jericho. The punishment of Achan, who, at the sack of the city, kept loot for himself when Joshua had ordered everything save metals to be destroyed as a sacrifice to God, was believed to be without parallel in Palestinian history. Achan, his family, .and his goods and his spoil, were taken into a valley, where, in the words of the Bible, “All Israel stoned him with stones and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones.”

In a report on his discovery, Sir Flinders Petrie says: “A thousand years before Achan the Canaanites made the same purgation of evil. Of this we have found unmistakable evidence. A man had brought misfortune on Gaza, or had offended the gods in some way. So his silver and gold and vessels of stone and pottery, and his gaming pieces and all that he had were taken out of the city and burnt with fire. In a pit full of sooty ashes lay lumps and drops of melted gold, and an earring or two still undamaged. But all the plited gold was stripped off and torn to the smallest scraps. The silver was mostly melted, but a few beads remained. The alabaster was smashed, two tripod dishes of basalt —the finest known—were broken up; the ivory draughtsmen were burnt, the painted pottery was broken to chips, the deep sooty bed of ashes told how much of goodly garments had flared up in that fierce fire.”