A Re-Examination of the Shechem Temple

neath the floors of the 902 palace, some features of an earlier building, the 939 building, have been investigated, but the greater part of its exploration remains for another campaign. All of the building activity in these palaces and streets is to be dated to the eighteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries. The building of wall 900, of the lowest street, and of building 939, falls somewhere in the first half of the eighteenth century; the first and second resurfacings of the street (levels 8 and 7) followed soon. The pottery sealed below these structures contained styles belonging to Middle Bronze IIB, the same horizon as that which characterized all of the palace and street loci in the field, even including the topmost street surfacings and scattered remains of a building above the 901 palace. The one hundred years which immediately preceded the coming of the Hyksos to Shechem appear to have seen lively building activity indeed. Who knows but that the patriarch Joseph saw these now ruined palaces when they were dominating the western edge of the city? Again a probe was dug to find what stratification can be expected below current work in Field VI. Below street level nine was found a stonelined silo belonging to the stratum upon which the first of the investigated buildings (939) rested; it too showed pottery from the transition from MB IIA to MB IIB. Below this stratum, under a meter or more of fill, appeared two layers of Chalcolithic material; the intervening Early Bronze Age (3100-2100) and MB I period (2100-1900) are not attested here, even though Early Bronze sherds from Field VIII suggest that somewhere on the site a village of that period probably existed. Thus the complex history of a city continues to emerge. Ahead lies the more thorough investigation of the Iron Age strata and the Late Bronze Age history which just precedes it. Also ahead lies the completion of the investigation of the palaces and of the Chalcolithic strata touched by various probing operations, as well as the study of Early Bronze remains. The mound of many digs will yet see more as she yields her secrets grudgingly.