EZION-GEBER GLUECK 473 



The settlement of Period III was built partly over and partly 

 against the walls of Period II, and utilized the old line of fortifica- 

 tion walls. The easiest way of distinguishing the settlement of 

 Period III from that of Period II, at least in the southeast corner, is 

 that its walls rest on the debris and sand covering the remaining lines 

 of bricks of the brickyard of Period II. In several instances the 

 foundations of the walls of Period III encountered and cut through 

 some of the bricks of Period II, which had been placed on their sides 

 in the second stage of drying. The builders of Period III must have 

 thought that these were isolated bricks. Had they dug down less 

 than a foot they would have found all the old bricks, and would 

 undoubtedly have utilized them in their new buildings. In addition 

 to making use of the sm.elter-refinery and the still existing rooms of 

 the industrial square, the entire area of the rest of the site was filled 

 with houses in Period III. For the first time in its history the place 

 assumed the semblance of a real village, and not merely a large, 

 fortified, industrial plant. Essentially, however, it remained an 

 industrial settlement with obviously a large amount of industrial 

 work carried on also in private homes. 



If the settlement of Period I is to be assigned to the tenth-ninth 

 centuries B. C. and that of Period II to the same time or solely to 

 the ninth century B. C, the settlement of Period III is to be assigned 

 to the eighth century B. C. when it became known as Elath. It may 

 have been constructed by Uzziah, who ruled from about 779 to 740 

 B.C. 



The city of Period III, which is Elath I, functioned again as an 

 industrial town of much the same nature as its predecessor. The 

 gateway in the outer fortification system was altered, without any 

 changes now apparent being made in the walls themselves, of which 

 only the foundations remain. Some repairs or changes were probably 

 effected in their superstructure. 



The main changes in the gateway, in addition to the fact that the 

 floor level was considerably raised, are that the entrances to the two 

 pairs of guardrooms were blocked up, creating thus four small, 

 squarish rooms behind the passageway, and an additional mud-brick 

 pier was built on each side of the third gateway, narrowing the pas- 

 sageway considerably. In other words, the general scheme of the 

 gateway of Period II with three doors was adhered to, but the guard- 

 rooms were transformed into casemates. A somewhat similar filling 

 up of the guardrooms in the Megiddo gateway discussed above seems 

 to have taken place. 



In a room belonging to Period III was found a beautiful signet 

 ring. The seal itself, enclosed in a copper casing, had incised on it 

 in retrograde, in the clearest possible ancient Hebrew characters, the 

 following inscription : LYTM^ meaning, "belonging to Jotham" (pi. 



