THE EXPLORATIONS OF TEL BURNA

Transcription

1 Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 145, 4 (2013), THE EXPLORATIONS OF TEL BURNA C. M K A. D This article provides a detailed review of the early explorations of Tel Burna (Arabic Tell Bornat) from the earliest explorers until the recent excavations led by Itzhaq Shai and Joe Uziel under the auspices of Bar-Ilan University. Beyond offering various possibilities for the identification of the site, this paper s purposes are as follows: first, to serve as a case study on investigation of the early sources associated with the discipline of Historical Geography; second, to provide a detailed history of research related to Tel Burna by examining each major explorer and their respective contributions; third, to compare the recent survey and ongoing excavation to the results of the explorations of the 19th and 20th centuries. Keywords: Tel Burna, Guérin, Conder, Survey of Western Palestine, Petrie, Albright 1. At various times throughout the biblical period the region surrounding Tel Burna, that is the Nahal Guvrin of the Lower Shephelah ( lowlands ), played an integral part of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah (e.g. Josh 15:42 44; Mic 1:10 16). Despite several in-depth studies over the course of the last quarter-century (e.g. Rainey 1980; Tappy 2008) this region is marked by a dearth in biblical and extra-biblical site names that have been positively identified. Only the sites of Lachish (Tell el-duweir) and Maresha (Tell Sandahanna) have been decisively identified and there remain numerous place names without a corresponding archaeological site. The current prevailing opinion of scholarship identifies the biblical site of Libnah 1 with Tel Burna (e.g. Rainey 1980; Albright 1921) and, while this identification is far from certain, ongoing excavations may provide additional details regarding the site s identification. Other scholars have offered various proposals to identify Tel Burna with other ancient toponyms. 2 The aim of this article is to provide a detailed summation of the explorations of Tel Burna (Arabic Tell Bornat) from the earliest explorers until the recent excavations led by Itzhaq Shai and Joe Uziel under the auspices of Bar-Ilan University. This paper will explore the research recorded at and around Tel Burna by 19th- and early 20th-century explorers and excavators. 1.1 The site Tel Burna is a tell that is settled from the Early Bronze Age until the Iron II period (c BCE) that is situated in the southern Shephelah of Judah located between Tel Zayit and Maresha on the northern bank of Nahal Guvrin (see Fig. 1). This small, yet prominent border site sits in the Judahite Shephelah on a junction route (Tappy 2000, 9 11, 23) that connects the international coastal highway with the southern hill country of Judah. Despite its close proximity to established archaeological sites and modern settlements, Tel Burna has not been excavated until recently. However, Tel Burna has been explored numerous times over the last 150 years. These explorations may be divided into the following four periods: s French Exploration s 1890s British Exploration Correspondence to: C. McKinny, 2115 Jocelyn Rd. Aransas Pass, Texas 78336, USA, chrismckinny@gmail.com Palestine Exploration Fund 2013 : / Z

2 s American Exploration s 2010s Israeli Exploration and Excavation Like many ancient sites in 19th-century Palestine, western explorers were the first to discover and describe Tel Burna. However, somewhat curiously, Tel Burna was passed over by the likes of Edward Robinson (1841, 1856) and Titus Tobler (1867) who first explored the uncharted Holy Land in the 1830s. In fact, Robinson unknowingly walked right past Tel Burna on his way to Tell es-safi from Beit Guvrin (Robinson and Smith 1856, 29). Instead, Tel Burna was first recorded at a relatively late stage by the French explorer Victor Guérin in 1863 (Peterson 1992, 323). Victor Guérin (1865, ), a French academic and amateur archaeologist, went to the Holy Land for exploration a total of eight times between the years of 1852 and Guérin s first visit in 1852 coincided with Edward Robinson s famed second visit to Palestine. Whereas Robinson was busy identifying many biblical sites with the developing tool of Arabic toponymy, Guérin s early explorations in 1852 and 1856 were limited to the established sites along the highways of Palestine. 4 This was primarily due to Guérin financing his own initial expeditions, but in 1863 the French Government lent their financial support, which considerably broadened Guérin s area of exploration. By 1853, with the Ottoman Empire already labelled as the sick man of Europe, its vast territory was being closely watched by the powers of Europe. So in order to gain a competitive Fig. 1. Map of the southern Shephelah of Judah.

