484 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1930 



During the excavation seasons of 1926 and 1927 we had succeeded 

 in clearing a large portion of the southern end of Tell en-Nasbeh, 

 including the great outer city wall (Bronze Age) and a narrower and 

 still older inner wall. At one point we found unmistakable indica- 

 tions that a gate had pierced the Bronze Age wall, but so far up in 

 the masonry that its subsequent destruction carried away also the 

 remains of the gate. During the first phase of the Iron Age, when 

 the remains of the city wall lay buried in debris, a road led over 

 the top vi^here the Bronze Age - gate had formerly been. There are 

 good reasons why the road should have clung to this particular spot ; 

 within, it was the approach to the sanctuary precinct ; without, to the 

 spring. 



THE NORTH END 



In 1929 we laid our plans for an exploration of the Tell from the 

 north end. Contours revealed by the German airplane photograph 

 seemed to indicate the existence of a gate at that end. Operations 

 were begun on March 15 by cutting a wide trench through the extra- 

 mural debris along a line at right angles to the clearly marked edge 

 of the city wall. On reaching the outer face of the wall I found, to 

 my great surprise, that it was leaning outward at so sharp an angle 

 that it was impossible, even after shoring it up, to remove all the de- 

 bris without endangering the lives of the workmen. At one point the 

 talus of rock leaning against the wall showed unmistakably that 

 it had resulted from the outward collapse of an upper section of 

 the wall. Not far from its base were the remains of a retaining 

 wall and beyond it a moat excavated in the limestone bedrock. This 



=* In his attempt to prove that Tell en-Nasbeh could not have been the Mizpah of Benja- 

 min, Probst H. W. Heitzberg (cf. ZAW, 1929, p.p. 195-90) has fallen into strange errors. 

 He overlooks the fact that the gate found in 1927 at the south end of the Tell was in the 

 Bronze Age wall, and therefore can not be used for an argument about Israelite use 

 during the Early Iron Age. The Israelites had a well-marked road over (he top of the 

 demolished Bronze Age wall at the point where the Bronze Age gate had formerly been. 

 The road made a direct approach to the sanctuary precinct. 



Equally beside the facts is his assumption that the sanctuary found in 1927 did not 

 antedate the ninth century B. C. On p. 15 of my preliminary report, I have stated ex- 

 plicitly that both the first and the second phases of the Iron Age (1200-586 B. C.) were 

 well represented by house levels and cistern deposits, and the sanctuary was a part of 

 both of them. On p. 38 I also refer to evidence of the probablL- Maccabaean use of the 

 high place. Last summer's exca\ation had made this a practical certainty, for extensive 

 Maccabaean levels were uncovered, which integrate with Maccabaean surface remains 

 found in and around the sanctuary in 1927. We have also good evidence to show that 

 the use of the high place reaches back into pre-Israelite times. In AL22 our general 

 map (cf. frontispiece of preliminary report) exhibits remains of what was doubtless an 

 earlier sanctuary, not under, but beside, the later one. Hertzberg's reference for his 

 dating of the sanctuary into the ninth century was based on a quotation from a monthly 

 expeditionary news bulletin of June 1927, in which no attempt was made to fix a com- 

 prehensive date for the sanctuary, because the excavations were still in progress. In 

 short, his two main contentions, so far as the writer's preliminary report is concerned, 

 are completely erroneous. For nothing is better established than that Tell en-Nasbeh was 

 an Israelite and Jewish city from 1200 B. C. to the beginning of the Christian era, so 

 that the sanctuary still remains der gewichtigste Grund against Hertzberg's general 

 argument. 



