IN PALESTINE IN RELATIUN TO THE BIBLE. 



225 



At a spot within sight of thi^ work Professor Selliu of 

 Vienna commenced in March, 1902, an independent excavation. 

 Tliis was at Tell Ta'wnifk; the undoubted site of the fortitied city 

 of Taanach. Although the hill was small its situation was 

 favourable, there being no modern buildings on the summit : 

 the site, too, had evidently been entirely deserted since about 

 600 B.C. except for some scanty Arab remains of a thousand 

 years hack, easily removed. It seems probable to Professor 

 Selliu that the destruction of the town occurred in 60S B.C. at 

 the time of the battle of Megiddo, but two and a half miles 

 away, when the pious KiuLr Josiah was killed (il Kings xxiii, 

 29-30, II Chron. xxv, 20-24). Croing back from this time a 

 continuous occupation of the hill from 1,500 to 2,000 years can 

 be traced ; no remains of Xeolitliic troglodytes were found 

 there as at Gezer. At present there is a pause in the general 

 activity, but several societies are making plans for renewed 

 work ;* it is therefore a good time to review the general results. 

 In doing this I shall refer to Gezer primarily, a^ the work 

 there has been most systematic and most fruitful in results, and 

 is the one I have most thoroughly followed by frequent \'isits, 

 but the work at the other teUs " will be referred to throughout 

 for the purposes of comparison. 



It is manifest at the outset that no results can be of historical 

 value unless the remains of the various superimposed civiUsations 

 can be approximately dated. An object found, say, a piece of 

 jewellery, a sherd of pottery or even a skull, which may l>e 

 intrinsically worthless, may l)e archa?ologically a priceless reHque 

 if belonging to a certain period. In digging tlirougli a tr/l the 

 depth from the surface will of course give some indication of 

 relative age, though allowance must always be made for objects 

 falhng down crevasses, etc., to strata earlier than their own 

 period. Unfortunately, the number of feet of rubbish which 

 acciunulates during, say, a century, varies so greatly that 

 calculations based on that alone are most precarious. Another 

 means of making a rough calculation regarding the age of any 

 stratum of city remains is the presence or absence of metaL A 

 " stone age," a " bronze age,'"' and an " iron age," may be traced 

 in Palestine as elsewhere. The tirst use of iron came in about 

 the time, calculated from Bible data, of the arrival of the 

 Hebrews : we cannot date the beginning of the use of bronze, 

 it is found all over the liistoric period, but the farther back we 

 go the less bronze and the more tlint instruments occur, until at 



* See note at end. 