3 296, 145, 4, 2013 edge over its British and German rivals, France empowered Guérin to explore the uncharted territory of Palestine with hopes of developing a working knowledge of the terrain and geopolitics of this backwater region of the Ottoman Empire. 5 Landing in Jaffa on 18 March 1863 (Guérin 1865, 4) armed with a charter from the French government (Guérin 1863, 48), Guérin set out to explore the region of Judea. In June of that same year, after spending the night at Beit Jibrin, Guérin with the help of a local Bedouin guide visited the ruins of several sites surrounding Beit Jibrin, including Tel Burna. He noted the following: We climbed the height of Tell Bornat. The sides of this hill are strewn with materials from old collapsed buildings. At the upper plateau, we noticed the traces of a wall composed of large stones, roughly squared and placed without cement on each other. This wall was not quite 80 paces (ca. 200 feet) on each side, perhaps it enclosed a military post. At the bottom of the mound winds the Wadi Museijid (i.e. Nahal Guvrin) this torrent is dry three-quarters of the year, but if we dig holes shallow water rises almost immediately (Guérin , 314). Guérin s description of the site is the first known mentioning of Tel Burna and is helpful in illustrating two key aspects of the site its appearance and its function. First, Guérin s description of Tel Burna s physical makeup closely matches its appearance today about a century and a half after he visited the site. Second, Guérin accurately notes the size and characteristics of the tell s fortification system, which led him to suggest that the site was used as a military post or fortress. 6 This is an interpretation that seems to hold up to the scrutiny of later exploration and excavation. Despite these contributions, Guérin offers no historical setting for the occupation of Tel Burna. The map in Fig. 2 that is included in the Baedeker travel guide of Palestine and Syria depicts southern Judah and Philistia in the late 19th century. 7 This is the first known inclusion of Tel Burna on a map. Interestingly, the original German version reads Tell Bulnad instead of Tell Bournat as shown on the French version above Claude Conder In Britain, the Palestine Exploration Fund was formed just 2 years after Guérin s exploration of Tel Burna (1865). So, in January 1872, Captain Stewart of the Royal Engineers was commissioned to carry out a survey that would cover the entirety of western Palestine. However, Stewart s commission was short-lived, as he was forced to return to Britain due to ill health (Conder 1878a, v). In his stead, Lieutenant Claude Conder was chosen as his replacement and the survey was resumed by June 1872 and completed in 1875 by Horatio Kitchener. This substantial work was published in seven volumes, encompassing over 3000 pages and included twenty six detailed sheets of topographical maps accompanied by a concordance of place names in Arabic and English. It is within this framework that the researcher is brought back to Tel Burna, as Conder discusses the site on several occasions Arabic name. Conder s contribution to the history of research at Tel Burna provide us with new information regarding the Arabic name of the site, a new interpretation of the site s function, and a detailed description of the remains atop the tell. On the topic of the Arabic name Conder states the following: The derivation of a few curious names may also be noticed. Bornata, meaning hat, is a name applied to several ruins. Perhaps it may be considered to be the Aramaic Birnatiah, meaning a palace or large building (Conder 1878b, 22).

