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Kamid el-Loz / Kumidi

كامد اللوز

Lebanon · Bekaa

Ancient cityUnknown
Approximate period5,000 BCE — 300 CEFrom approximately the 5th millennium BC; especially the Middle and Late Bronze Age See on the map ↓

In brief

The mound in the Bekaa Valley is identified with the ancient city of Kumidi. Located on routes connecting Egypt with the inland Levant, the settlement was an important regional center, especially during the Bronze Age.

What was found?

  • 1Middle Bronze Age temples

    Temples designated T4 and T5 were uncovered in the central sanctuary. Successive building phases allow changes in the place of worship to be traced over time.

  • 2Late Bronze Age palaces

    The excavations documented successive palace phases along with workshop, temple, and residential areas. They reveal the urban layout of Kumidi and the location of its administrative buildings.

  • 3Persian–Hellenistic period cemetery

    The graves and grave goods form an important group of finds relating to the settlement's later use. Isotopes in human remains and plant remains in dental calculus have been studied to investigate past diets.

What does it point to?

The temples, palaces, and residences show that Kumidi was an urban center with different functions during the Bronze Age. The later cemetery indicates that the use of the same mound changed and that everyday life can also be investigated through human remains.

What did it teach us?

  1. It documented religious activities in the central temple area throughout approximately 1750–1150 BC.
  2. It showed that palace, temple, administrative, and residential areas were organized together in the Bronze Age city.
  3. Cemetery research made it possible to compare dietary habits in different periods.

Record

Culture
Bronze Age Levantine societies; the administration of Kumidi with ties to Egypt
First modern dig
1963
Team / historical
Marlies Heinz; Freiburg Üniversitesi
Coordinates
33.6236°, 35.8211°

Sources

  1. pekuli.vfp-archaeologie.uni-muenchen.de
  2. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  3. palaestina-verein.de
  4. etheses.durham.ac.uk

Nearby excavations


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12.000

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