488 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1930 



the cave coincide with the stratification on the Tell where charac- 

 teristic Late Bronze Age pottery is absent or represented sparingly. 

 There is enough to indicate that further excavations may bring to 

 light a Late Bronze Age occupation of the Tell. 



In short, the evidence points to a first use of the cave by Early 

 Bronze Age inhabitants of Palestine as a place of burial. Remains 

 of 14 persons could be made out, but there may have been many 

 more before the cave was cleared for occupation as a dwelling-place 

 during the Middle Bronze Age. There is a suggestion of a sudden 

 tragedy for the Early Bronze Age people in our discovery of a small 

 kiln filled with pottery that had not been fired. It was at the 

 entrance of the cave, and the pottery, made of a greenish clay, may 

 have been intended for funerary purposes. Before the firing could 

 take place an evil fate overtook the living and probably the dead. 

 The Middle Bronze Age stratum of the cave contained many objects 

 of great interest, among them a terra-cotta couch of a unique design. 



INTRAMURAL AREA 



Above the cave, and within the city wall, our excavations con- 

 nected with those of 1926. Here again we struck the two city walls, 

 tlie outer and the inner, and in the space between them were numer- 

 ous circular grain bins, like those found during the previous year. 

 Along the inner wall ran a paved path over which purchasers and 

 vendors, camels, and donkeys, came and went when this part of the 

 city was a busy grain market. Thirty or forty meters farther north 

 the inner circuit wall gradually turned westward away from the 

 main wall, thus widening the intramural area. This wider space 

 was at this point occupied by a moderately large square building, 

 divided into four rooms, arranged exactly like those in the Israelite 

 sanctuary discovered on the west side of the Tell in 1927. One 

 room, about 8 by 30 feet, ran across the entire width of the building. 

 Three others ran at right angles to it, and the central one was the 

 largest. It contained a large circular-walled structure like a stor- 

 age bin, about 2 meters in diameter, a stone basin, and a kind of 

 table made of two flat stones. Among the objects found in the 

 rooms were a terra-cotta dove, the torso of an Astarte figurine, and 

 a small saucer lamp nested in the 3-branched fork of a tree, all in 

 terra cotta. The lamp had been covered with white slip and then 

 painted red, just like the Astarte figurines. Therefore it probably 

 had religious significance and was of a votive character. The dove, as 

 is well known, was a bird sacred to Astarte. So far as the evidence 

 warrants a conclusion, we are concerned here with a sanctuary of 

 Astarte, the "Queen of Heaven" (Jer. 44, 17). It may be added, 

 as a significant fact, that in the immediate neighborhood of this 