4 297 Fig. 2. Socin and Benzinger s map of Palestine in the mid-19th century CE. These several ruins may be observed on the above map that shows the location of the ruins of Tell Bornat. Kh. El Bornat, which sits between the modern city of El Ad and the village of Sho am just east of highway 6, 8 and identically named Kh. el Bornat which is the Arabic name for the so-called Altar of Joshua (Zertal , ) that sits on Mt. Ebal north of Shechem. In the absence of a clear toponymic connection between Bornata and any ancient site name, 9 we must conclude that these names derived from the shape of the ancient ruin and not an ancient site name. On this front, Zadok further determines that the toponym is related to the Palestinian Arabic name for hat, burnēta, which is specifically related to the Italian berretta hat with a brim (2009, 667). Furthermore, with Conder s suggestion in mind, it is unclear whether Bornat arises from the prototypical hat-like shape of tells in general or the more specific remains of large buildings atop these sites. In either case, the Arabic name is too general to offer any conclusions regarding the identification of the site. In addition to the spelling offered in the Survey of Western Palestine (SWP), we might add several variant spellings of the ancient site: Tel Burna/Burnah the modern Hebrew name and primary name used by the ongoing excavations; Tell Bournat/Burnat the typical transliteration of the Arabic, and Tall Birnat a variant Arabic transliteration (e.g. Thompson 1979, 416) Function of site. After Conder s official visit of the site on 26 March 1875, he and his team finished surveying the site and they recorded the following:

5 298, 145, 4, 2013 Beit Jibrin seems to have been besieged by the Romans, if I am correct in supposing that the three great Tells which surround it are the sites of Roman camps; they may, however, have been constructed later, when the Crusaders fortified the town. They are known as Tell Bornat west, Tell Sandahannah southeast, and Tell Sedeideh (Judeiyedeh) north-west (Conder , 144). Conder actually lists Tell Sedeideh instead of Tell Judeiyedeh, but since there is no such tell northwest of Beit Jibrin/Eleutheropolis or anywhere else in Palestine for that matter we assume that Conder meant Judeiyedeh. This also fits with his near identical description of Beth Jibrin in the SWP (Conder and Kitchener 1883, 270). This difference between these two descriptions shows the editing process that the SWP went through in going from Lieutenant Claude R. Conder s Reports (Conder , 138) to the final more broadly published product of the SWP. Moreover, since the SWP excludes Conder s comments about Roman camps and Crusader fortification it would seem that either Conder changed his mind or more likely a judicious editor removed Conder s highly conjectural view of the occupational levels of the three sites mentioned. Despite the fact that Conder s initial thoughts missed the occupational period by one to two thousand years, his idea regarding the geographical functionality of these southern Shephelah sites has some merit. All three sites appear to have been occupied in the Iron II Age and, although none of them have been adequately excavated (Bliss and Macalister 1902), it seems reasonable to assume that most sites would have been fortified at some point in the Iron II period in order to form a system of outworks for interior Judah. Although Gibson s re-assessment of Tell Judeiyedeh indicates that there are no Iron Age fortifications on site (1994, 213, ) Description of physical remains. In addition to Conder s comments regarding the function of Tel Burna and the surrounding sites, he also adds the following description of their physical remains. On each is a square enclosure, with a foundation, seemingly of a wall of small stones, but some 4 feet thick. The square faces towards the cardinal points, and the length of a side is about 50 yards. The positions chosen entirely command the town and the artificial character of the top of each Tell is at once visible from a distance (Conder , 144). Like Guérin before him, Conder describes the visible fortifications of Tel Burna. 10 Despite the fact that the surrounding wall measures closer to 5 6 ft (1.5 2 m) in width than Conder s 4 ft (1.2 m) his description of the walls architectural elements matches the remains that can still be seen on the surface today. Moreover, in the archaeological section of the SWP Conder adds that he observed artificial terracing along the slopes of Tel Burna these can clearly be seen on the western, northern and eastern slopes. Lastly, either due to an error in the field or an assumption that Tel Burna was equal in size to Tell Judeiyedeh or Tell Sandahanna, Conder miscalculated the size of Tel Burna by 50 ft (15 m). In 1875, Conder returned to Britain, leaving his 28-year-old assistant Kenneth Kitchener to finish the task of surveying the remaining 1300 square miles of western Palestine (Conder 1878a, v). The maps of the SWP were published in 1878, which gave the scholarly world the most in-depth picture of Palestine to date (see Fig. 3 for Sheets XX-XXI, covering the region of Tel Burna). Today, these groundbreaking maps still have relevance to the disciplines of Historical Geography and archaeology of the biblical periods, as they provide us a snapshot of the Land as it was 120 years ago Flinders Petrie While no introduction to Flinders Petrie is needed, we might add a few words on his significance to the explorations of Tel Burna. After refining his understanding of ceramic seriation

6 299 through a decade of excavations in Egypt, Petrie turned his attention to Palestine. Applying this method to the ceramic material extracted from the sequential strata of Tell el-hesi during his 1890 excavations there, Petrie established the first systematic seriation of ceramic types in the Levant. Now, only fifteen years since Conder s visit, Petrie using the tool of ceramic typology was able to access Tel Burna in a much more scientific manner than Guérin or Conder. Note the clear difference in Petrie s matter-of-fact description: Tell Bornat Late Jewish pottery, no Greek (?) or Roman. Top is in crops, the sides half-barren. About 200 feet square with long slopes (Petrie 1890, 61). While Guérin had no thoughts regarding the site s history and Conder had guessed that it was Roman or Crusader, Petrie defined the site as belonging to the period associated with ancient Israel. In 1890, Petrie s definition of Jewish pottery is a bit nebulous, but it is impossible to be negative towards Petrie when it is considered that his predecessors best guess regarding the occupational levels of Tel Burna was over a thousand years out During an exploration trip in October 1924, William F. Albright led a group of students from the American School of Oriental Research from Gaza to Jerusalem and back. On the way back to Jerusalem, Albright visited Tel Burna and stated the following: Fig. 3. Sheets XX XXI of the Survey of Western Palestine maps (courtesy of

7 300, 145, 4, 2013 Our study of Tell Bornat, revealed nothing new in regard to the pottery, which is Late Bronze and Early Iron, mostly the latter, just as seen by Petrie. The site is comparatively small, and the writer s suggestion for its identification is hardly ripe for discussion (Albright 1925, 8). While Albright admits to revealing nothing new in his survey of the site he actually makes a key distinction by expounding upon Petrie s description of later Jewish pottery by labeling the surveyed pottery as Late Bronze and Early Iron Age. Later surveys and excavation have shown that these are two of the three most densely populated periods in Burna s occupational history. Albright s brief survey of the site illustrates the advancements that ceramic typology had gained in the 30 years since Petrie first discovered the phenomenon. Furthermore, Albright s findings lead him to identify the site with biblical Libnah (Josh 21:13; 2 Kgs 8:22; 19:8; 23:31). Following Albright s lead Karl Elliger (1934, 58 63), Yohanan Aharoni (1959, 1979, 439) and Anson Rainey (1980, 198; Rainey and Notley 2006, 127) along with several others affirmed his identification of Libnah (Noth 1937, 34 35). Although several other sites have been suggested as candidates for Libnah (as seen above), Albright s identification continues to be met with general acceptance among scholars During the 1948 War of Independence, the Israeli Givati Brigade occupied the site of Tel Burna and dug out foxholes atop the tell. These depressions can be seen along the perimeter of the ruin. Ironically, these soldiers had taken a defensive position directly over a fortification system that was last used around 2600 years earlier. 11 The 1960s produced an interesting footnote in the explorations of Tel Burna. By chance, a local shepherd herding in the Nahal Guvrin discovered a cuneiform plaque with a depiction of the Mesopotamian demon goddess, Lamashtu. The depiction of Lamashtu on cultic plaques is well known in Mesopotamia. What is peculiar about the plaque from the Nahal Guvrin is that it dates to the Iron II period, which led Mordechai Cogan (Cogan 1995, 161) to suggest that an Assyrian soldier dropped the tablet during one of the several raids against the Judahite Shephelah. While uncertainty on the matter should be stressed, if either Tel Burna or nearby Tel Zayit is biblical Libnah which according to 2 Kgs 19:8 was the last conquest of Sennacherib before he headed to Jerusalem then it is conceivable that this plaque is a witness to the presence of the Assyrian forces that besieged and ultimately destroyed Libnah. Geographically this makes sense, as a military camp to the east of Tel Burna/Tel Zayit would have cut off communications, reinforcements and supply-lines from interior Judahite cities. The nature of the evidence is fragmentary, but this suggestion is consistent with the available data. 5.1 Yohanan Aharoni and Ruth Amiran In 1955, Aharoni and Amiran (1955, ) carried out a brief survey of the Judean Shephelah. Tel Burna was among the sites that they surveyed: their survey concluded that Tel Burna was occupied in the Bronze and Iron Ages. They also noted Tel Burna s fortifications, photographing them for the first time. Upon comparison of the northern wall of the site, one can clearly observe the preservation of the site since the 1950s (see Fig. 4). 5.2 John Peterson, Yehuda Dagan, and Sejin Koh The next fifty years brought three separate explorers to the site: In the 1970s, John Peterson, formerly of St George s College in Jerusalem, surveyed Tel Burna in a larger study directed at comparing the stratigraphy of Joshua s Levitical Cities (Peterson 1977). He observed pottery from the Early Bronze Age, no Intermediate Bronze

8 301 Age material, and then a continuation from the Middle Bronze Age-Iron II with later traces of Persian and Arab period pottery. Around the same time, Yehuda Dagan undertook an archaeological survey of the entire Shephelah of Judah in an attempt to better understand the region as a whole (Dagan 2000). Dagan s work at Tel Burna concluded with similar results to Peterson s, the main difference being that he observed an occupational continuation from the Iron II into the Persian, Hellenistic and even Roman periods. This interpretation of the surveyed ceramics would prove to be one of the key deciding factors in the explorations of Tel Burna, as the site continued to be unexcavated well into the 21st century. In addition, Sejin Koh of Jerusalem University College surveyed Tel Burna in Through communication with several members of the staff it seems clear that the survey produced results similar to those of Peterson and Dagan. However, without a final publication of the findings it is impossible to access Koh s surveyed material. 5.3 Itzhaq Shai and Joe Uziel Finally, in 2009 Itzhaq Shai and Joe Uziel of Bar-Ilan University began surveying Tel Burna. Their survey methods can be broken down into three separate categories (Uziel and Shai 2010; Shai and Uziel 2011). Firstly, surface scatter this was accomplished in the summer of 2009 and produced similar results to previous surveyors with one key difference. Unlike Dagan s survey, their work did not show an occupational continuation from the Iron II into the later periods. Instead, they found that the tell itself stopped being occupied in the Iron II period and only found later remains along the slopes of the site. Secondly, test pits this method seeks to produce a better test sample than the more common surface scatter survey by excavating a small pit 20 cm in depth by 1 m in diameter (0.16 m 3 ), then sifting the material and analysing the finds. This ongoing project was started in 2010 and will continue until a total of 200 pits have been excavated all across the site. The main purpose of this survey method is to ultimately compare its accuracy to that of the typical surface survey method (Shai and Uziel 2011). Thirdly, feature survey this project, which was carried out by the Cave Research Unit of the Hebrew University, was focused on charting the artificial and natural features of Tel Burna s slopes and adjoining hills. Lastly, in addition to these survey techniques, Shai and Uziel began excavating the site in 2010 (see Fig. 5). After two short seasons of excavation, it became clear that the excavated Fig. 4. Comparison of the façade of the northern fortification of Tel Burna.

9 302, 145, 4, 2013 remains matched very closely to the periods and dispersal of finds as seen in the surface survey. So far, the excavations have uncovered layers from the Late Bronze II Age, Iron IIA, Iron IIB, Iron IIC, and Persian periods (Uziel and Shai 2010). It is our hope that continued excavations will shed light on the occupational history of the site, as well as continue to allow us to refine our survey techniques. 6. The history of research at Tel Burna would be incomplete without a discussion regarding a post-biblical reference to Libnah. The only mention of the site from the post-biblical era comes from the early 4th century CE Onomasticon of Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea, which states, Libnah. Joshua also destroyed it and killed its king. It was included in the tribe of Judah. A priestly city. Now it is a village called Lobana (Λοβανἀ) in the district of Eleutheropolis. It is also mentioned in Isaiah (Notley and Safrai 2005, 116). This text led Dagan to associate the site of Kh. Lavnin (Arabic Tell el Beida), a site located c km Fig. 5. Site Map of Excavation Areas at Tel Burna.

10 303 (4.20 miles) northeast of Eleutheropolis directly adjacent to Kh. Midras, with the site of Libnah/Λοβανἀ on the basis of the similarity of the name (i.e. white ) and the existence of both Late Bronze, Iron II, and Roman/Byzantine period pottery. 12 However, in examining the map of the Survey of Western Palestine we noticed the homonymous ruin of another Kh. el Beida, a site located a mere 0.5 km to the north of Eleutheropolis (see Fig. 3), Conder and Kitchener describe the ruin as follows, caves, cisterns, heaps of stones, foundations. One of the caves has 120 niches (apparently for urns) in it (Conder and Kitchener 1883, 369). Based on our examination of Kh. el Beida (Hebrew Horvat Adah), it seems clear that Conder and Kitchener were describing a columbarium (dovecot), which can be still seen on the surface. Additionally, we noticed substantial occupational activity from the Byzantine period including a large, collapsed winepress installation and abundant Byzantine pottery. Since Kh. el Beida is much closer to the Byzantine city of Eleutheropolis than Tell el Beida and likewise could retain the ancient name through Arabic translation, it would seem that it is a likelier identification for the Byzantine site of Lobana than that of Tell el Beida. Using similar reasoning, Zadok argues against Dagan s identification of Tell el Beida (Kh. Lavnin) by arguing for the identification of biblical Libnah at Tel Burna and Lobana at nearby Kh. el Bornateh, on account of Tel Burna having very few Byzantine remains. Zadok conclusively shows that the ancient site name was preserved up until the beginning of the Ottoman period by referencing an Arabic town by the name of Libna/Lubna in several local censuses from the Crusader, Mamuluk and Ottoman periods (Zadok 2009, ). The form of this name does not appear on the earliest maps of the Holy Land, such as the Survey of Western Palestine, which means that the name was lost some time between the mid-16th century and 1880 CE. So the question is where is this Byzantine-Ottoman site? Zadok suggests that this Crusader, Mamuluk and Ottoman site should also be located at Kh. el Bornateh, a site that has never been excavated, but has Byzantine remains that would fit well with the city mentioned by Eusebius (Zadok 2009, 668). While this interpretation is certainly a possibility, it is our opinion that Kh. el Beida is a better candidate for Byzantine-Ottoman Lobana/Libna/Lubna for the following two reasons: (1) Kh. el Beida is closer to Eleutheropolis (c. 0.5 km) than Kh. el Bornateh (c. 3.8 km); and (2) Kh. el Beida possibly preserves the ancient site name of white. 13 A lack of post-byzantine remains is a problem for both sites, but since neither site has been excavated one must choose between the better of two incomplete archaeological pictures. Therefore, we tentatively suggest that if the biblical site of Libnah is to be found at Tel Burna (e.g. Rainey 1980) then Kh. el Beida should be identified as the Eleutheropolis suburb of Lobana. It seems quite possible that Kh. el Beida preserves the biblical name from the Bronze-Iron Age tell as the local population was drawn away from the tell toward Eleutheropolis, the largest city in the region. 7. This work has chronicled the explorations and excavations of Tel Burna over the last century and a half by beginning with the initial rudimentary, yet pioneering techniques of the French and British geographers and culminating in the ongoing research of Uziel and Shai. This period of time has seen vast improvements in the fields of historical geography and archaeology of the biblical periods. Through the lens of the history of research, Tel Burna s explorations can be seen as a case study in the advancements of archaeological field survey technique, which shows both the value of this technique for understanding a particular site and the worthiness of the pursuit to further improve the methodology by which researchers carry out site explorations.

11 304, 145, 4, 2013 The authors wish to thank Matthew Suriano and Adam Miglio for providing information regarding the Sejin Koh-lead survey. We would like to thank Todd Bolen for giving us permission to include the Survey of Western Palestine Map. We also extend our gratitude to Prof. Aren Maeir for his helpful insights regarding this article. Finally, special thanks goes to Joe Uziel and Itzhaq Shai for allowing us to participate in the research of their excavated material. During the course of editing this article for publication, Caleb McKinny, brother of Chris McKinny, was killed in a tragic car accident. This article is dedicated to Caleb s memory; may his memory be blessed. 1 Libnah is mentioned sixteen times in the bible in the following periods: Israelite conquest and settlement (Josh 10:29 32, 39; 12:5; 15:42; 21:13; 1 Chron 6:57), reign of Jehoram king of Judah (2 Kgs 8:22; 2 Chron 21:10), reign of Hezekiah king of Judah (2 Kgs 19:8; Isa 37. 8), reigns of Josiah s sons Jehoahaz and Zedekiah, kings of Judah (2 Kgs 23:31; ; Jer 52:1). 2 Other proposals for Libnah s identification include: Tell es-safi (Albright 1921, 2 12 before changing his mind), Kh. el Beida/Lavnin (Dagan 1996, 142 3), Tel Zayit (Tappy 2008), Tell Judeiyedeh (Kallai 1962, ), and Tel Eton (Galil 1987, 67 71). Other proposals for Tel Burna s identification include: Makkedah (Kallai-Kleinmann 1955, 227) and Murašti of the El Amarna correspondence (Na aman 2011, 284). 3 Shavit and Eran (2007, 31). Guérin also explored large portions of Greece, Syria, Egypt and Northern Africa. 4 Additionally, Moorey (1991, 18) illustrates the gap between Robinson and Guérin by stating that Guérin s method was markedly inferior to Robinson s. 5 This fascinating dynamic is detailed by such works as Silberman (1982) and Ben-Arieh (1979). 6 In describing the road from Hebron to Beit Jibrin, Socin and Benzinger note Tel Burna s close proximity to Beit Jibrin and concur with Guérin in assuming that the site was likely fortified (Socin and Benzinger 1875, 327). 7 Socin and Benzinger (1875, 138). Originally created by Hans Fischer and Hermann Guthe. 8 For further discussion regarding the site of Kh. el Bornat, see Amit, Torgü and Gendelman (2008). 9 The biblical term of which comes from (e.g. 1 Chron 29:1) is mentioned in 2 Chron 17:12; 27:4 in association with the building programs of Jehoshaphat and Jotham kings of Judah. Though the term has a similar sounding name to Tell Bornat it seems highly unlikely that the etymology of the site s toponym derived from this source (see Maeir 2012b, , for a good example of the factors involved in a site s etymological history). 10 The actual description of the archaeological remains in the SWP is as follows: Tell Bornat (I u). A mound, partly natural, partly artificial, with a square enclosure, about 50 yards side at the top, and terraces artificially cut on the slopes. (Conder and Kitchener ). F. Bliss noted the close proximity of Tel Burna to Tell Judeiyedeh (Moresheth-Gath?) in a report to the Palestine Exploration Fund (Bliss 1899, 13). 11 During the night of September 22, 1948 the first company of the Givati Brigade activated Operation Roshem (=impression) whose objective was to hold the front line between the Egyptian and Israeli troops. Due to this, the Givati forces took up strategic positions in the area of Tell Bornat, Galon and Kh. Sheihk Amar, opposite the area controlled by the Egyptian army, while other companies from the brigade sat in the region of Tell es-safi and Kfar Menahem (Ayalon 1963, 368 9). 12 Dagan (1996, , 2000, Appendix 1, 58). This northern Kh. el Beida/Kh. Lavnin is often tentatively identified with Achziv of the Bible (Josh 15:44; Mic 1:14) and Chasbi of the Onomasticon (172) (Aharoni 1979, 58, 392; Prausnitz 1992, 57). 13 Kh. el Beida is located c. 3.3-km east of Tel Burna directly north of Eleutheropolis. The well-known phenomenon of Greco-Roman populations moving away from the top of the tells to nearby plains applies here (e.g. Bronze-Iron Age Tell es-safi moved 1 km to the east to Kh. es-safiyeh in the Roman period; see Maeir 2012a, 58). Although the distance between Tel Burna and Kh. el Beida is significant this is mitigated by the presumed overwhelming draw of metropolitan Eleutheropolis and its historical predecessor of Marisa/ Maresha. Aharoni, Y., The province-list of Judah, Vetus Testamentum 9, Aharoni, Y., The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography, Philadelphia: Westminster. Aharoni, Y., and Amiran, R., A survey of the Shephelah tels, BIES 19, (Hebrew). Albright, W. F., Libnah and Gath, BASOR 4, Albright, W. F., The Fall trip of the School in Jerusalem: from Jerusalem to Gaza and back, BASOR 17, 4 9.

12 305 Amit, D., Torgü, H., and Gendelman, P., Horvat Burnat, a Jewish village in the Lod Shephelah during the Hellenistic and Roman period, Qadmoniot 41, (Hebrew). Ayalon, A., Givati Brigade against the Egyptian Invader, Tel Aviv: Ma arakhot Publishing. Ben-Arieh, Y., The Rediscovery of the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, Jerusalem: Magnes Press. Bliss, F. J., First report of the excavations at Tell Zakariya, PEFQS 31, Bliss, F. J., and Macalister, R. A. S., Excavations in Palestine during the Years , London: Palestine Exploration Fund. Cogan, M., A Lamashtu plaque from the Judean Shephelah, IEJ 45, Conder, C. R., The Survey of Palestine: Lieut. Claude R. Conder s Reports, PEFQS 7 8, Conder, C. R., 1878a. Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure. London: Richard Bentley and Son. Conder, C. R., 1878b. Notes from the Memoir, PEFQS 10, Conder, C.R., and Kitchener, H.H., The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology, vol. 3. London: Palestine Exploration Fund. Dagan, Y., The Cities of the Lower Shephelah and the separation of the districts of Joshua 15, ErIsr 25, (Hebrew). Dagan, Y., The Settlement in the Judean Shephela in the Second and First Millennium B.C.: A Test-case of Settlement Processes in a Geographic Region, Ph. D. Dissertation, Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University (Hebrew). Elliger, K., Josua in Juda, PalJB 30, Galil, G., The administrative division of the Shephelah, Shnaton 9, Gibson, S., The Tell el-judeideh excavations, TA 21, Guérin, V., Séances du mois de Février, Comptes Rendus des Séances de l Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 6, Guérin, V., Mission Scientifique en Palestine, Paris: Libraire de la Société de Géographie. Guérin, V., Description Géographique,Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine, Paris: Imprimerie Impériale. Kallai, Z., Libnah, in E. L. Sukenik (ed.), Encyclopedia Miqrait, vol. 4, Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, (Hebrew). Kallai-Kleinmann, Z., The Shephelah of Judaea, BIES 19, Maeir, A. M., 2012a. The Tell es-safi/gath archaeological project : introduction, overview and synopsis of results, in A. Maeir (ed.), Tell es-safi/gath I: The Seasons, Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, Maeir, A. M., 2012b. History of research, in A. Maier (ed.), Tell es-safi/gath I: The Seasons, Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, Moorey, P. R. S., A Century of Biblical Archaeology, Louisville: Westminster. Na aman, N., The Shephelah according to the Amarna Letters, in I. Finkelstein, and N. Na'aman (eds.), The Fire Signals of Lachish: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Israel in the Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Persian Period in Honor of David Ussishkin, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, Noth, M., Die fünf Könige in der Höhle von Makkeda, PJB 33, Notley, R. S., and Safrai, Z., Eusebius, Onomasticon, Leiden: Brill. Peterson, J. L., A Topographical Surface Survey of the Levitical Cities of Joshua 21 and I Chronicles 6: Studies on the Levites in Israelite Life and Religion, Ph. D. Dissertation, Chicago: Chicago Institute of Advanced Theological Studies and Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. Peterson, J. L., Libnah, in D. N. Freedman (ed.), Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 4. New York: Doubleday, Petrie, W. M. F., Tell el-hesi Journal, London: Palestine Exploration Fund. Prausnitz, M. W., Achzib, in D. N. Freedman (ed.), Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 1, New York: Doubleday, Rainey, A. F., The administrative division of the Shephelah, TelAviv 7, Rainey, A. F., and Notley, S., The Sacred Bridge: Carta s Atlas of the Biblical World, Jerusalem: Carta. Robinson, E., and Smith, E., Biblical Researches of Palestine, Boston: Crocker and Brewster. Robinson, E., and Smith, E., Later Biblical Researches in Palestine, Boston: Crocker and Brewster. Shai, I., and Uziel, J., Tel Burna: archaeological project: The results of the seasons, presented at the 2011 ASOR Annual Meeting. Shavit, Y., and Eran, M., The Hebrew Bible Reborn: From Holy Scripture to the Book of Books : a History of Biblical Culture and the Battles Over the Bible in Modern Judaism, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Silberman, N. A., Digging for God and Country: Exploration, Archaeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land, , New York: Knopf. Socin, A., and Benzinger, I., Palestine et Syrie: Manuel du Voyageur, Leipzig: Baedeker. Tappy, R., The 1998 preliminary survey of Khirbet Zeitah el-kharab (Tel Zayit) in the Shephelah of Judah, BASOR 319, Tappy, R., Historical and Geographical Notes on the Lowland Districts of Judah in Joshua xv 33 47, Vetus Testamentum 58, Thompson, T., The Settlement of Palestine in the Bronze Age, Wiesbaden: Reichert. Tobler, T., Bibliographa Geographica Palaestinae, Leipzig: Hirzel. Uziel, J., and Shai, I., The settlement history of Tel Burna: results of the surface survey, TelAviv 37, Zadok, R., Philistian Notes I, Ugarit-Forschungen 41, Zertal, A., An early Iron Age cultic site on Mount Ebal, TelAviv 13 14,